Marital conflict of manic-depressive patients

Forty-two manic-depressive inpatients and their spouses, as well as 30 "normal" pairs from the community, reported on marital dissension through the Conflict in Marriage Scale (CIMS), an agree-disagree card sort. The marriages of manic-depressives were significantly higher in acknowledged conflict then those of community pairs, and the patients reported significantly more conflict then their spouses did. There was no correlation between levels of conflict reported by patients compared with their spouses though conflict levels of community pairs were significantly correlated with each other. This leads to the speculation that manic-depressive marriages may be characterized by more complementarity than similarity of partners.