Annual of social work, Vol. 24 No. 3, 2017.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/ljsr.v24i3.127.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SATISFIED MARITAL PARTNERS AND PARTNERS WHO SEEK PROFESSIONAL COUNSELLING
Dubravka Svilar Blažinić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4284-2746
; Social Care Centre Zagreb – Family Centre, Zagreb, Croatia
Damir Lukinac
; Social Care Centre Zagreb – Family Centre, Zagreb, Croatia
Josip Obradović
; Catholic University Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Most research results show that when marriage is in crisis, especially if it is a long lasting one, marital partners experience distress and considerably differ from those couples who are satisfied in marriage, not only in terms of distress, but also in terms of personality and system of values. Some authors claim that a specific social and cultural context can determine the differences between these two groups of couples. In an attempt to determine these differences and their nature, we conducted a study including 100 satisfied couples and 100 couples seeking professional help. Couples were matched in terms of husband’s education and place of living. In addition, the effects of variables satisfaction with income, marriage duration, marriage order, cohabitation before marriage and number of children in the family were statistically controlled. Five groups of predictor variables were defined: personality, partners’ attitudes and values, impact of social environment, marital processes and partners’ wellbeing with 30 variables in total. General discriminate analysis showed that these two groups in the Croatian social and cultural context are different in many ways. The couples were successfully classified a posteriori in one of two groups. Using factor analysis, seven factors were obtained: harmonious marital relationship, distress, traditionalism, personality, negative spillover from work to marriage and household, liberal individualism and life satisfaction. MANCOVA showed that five factors significantly differentiated the two groups: couples seeking help experience a lower level of marital harmony, more intensive distress, they are less extrovert, agreeable and emotionally stable, they experience less life satisfaction and are more liberally and individualistically oriented.
Keywords
harmonious relationships; personality; marital processes; distress; well-being of partners
Hrčak ID:
196199
URI
Publication date:
5.3.2018.
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