• DOI:10.1207/S15327698JFC0301_03
• Corpus ID: 144200365

An Examination of Couples' Difficulties With Emotional Expressiveness and Their Marital Satisfaction

@article{Yelsma2003AnEO,
  title={An Examination of Couples' Difficulties With Emotional Expressiveness and Their Marital Satisfaction},
  author={Paul L. Yelsma and Sherilyn Marrow},
  journal={Journal of Family Communication},
  year={2003},
  volume={3},
  pages={41 - 62}
}

• P. Yelsma, S. Marrow
• Published 1 January 2003
• Psychology
• Journal of Family Communication

This study investigated a sample of 66 husbands' and wives' perceived difficulties with emotional expressiveness and their marital satisfaction. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Taylor, 1994) was used to assess couples' difficulties identifying, describing, and personalizing emotions, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) was used to assess their marital satisfaction. Results from 2 piece-wise regression models indicated that both husbands' and wives' difficulties with emotional expressiveness impaired their own, as well as their spouses' marital satisfaction. Specifically, husbands' difficulties describing and personalizing their emotions negatively influenced their marital satisfaction. Also, husbands' difficulties describing their emotions negatively influenced their wives' marital satisfaction. Wives' difficulties with identifying emotions negatively influenced their own, as well as their husbands', marital satisfaction. These findings suggest when either husbands or wives have lower levels of emotional expressiveness than their partners, their marital satisfaction will be negatively influenced. Although most husbands and wives revealed differences between themselves on each of the 3 levels of emotional expressiveness, no significant differences were found between the 2 genders-at-large on the 3 independent variables, difficulty identifying, describing, and personalizing emotions, and the dependent variable, marital satisfaction.