Shared Reality and Grounded Feelings During Courtship: Do They Matter for Marital Success?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12031 |
| Author | April C. Wilson,Ted L. Huston |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
APRIL C. WILSON The University of Texas at Austin
TED L. HUSTON The University of Texas at Austin∗
Shared Reality and Grounded Feelings During
Courtship: Do They Matter for Marital Success?
This study provides evidence that newlywed
pairs who have a shared and well-grounded
understanding of their courtship are better
able to establish unions that endure. Using a
sample of 168 couples, the authors found that
marriages were more likely to survive when
courting partners (a) loved each other to a
similar degree, (b) depicted the probability
of marriage and changes in the likelihood of
marriage in a corresponding fashion over the
course of their courtship, and (c) portrayed the
courtship as escalating from a low (25%) to a
high (75%) probability of marriage as spanning
a comparable period of time. The durability of
marriages was reflected, as well, in how solidly
courting partners’ feelings for each other were
interwoven with their courtship experiences.
More specifically, courtship difficulties were not
as associated with weakened feelings of love or
with heightened feelings of ambivalence among
couples who later divorced as compared to those
who stayed married.
Many social scientists believe that ‘‘the seeds of
marital distress and divorce are sown for many
couples’’ before they wed (Clements, Stanley, &
Markman, 2004, p. 621; e.g., Niehuis, Huston, &
1313 Yorkshire Dr., Austin, TX 78723
(aprilcwilson@gmail.com).
∗Department of Human Development and Family Sciences,
1 University Station, A2700 University of Texas, Austin,
TX, 78712.
Key Words: commitment, dating, divorce, intimate relation-
ships, marriage.
Rosenband, 2006). Despite this belief, the way
courtships foretell marital success remains more
a matter of speculation than the focus of a large
body of empirical work. We do know, however,
that personality traits come into play during
courtship in ways that prefigure the emotional
climate of marriages (e.g., Huston & Houts,
1998; Kirkpatrick & Hazan, 1994). Research
also has shown that premarital couples who are
highly critical of each other or who do not make
much of an effort to work through their problems
establish less satisfying marriages than couples
who communicate with little rancor and are
more willing to solve their problems through a
give-and-take process (e.g., Markman, Rhoades,
Stanley, Ragan, & Whitton, 2010). In addition,
features of courtships, such as the length,
approval by family and friends, cohabitation,
and premarital pregnancy are linked to marital
satisfaction and divorce (e.g., Booth & Johnson,
1988; Whyte, 1990).
Several issues limit our understanding of the
links between courtship and marriage. Much of
the research has focused on individual features
of courtship, such as cohabitation or how well
partners communicate during a conflict. Second,
although mate selection is the culmination of a
process of mutual choice that unfolds over time,
few have attempted to describe differences in
how partners choose each other (e.g., Orbuch,
Veroff, & Holmberg, 1993). Third, researchers
largely gauge marital success within just the first
few years of marriage (see Clements et al., 2004,
as a notable exception). Fourth, little attention
has been given to the idea that suitors differ in
Journal of Marriage and Family 75 (June 2013): 681 –696 681
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12031
682 Journal of Marriage and Family
the degree to which they develop feelings that
are grounded in their interactive experiences.
In the present study, we examined whether
marital stability is foretold by the extent to
which premarital partners experience a shared
reality during courtship and how strongly their
feelings of love and ambivalence are grounded
in features of their courtship experiences.
We define shared reality (i.e., concordance,
agreement, perceptual congruence) as partners
feeling comparable depths of love for one
another and showing similar changes in their
estimation of the likelihood of marriage. We
estimated this concordance using a highly
structured protocol in which newlywed husbands
and wives independently produced accounts of
their courtship from when they first paired as
a couple to their wedding day. The spouses
depicted the progression of the courtship month
by month on graph paper, with time in months
on the baseline and the likelihood of marriage
on the vertical axis. Because love is seen as
an important driving force toward marriage and
ambivalence a key psychological barrier, we also
gathered information on these feelings using a
standard questionnaire that also assessed each
partner’s perception of the amount of conflict
and negativity in the relationship. We theorized
that partners with grounded responses would
show congruency between premarital behavior
patterns and the feelings they develop toward
each other (e.g., couples with higher conflict
feel less in love).
MATE SELECTION AS A RATIONAL PROCESS?
Most contemporary views of mate selection take
one of two positions: One characterizes it as a
rational process, whereas the other sees it as a
matter driven by idealization and fantasy (see
Caughlin & Huston, 2006). The rationalists,
drawing from ideas proposed by Burgess and
Wallin (1953), argue that people carry around
in their head a mental template of an ‘‘ideal
mate’’ that leads them to be drawn to partners
who approximate their ideal (Buss & Schmitt,
1993). Social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and
compatibility theory (e.g., Murstein, 1970) both
presume that rational considerations underlie
mate selection processes. Accordingly, dating
partners are thought to be motivated to show
much of themselves while dating in terms of
who they are, how they feel, and how they
typically behave, because neither wants to be
appreciated for qualities they do not believe they
possess or to build a relationship on the basis of
false pretenses. The partners’ personal qualities
and values necessarily reveal themselves over
time, thus making it possible for each partner
to collect time-tested data about each other and
cross-check the accuracy of their impressions. A
courtship filled with conflict and negative affect,
for example, ordinarily will result in the partners
feeling ambivalent about the relationship,
leading them to become cautious about making
commitments. Some couples strike a bargain
with themselves and each other that leads them
to marry even though they appreciate that their
union will likely fall well short of a hypothetical
ideal. Their decision to marry, according
to rational theories, is rooted in real-world
opportunities and constraints. Regardless of
whether a courtship is largely ‘‘sweet,’’ ‘‘sour,’’
or a blended mix, rational theories presume that
partners enter marriage with their eyes wide open
to their partners’ and relationships’ strengths
and weaknesses (e.g., Burgess & Wallin, 1953;
Huston, Caughlin, Houts, Smith, & George,
2001).
Preeminent sociologist Waller (1938), on the
other hand, asserted that suitors’ views of each
other and their courtship are idealized (Crosby,
1985). Accordingly, individuals oversell their
enthusiasm in an effort to cultivate or maintain
their partner’s interest; they also are reluctant to
show parts of themselves or thoughts and feel-
ings that could dampen or puncture the romance.
Because partners try to nurture interest, a lack
of concordance in views may develop because
neither partner has access to the information
needed to accurately understand the other. Even
when problems surface in courtship, partners
minimize them or discount their significance.
They also elevate the importance of partners’
virtues or redefine off-putting qualities as quirky
and appealing. The real person is difficult to
find because neither partner is forthcoming;
thus, partners have difficulty tracking their
relationship and building a realistic under-
standing of each other. According to Waller’s
disillusionment theory (Caughlin & Huston,
2006), once the marital knot is tied, inaccurate
views are challenged in their daily living and
difficult to sustain, ultimately being replaced
by more realistic beliefs (Karney & Bradbury,
1997; Swann, De La Ronde, & Hixon, 1994).
To the extent that their newlywed hopes are
mismatched with the reality of their day-to-day
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