“Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.”
Erik Erikson
A study published in Psychological Science found that couples who experienced less conflict and utilized effective coping mechanisms were more likely to report an increase in relationship satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The opposite was true for some couples with more interpersonal conflict.
This research was conducted by Dr. Hannah C. Williamson, an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin.
Romantic relationships can be quite difficult to navigate during times of stress, especially when crisis hits. Many couples across the country are working from home and isolating together while dealing with financial stress, parental responsibilities, and so on. It may not be surprising that law firms are reporting a surge in divorce cases.
Despite the rapid change in family dynamics, there is not much existing research on the aftermath of couples enduring a crisis together. This led Dr. Williamson to attempt to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on important relationship outcomes.
The aim was to study couples in the United States who had been dating from a few months prior to the initial stages of the pandemic, in order to understand relationship dynamics before and after the start of the COVID crisis.
Couples were recruited and surveyed at three different time points through an online research platform called Prolific. Time 1 was in December of 2019, before the start of the pandemic. Participants were then asked to follow up at time 2 during March of 2020 and finally again in April of 2020.
The findings highlighted two main outcome variables: relationship satisfaction and relationship attributions.
Relationship satisfaction was assessed by having participants rate their overall happiness on a 6-point scale. The higher the score, the higher the satisfaction.
Relationship attributions covered the ways in which individuals would explain their partner’s behavior. The two subscales this was based on were causal attributions (stability, globality, and locus of negative partner behaviour) and responsibility attributions (intentionality of partner behavior).
Participants were given two negative scenarios at a time and were asked to rate on a 7-point scale how much they agreed with their partner’s engagement in said events. The higher the scores, the more negative the attributions.
Couples with higher levels of coping experienced an increase in relationship satisfaction while causal attributions (i.e. a desire to determine the cause of their partners behavior) and responsibility attributions decreased.
Couples with lower levels of coping experienced a decrease in relationship satisfaction and an increase in causal attributions. As the pandemic progressed, these trends became stronger.
In terms of conflict, couples who reported lower levels, experienced an increase in relationship satisfaction and a decrease in both causal and responsibility attributions.
For individuals with higher levels of conflict, relationship satisfaction decreased, causal attributions increased, and responsibility attributions remained stable.
In conclusion, the pandemic’s early effects did not alter relationship satisfaction and causal attributions significantly because people were more understanding of the crisis being the main reason for their partner’s possible difficult behaviors. Responsibility attributions, however, were noticed to decrease more profoundly, on average.
Although demographic variables and certain relationship characteristics did not play a role in these outcomes, positive relationship coping, and lower levels of conflict enhanced high functioning while maladaptive coping and high conflict meant an increase in distressed functioning.