![]() ![]() Consistent with people’s tendency to hold positive beliefs about their futures (e.g., Weinstein, 1980), dating partners are more optimistic in their predictions about how likely their relationships are to last than are their roommates and parents, and they are more confident in these predictions ( MacDonald & Ross, 1999). McNulty & Fincham, 2012).Įmerging evidence supports the presence of forward-looking cognitive biases in relationships as well. These types of positive cognitive processes are generally seen to promote marital well-being (cf. Spouses also enhance their retrospective views of their relationships, positively distorting the extent to which their relationships have recently improved even in the context of declining satisfaction ( Karney & Frye, 2002). When focused on the immediate present, spouses make benign attributions for irritating behaviors (e.g., Bradbury & Fincham, 1990), attend more to information that supports and strengthens their relationship ( Miller, 1997), and believe that their partners meet their ideals more than their partners report they actually do (e.g., Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996). ![]() Romantic partners frequently engage in a variety of cognitive processes that allow them to see each other and their relationships in a positive light and maintain their commitments to each other. Does believing that one’s relationship is immune from adverse outcomes increase the likelihood of marital success years later? Can positive projections such as believing that one’s relationship will improve actually promote more satisfying relationships, or are these optimistic forecasts simply random affective forecasting errors – or perhaps even marks of troubled relationships? This study aimed to address these questions, examining newlywed spouses’ predictions for how their marriage would change, the extent to which spouses’ initial projections about their marital trajectories corresponded to their actual four-year marital trajectories, and the initial characteristics of spouses with different types of marital forecasts. Future research is needed to understand the psychological processes allowing couples to commit to and stay in risky relationships.ĭespite ample evidence that divorce and relationship distress are common (e.g., Whisman, Beach, & Snyder, 2008), married and unmarried individuals alike believe their own odds of divorce are low, even after they are reminded of the actual divorce rate ( Baker & Emery, 1993 Fowers, Lyons, Montel, & Shaked, 2001). These findings may be important in helping to understand low rates of premarital counseling utilization by showing that nearly all couples overestimate the durability of their existing satisfied feelings at the start of their marriage. Thus, believing that one’s marriage will improve does not make it so and instead may paradoxically mask risky relationships among women. These wives also had lower self-esteem and higher levels of stress and physical aggression toward their partners initially. Wives with the most optimistic forecasts showed the steepest declines in marital satisfaction. Marital satisfaction declined on average despite this high overall level of optimism. Nearly all spouses predicted their marital satisfaction would remain stable or improve over the following four years. To test these opposing perspectives, we asked 502 newlywed spouses in 251 marriages to predict how their overall feelings about their relationships would change over the following four years, and we then compared these reports to their prospective marital satisfaction trajectories. Newlywed spouses routinely hope and believe that their relationships will thrive, but theoretical accounts differ on whether optimistic projections such as believing that one’s marriage will improve are sources of strength, random forecasting errors, or self-protective mechanisms. ![]()
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