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Summary of Intercultural Couples’ Internal Stress, Relationship Satisfaction, and Dyadic Coping Your Name (First M. Last)
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Summary of Intercultural Couples’ Internal Stress, Relationship Satisfaction, and Dyadic Coping
The marriage trend between couple having different cultural background is growing in USA. Many studies have seen the impact of relational stress and connectivity between couples of different background. They may experience greater difficulties due to increased amount of time needed to understand each other and to adjust to each other’s background. The couples might cope with their stress by using the communication of stress with the intimate partner. It is called the positive dyadic coping. The failure to connect with the partner emotionally, is called negative dyadic coping and it is detrimental to emotional, physical, psychological and emotional health of the individual experiencing stress. Stress can be due to multiple factors and multiple reasons. There has been a plethora of researches on the dyadic coping amongst the couples, but the dyadic coping between intercultural couples is a neglected paradigm. The main purpose of this study is to see whether the intercultural couples connect with the dyadic coping mechanism to reduce stress, how it effects the relational satisfaction amongst them and how dyadic coping is effected by cultural variables.
Culture can be defined as the tradition, race, ethnicity and other multiple factors. The cultural differences may contribute to variety of stressors as the responsibilities at home, arranging for holidays, expressing affection, involvement of family in household and other multiple factors. The stressors can develop in multiple forms and by multiple factors, and what’s important, is the stress communication pattern and dyadic coping. The present study uses the Dyadic Coping Inventory, Marital Stress Assessment, and Marital Satisfaction Scales for assessing the particular variables of stressors, stress coping, and marital satisfaction amongst the intercultural couples. The present study hypothesized that the high levels of stress will result in reporting of lower marital satisfaction, while the lower levels of stress will result in reporting of higher marital satisfaction. The positive dyadic coping will have significant correspondence with the marital satisfaction and insignificant correspondence with the stress levels. The negative dyadic coping will have insignificant correspondence with marital satisfaction and significant correspondence with the stress levels. The study used the transactional model to investigate the variables. The participants were recruited across the USA through Facebook, and email to cultural centers and universities. The couples who showed interest in the study were chosen on the major criteria of i) over the age of 18 ii) born in different countries with one partner from USA iii) in the heterosexual relationship with their current partner for at least six months iv)self-identified as intercultural couple and v)willing to participate. The final data consisted of 73 couples with majority consisting of USA-Germany cultural identities. The age ranged between 19 years to 79 years. Most participants identified as Whites, well-educated, married and making less than $50,000 per year. Forty-six couples reported having children. The median age of relationship was 4 years. The results found a significant relationship between the variables of the high levels of stress and lack of marital satisfaction. There was a significant relationship between the decreased stress level and increased marital satisfaction. The positive dyadic coping showed positive correspondence with the marital satisfaction and insignificant correspondence with stress level. The negative dyadic coping showed insignificant correspondence with the marital satisfaction and significant correspondence with the stress level.
The study shows that despite the cultural differences, there is a significant difference in the couples but the management of stress, open communication, ability to share the emotional burdens and connecting emotionally with one’s partner is the key to marital satisfaction. The study has limitations, as it has a very small sample size and it does not explore the cultural believes and their impact on the marital satisfaction, stress factors and dyadic coping. The study has multiple implications in family/couple counselling and by improved sample size, better data analysis and further exploration, the study can serve as the stepping stone for further marital interpersonal dimension (Holzapfel, Randall, Tao, & Iida, 2018).
References
Holzapfel, J., Randall, A. K., Tao, C., & Iida, M. (2018). Intercultural Couples’ Internal Stress, Relationship Satisfaction, and Dyadic Coping. Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 12(2), 145–163. https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v12i2.302
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