The relationship between communication and low marital satisfaction : a rapid review

Abstract

What distinguishes a happy marriage from an unhappy one? According to Gottman and Krokoff (1989) research on marriage has been conducted since the 1930’s in an effort to answer this seemingly complex question. As some of the leading researchers in this field, they attempted to answer this question by investigating the longitudinal effect of what distinguishes a satisfying marriage from an unsatisfying one over time, by investigating the communication between heterosexual marital partners. Put differently, they sought to determine what differentiates non- distressed couples from distressed couples in a marital relationship with regard to their level of marital satisfaction when investigating their communication patterns. Their findings revealed what became commonly known as the ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’, or the four communication behaviours which, when present in a marriage, resulted in the highest likelihood of low marital satisfaction. These factors were named criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling (Gottman & Krokoff, 1989). This research was conducted in the 1980’s in the United States of America (USA), which led the researcher to question whether these findings were still relevant in contemporary marriages and, whether they were also applicable to marriages outside of the USA, including South Africa? While reviewing the literature in response to the aforementioned question, a recently published rapid systematic review was identified that was conducted in South Africa by Du Plooy and De Beer (2018) where the relationship between communication and high levels of marital satisfaction was investigated. This study had focussed on the factors which contributed to high levels of marital satisfaction among heterosexual married couples and research that focussed on factors that contributed to low levels of marital satisfaction could not be identified from it. As such, the aim of the current study was to build on the aforementioned research by Du Plooy and De Beer (2018) by conversely summarizing the best available scientific research of communication aspects that contributed to low levels of marital satisfaction among heterosexual married couples. This rapid The relationship between communication and low levels of marital satisfaction

systematic review was conducted independently by two researchers over a period of four weeks. While keeping by the standards set by Du Plooy and De Beer (2018), the search was limited to articles published between 2005 and 2015 in English or Afrikaans, which reported on both quantitative and qualitative scientific data. These articles were primarily obtained in full text format from the North-West University’s (NWU) database. In addition, a secondary search was also conducted on Google Scholar in order to ensure that the best available empirical evidence was included, as well as that to keep the number of important findings to be missed, as low as possible. The initial search produced 372 articles after duplicates and articles written in other languages were removed. A further 310 articles were next excluded after their titles and abstracts were screened for relevance. Of the remaining 62 articles, 26 more were excluded after the two independent reviewers further reviewed and discussed the pre-selected articles. Following full-text screening for relevance of the remaining 36 articles, another 23 were excluded due to not meeting the complete inclusion criteria. Finally, 13 articles were included in the study as they were deemed scientifically valid and reliable after being critically appraised by the two independent researchers according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, 2012) guidelines. Findings from the study revealed two themes and related sub-themes. Theme one revolved around detrimental communication processes which included the sub-themes of the demand/withdraw pattern of communication, destructive conflict styles, ineffective pre- or early marital communication and ineffective problem-solving skills. Theme two consisted of detrimental content which included the sub-themes of financial stress and conflict surrounding sex in the marriage. These themes and sub-themes were all associated with low levels of marital satisfaction. In conclusion, this study illustrated that certain aspects of communication, pertaining both to process and content, lowered couples’ levels of marital satisfaction. Lastly, the results indicated the need for more research on the present topic within the South African and African context, as well as research on other types of