The role of individual‐ and interactive‐level relationship maintenance on married couples' commitment

Abstract

AbstractThe interaction of maintenance processes between partners constitutes a complex context, which can be categorized into individual‐ and interactive‐level relationship maintenance processes. Individual‐level maintenance processes refer to both partners' relationship maintenance enactment and perception of partners' relationship maintenance. Interactive‐level relationship maintenance processes include similarity, accuracy, and projection. This study investigated the actor and partner effects of individual and interactive relationship maintenance processes on commitment as moderated by relationship satisfaction. We recruited 193 mixed‐gender married couples from the midwestern US and adopted the two‐intercept actor‐partner interdependence model to analyze the data. The results demonstrated a positive association between husbands' relationship maintenance enactment and their commitment, a negative association between similarity of relationship maintenance enactment and wives' commitment, a positive association between husbands' accuracy and wives' commitment, and a negative association between husbands' projection and their commitment. Satisfaction was strongly associated with participants' commitment and moderated the association between relationship maintenance enactment and commitment for both partners, the association between husbands' maintenance enactment and wives' commitment, and the association between husbands' partner perception and their commitment. Satisfaction also moderated the association between wives' accuracy and husbands' commitment and the association between husbands' projection and both partners' commitment.