Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Relationship Qualities: Investigating The Nature Of Self-Identified Couple Strengths And Language Use During A Strengths Interview, Katie Cassandra Wischkaemper

Doctoral Dissertations

Research and practice in couple therapy has been influenced by positive psychology, and other factors, to create a nuanced viewed of relationship health. Relationship strengths are thought to be informative of overall relationship health, possibly even more so than relationship concerns (Gable, Gonzaga, & Strachman, 2006; Sullivan, Pasch, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2010). The present project explored the association between self-identified relationship strengths and couple satisfaction. Then, the study examined the association between self and partner pronoun use and level of couple satisfaction during an interview about relationship strengths.

Aim 1 replicated Gray and colleagues’ (under review) project which examined the …

Communication In Married Couples: Exploring The Roles Of Betrayal And Forgiveness, Nikki N. Frousakis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explored the associations between having experienced a major betrayal, forgiveness, and communication behaviors in married couples. The first aim of the current research was to compare the communication behaviors of couples who have experienced a major betrayal and are in various stages of the forgiveness process as delineated by Gordon, Baucom, and Snyder (2005) to couples who reported never having experienced a betrayal in their current relationship. The second aim of the study was to explore whether injured partners and their spouses behave differently when discussing the betrayal event than when they are conversing about a separate problem …