A study of heterosexual married couples in Switzerland explored the association between the networks of friends a person has and the quality of their marriage. Results suggest that having friends who are not in contact with one’s spouse and do not know each other tends to negatively affects marital quality for women, but not for men. The study was published in Personal Relationships.
Factors that affect the quality of a marriage go far beyond just the relationship of the partners in marriage with each other. Relationships between marital partners are typically embedded in various social structures that influence how partners interact with each other. Networks of friends represent one such structure.
However, although the role of friendship networks for psychological dynamics of romantic couples is well known, most studies have focused on relationships with kin, highlighting social support that kin relationships provide, but also on influences with detrimental effects on the married couple.
When friendship networks of romantic couples are considered, these contacts can be such that romantic partners see their friends together or separately. Seeing friends together as a couple (joint contacts) can strengthen the relationship with friends, but also reinforce the couple’s social identity thus strengthening their relationship.
Another factor to consider is “friendship transitivity,” which is the extent to which friends within the network know each other. Researchers expect that networks of friends who know each other (high friendship transitivity) have beneficial effects for the quality of the relationship between the couple as such networks can more easily coordinate the provision of support to partners if needed (friends who know each other can communicate easily).
A factor to consider is also friendship overlap i.e., whether friends in the network are mutual friends of both romantic partners or are exclusively friends of one member of the romantic couple. Previous studies reported that “that partisan support in marital conflicts is more likely to occur in the presence of low overlap between spouses’ friends, and critics are more often found among the spouses’ separate contacts.” On the other hand, shared friends are more likely to act as mediators and encourage couple members to compromise.
To study the association between the properties of friendship networks and marital quality, study author Julia Sauter and her colleagues analyzed data from the Social Stratification, Cohesion and Conflict in Contemporary Families Survey, a nationally representative survey of heterosexual couples in Switzerland.
The current study used data collected in 2011 and 2017, “which asked both partners separately about their personal networks, their marital quality, and the extent to which they spent time together in the company of friends.” Researchers analyzed responses of 634 couples in which both partners answered the questionnaires in 2017, 534 couples who first participated in this survey in 1998 and remained together since, and 100 couples from a new group that joined the study in 2011. The age of participants ranged from 20 to 88 years.
Marriage quality assessments included four indicators – marital quality (“In general, how do you evaluate your relationship (in terms of your understanding of one another, your intimate life, your way of communication…)?”), marital instability (“Many couples, after facing some difficulties, have considered separation. Have you also experienced such moments and considered separation?”), communication problems and coordination problems (both computed from a list of difficulties couples were asked to list if they experienced them).
Friendship networks were assessed in terms of how often they had joint contacts with friends, the level of friendship overlap, and friendship transitivity.
Women more often reported to be dissatisfied with their marital relationship (56% of women and 48% of men), reported more communication and coordination problems than men (49% of women vs 40% of men) and they more often considered divorce than men (35% of women vs 21% of men).
When friendship structures were considered, having separate, low transitive friendship networks affected marital quality negatively for women. No effects were found on men. When life stages of the couple were considered, women with preschool children reported higher levels of communication problems than women in the empty-nest stage of life (when children have grown up and left to live on their own). On the other hand, men who had post-school age children reported fewer coordination problems than men in the empty nest stage.
The study gives an important contribution to scientific understanding of the association between marriage quality and friendship networks. However, it also has limitations to consider. Notably, the measures used did not allow the researchers to detect whether partners were mentioning the same friends. Because of this, they were unable to establish a joint measure of the friendship network structure for the couple as a unit. Additionally, all participants come from a single country (Switzerland) and results of studies on other cultures might not yield equal results.
The study, “The impact of friendship structures on marital quality of heterosexual couples”, was authored by Julia Sauter, Olga Ganjour, Rita Gouveia, and Eric D. Widmer.