Relationship -schematic processing and relationship satisfaction after marital therapy

The present paper examines a variable, Relationship-Schematic Processing (RSP), and its association with relationship satisfaction. RSP is defined as the tendency to attend to and give relationship and/or emotional meaning to events that happen within and outside of an individual's romantic relationship. An observational coding system, which was developed to assess the quantity and quality of partners' RSP, was applied to 48 maritally-distressed couples who participated in a treatment outcome study of the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral marital therapy (Baucom, Sayers, & Sher, 1990) and 44 maritally-distressed couples who participated in a study of the efficacy of insight-oriented marital therapy (Snyder & Wills, 1989). Couples from both studies were combined for the present analyses. Findings indicated that prior to receiving treatment, wives engaged in higher quantity and quality of RSP than husbands. Additionally, wives' quantity and quality of RSP were positively correlated with husbands' relationship satisfaction. Husbands' quality of RSP was positively correlated with wives' satisfaction. Findings also indicated that after completing treatment, neither wives nor husbands increased significantly in quantity or quality of RSP. Also, changes in one partner's RSP were not correlated with changes in the other partner's satisfaction. This lack of significant findings following treatment is discussed in terms of differences between the Baucom et al. sample and the Snyder and Wills sample.