Quality of Relationship with One's Current Partner: Attachment and its Correlate with One's Quality of Relationship with One's Opposite-Sex Parent Retrospectively

This study explored the relationship between the participants' opposite-sex parent, how that relationship is involved with their attachment style, and how both of those factors relate to the quality of relationship the participants experience with their current partner in non-Caucasian Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern couples. This study is especially timely and important in that there appears to be a lack of research concerning attachment styles and individuals' relationship with their parents and how that relates to their current relationship in non-Caucasian Middle Eastern couples. The hypotheses were that the quality of the relationship with their current partner in non-Caucasian Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern married couples and their attachment style will be correlated with the quality of the relationship each partner has/had with their opposite-sex parent retrospectively, and that the non-Caucasian Middle Eastern and the non-Middle Eastern group's results will not differ on the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) and the Experiences in Close Relationships Revised (ECR-R) instruments. The sample was made of 57 participants, specifically 39 non-Middle Eastern participants and 18 non-Caucasian Middle Eastern participants, accessed the unmodified questionnaires via the internet. Results indicate that there were no statistically significant findings between the two ethnic groups in the four areas studied: Attachment Anxiety, Attachment Avoidance, Care, and Protection. Thus, there were no differences in the measures across cultures, which is consistent with past research that studied attachment styles in both Western and non-Western cultures.