A Study Of The Relationship Between Christian Couples' Communication Patterns And Marital Quality

Marriage is the subject of life that almost every individual have to face. A good marriage is closely related to personal well-being and mental health. Among many groups that I have contacted, I found that Christians are particular in marriage, which attracted my interest. In addition, from the previous study we can find the communication pattern played an important role in marriage. The Christians who has been likened to "herd" which love living together in the Bible, also payed attention to interaction and communication between individuals. Based on these considerations, this research attempts to explore the relationship between Christian couples communication patterns and marital quality from the point of view of psychology, and whether the Christian faith plays a regulatory role in the relationship between the two.The present research mainly adopts the quantitative research to explore the possible relationship among those variables. The other qualitative research was made to get some further discussion of this topic.In quantitative research, three scales including the Communication Pattern Questionnaire(CPQ), the Dyadic Adjustment Scale(DAS) and the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) were used to collect data.Applying simple sampling method, this research selected 50 christian couples from Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, distributing 100 questionnaires.The results of quantitative are as follows:(1) The marital quality of christian couples was not significantly different in gender but had a significant correlation between each other. There was a significant positive correlation between baptism time and consistency of couples. The marital quality and couples'consistency of high group whose baptism time were longer was significantly higher than that of low group;(2) Christian couples'communication patterns are not significantly different in gender. There was a significant negative correlation between baptism time and demanding/withdraw communication. Most existing communication pattern among christian couples is consistently negative type;(3) Correlation analysis showed:most dimensions of couples communication patterns were significantly relate to dimensions of marital quality, except for the correlation between demanding/withdraw communication and marital satisfaction,emotional expression. Constructive communication could positively predict the total score of marital quality, marital satisfaction and marital cohesion. Mutual avoidance communication significantly and negatively predicted the total score of marital quality, couple consistency, emotional expression;(4) Most dimensions of marital quality, except for marital satisfaction, were significantly relate to the strength of faith. The strength of faith could positively predict marital quality and its three dimensions;(5) There was s significant correlation between the strength of faith and mutual avoidance communication;(6) The strength of faith moderated the relationship between demanding-withdraw communication and couples' emotional expression, as well as the relationship between constructive communication and cohesion between couples.In the qualitative research,5 couples, namely 10 subjects were selected from the quantitative research. After in-depth interviews, the results are as follows:(1) The influence of the Christian faith to the marital quality was mainly reflected in three aspects:personal psychological, interaction between couples and social support;(2) From the perspective of individual psychology, christian faith firstly affected their concept of mate selection and expectations of marriage. They think that people believing in God or not didn't match, and the combination between whom had the same belief is perfect. The belief has curative effect to the family trauma (parents' divorce), avoiding the negative influence to their own marriage. Faith makes adjustments in christian family order arrangement, valuing the relationship between couples more than parent-child relationship;(3) From the perspective of the interaction between couples, the relationship between husband and wife intermediate into "the third role"--God, forming a triangle relationship. Conflict coping involved prayer mechanisms, which made couples recognize their mistakes to make a change. Communication patterns changed from demanding/withdraw communication and mutual avoidance communication into constructive communication.Although family power was mainly dominated by husband, every christian couples had a common head -- Christ.(4) From the perspective of the social support, church groups can provide christian more social support and sense of belonging.In addition, group meetings in the church also provide a platform for them to keep touch with each other, which establish the mutual trust and love relationship, achieving the group counseling and therapy effect of marriage.In summary, the conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) Christian couples' communication patterns are different from the general population. Their common mode of communication is now-avoiding and afterwards-communicating mode, which added the mechanism of prayer.(2) The Christian faith generally influenced the quality of marriage through the individual psychology, marital interaction and church support.