Quality of Cohabiting and Marital Relationships among Young Couples
Mieczyslaw Pokorski, Anna Kuchcewicz

Abstract
We investigated the quality of intimate relationship and its dependence on emotional intelligence and the sense of coherence in 36 cohabiting and 35 married young couples. The findings demonstrate that relationship quality perceived by cohabitors was akin to that of marrieds. There were gender differences in that the women perceived the relationship as less satisfying. The findings further demonstrate that both emotional intelligence and coherence were positively associated with the fineness of relationship perceived by both cohabitors and marrieds. A greater emotional engagement of female partners in the union may, however, mitigate the feeling of satisfaction they experience. We conclude that dyadic characteristics evolving from emotional intelligence and coherence are essential for the feeling of satisfaction from the intimate relationship, regardless of its type.

Full Text: PDF