Self-­Attitude of a Person as a Factor of Satisfaction with Marriage

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of a person’s self-attitude as a factor of satisfaction with marriage. It is shown that the problem of harmonious family relations is studied in various scientific fields and a large number of theoretical and empirical studies are devoted to it, but today it still belongs to the category of complex and ambiguous. One of the possible reasons for low satisfaction with marriage may be an unstable and negative self–attitude – a personal assessment of one’s attitude to oneself, to one’s qualities, as well as to life situations in general. This concept is one of the key factors in social psychology, as it determines how a person sees and evaluates himself and his capabilities. It is a healthy and confident self-attitude that can become one of the key factors for establishing strong and long-term relationships in family relationships. At the same time, an analysis of literary sources shows that despite a large number of studies on marital satisfaction, self-attitude as a factor of marital satisfaction has been studied extremely fragmentally. The hypothesis of the study was the assumption that self-relationships can cause a consistent variability in marital satisfaction and role expectations and claims in marriage, and the features of the interdependent relationship in the male and female subsamples are different. The following research methods were used: S. R. Pantileev’s Self-attitude Research Methodology (MIS) (1989); the questionnaire “Level of satisfaction with marriage” by Yu. E. Alyoshina, L. Ya. Gozman, E. M. Dubovskaya (1987); the Methodology “Role expectations of partners” by A. N. Volkova (1985). 73 people participated in the study, including 22 men and 51 women; the average age was 37 years. All respondents are in long-term relationships. In the process of empirical research, the analysis of the interdependent relationship between the parameters of self-attitude, satisfaction with marriage and the role expectations and claims of partners was carried out, and their complex interdependent effects on each other were shown. In the male sample, a positive reflected self-attitude, a negative internal conflict, self-confidence, and closeness were found to have an impact on marital satisfaction. In the female sample, a positive effect of closeness on marital satisfaction and a positive effect of marital satisfaction on self–guidance and self-worth were revealed, while a negative effect on self-attachment. In the male and female samples, a significant dependence of satisfaction with marriage on their role expectations and claims was revealed. In the male sample of 10, at the level of four factors, the factor-­forming variables of role claims were the parameters of self-attitude: self-leadership, internal conflict, lack of closeness and lack of self-acceptance. In the female sample of 8, the self–attitude parameter, the absence of internal conflict, was at the level of only the first factor of the factor-­forming variable of role claims. The results of an empirical study show how complex and sometimes contradictory the interdependent relationships between the parameters of self-attitude and satisfaction with marriage are, which should be considered in psychological counseling for both couples and spouses separately.