Marital Quality in Early Years Marriage: The Role of Intimacy, Passion and Commitment

Abstract

Problems that occurs in the early years of marriage are often emotional tension, conflict and discord since the couple are in the process of adjusting to each other. If it cannot be solved in a positive way, then it can lead to the decline in the quality of marriage and will end up in divorce. Whereas studies show that marital quality in the first

five years plays an important role on stability on the later years of marriage. One of the factors that affect the quality of marriage according to Duvall and Miller (1985) is love. The aim of this study was to investigate the components of love which contribute most significantly to predicting the quality of marriage in newlyweds over the first 5 years of

marriage. Participants were 188 people (husbands/wives) who had completed Triangular Love Scale (TLS) and Marital

Quality Index (MQI). Multiple regression indicated that intimacy, passion and commitment play significant roles in predicting marital quality during the early stages of marriage. As many as 43.2 percent of intimacy, passion and commitment affects the quality of marriage (R square = 0.432). Out of the three components of love, intimacy has the greatest contribution in predicting marital quality (β = 0.152, p = 0.000). The other component of love which are commitment and passion showed non-significant results in predicting marital quality (β = 0.072, p = 0.069) (β = 0.029, p = 0.396). These findings are expected to be used to formulate alternative solution in tackling issues that may occur in the first five years of marriage.

Keywords—Marital quality; love; early years marriage