Direct and indirect pathways between adult attachment style and marital satisfaction

We explored direct, mediated, and moderated associations between adult attachment style and marital satisfaction using a community-based sample of 73 married women. Continuous ratings of secure, avoidant, and ambivalent attachment styles were related to levels of marital satisfaction. However, psychological distress mediated the association between secure attachment and marital satisfaction, and social support mediated the relation between avoidant attachment and marital satisfaction. In addition, psychological distress moderated the relation between both secure and avoidant attachment styles and marital satisfaction. The ways in which adults think, feel, and interact in the context of their romantic relationships has been shown to vary with their attachment styles. Hazan and Shaver (1987) first argued that attachment styles reflect fundamental distinctions in adults’ mental representations of romantic love. Securely attached married, co-habitating, dating, divorced, and widowed adults rated their love experiences as happy and trusting, and emphasized being supportive and accepting of their partners. In contrast, avoidantly attached adults described their love experiences as characterized by fears of intimacy. Furthermore, ambivalently attached adults characterized their love experiences as obsessive, involving jealousy and extreme sexual attraction to their partners. Beyond differences in perceptions of romantic love, attachment styles have been related to husbands’ and wives’ self-reported marital satisfaction (Brennan & Shaver, 1995; Feeney, 1994, 1996; Feeney, Noller, & Callan, 1994; Fuller & Fincham, 1995; Lussier, Sabourin, & Turgeon, 1997). These researchers have documented positive correlations between secure attachment and marital satisfaction and inverse associations between insecure attachment styles and marital satisfaction for both married men and women. Although the direct relation between attachment style and relationship satisfaction has been well-documented, the mechanism of this association remains unclear. In this study, we assessed how and when these two constructs relate to each other. More specifically, we explored whether psychological distress and social support, two overarching psychological and interpersonal correlates of adult attachment style (Davis, Morris, & Kraus, 1998; Mikulincer & Florian, 1998), mediate or moderate the relation between adult attachment style and marital satisfaction. This approach underscores the need to consider the broader context of adult attachment when evaluating ways in which it may be associated with marital functioning. 159 This research was supported in part by Research Leave and Summer Research Grants to the first author from Roosevelt University. We are grateful to Elaine Allensworth, Leigh Leslie, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Correspondence should be addressed to Steven A. Meyers, School of Psychology, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605. E-mail: smeyers@ roosevelt.edu. Personal Relationships, 9 (2002), 159–172. Printed in the United States of America. Copyright # 2002 ISSPR. 1350-4126/02