Couples' affective orientations and their verbal abusiveness

Four measures of affective orientation: awareness of affect as information, posses‐sion of positive feelings, and expression of positive and negative emotions were employed to examine the relationships between functional males’ and females’ affective orientations and the level of verbal abuse reported in their relationships. Females reported having higher levels of affective awareness on all four measures of affective orientation. Contrary to expectations, males’ and females’ awareness of affect as information to guide interactions and positive feelings were not associated with reported verbal abuse. Males’ and females’ expressions of negative emotions, however, were significantly negatively associated with verbal abuse in the relationships. Males’ positive emotional expressiveness was significantly negatively associated with self‐reported verbal abuse in the relationship. Functional males and females reported experiencing similar levels of verbal abuse within their relationships.

Key concepts:

• Functional relationships
• verbal abuse
• affective orientations
• positive feelings
• positive and negative emotional expressiveness