Communication, Context, and Well-Being Among Military Couples

Abstract

The present study’s aims were to compare reports provided by deployed military husbands and their at-home wives of their communication and well-being during deployment, and to determine whether the quantity and quality of their communication are uniquely linked to their well-being, controlling for relevant contextual factors. Participant were from military families with children and included deployed husbands from multiple service branches and their at-home wives (N = 106 couples). They provided data on military contextual factors (perceived barriers to communication, months deployed), family contextual factors (military rank, family size), quantity of communication (frequency of synchronous communication, total hours of communication), quality of communication (positive and negative emotions immediately after communicating), and contemporaneous well-being (marital satisfaction, perceived stress, health/mental health down days, and self-rated health). Wives reported more negative emotions after communicating and more stress and down days than husbands, and partners’ reports of their experiences were only moderately correlated. Wives’ well-being was most closely associated with a short separation and a high quality of communication as indicated by high positive and/or low negative emotions after communicating. Quality of communication was the only significant predictors of deployed husbands’ well-being. Implications for military family support are discussed.

Keywords:

• Military; deployment
• marital relationship
• communication
• health
• mental health
• stress
• husbands
• wives
• contextual

Acknowledgment

We appreciate support for this project from the Columbian College Facilitating Fund and the contributions of Dr. Cindy Rohrbeck and our team of research assistants. Portions of this research were presented as a poster at the meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, May 2019.