Contextualizing Experiences of Hurt Within Close Relationships

Abstract

This article uses Bradbury and Fincham's contextual model of relationships to clarify how proximal and distal factors affect the relationship damage associated with hurtful messages, how the consequences of a previous hurt shape people's experience of a subsequent hurtful message, and how the cumulative consequences of hurt influence relationship quality over two weeks. Participants responded about either a dating partner or friend. Multi-level modeling and regression analyses revealed that relational quality and perceptions of messages corresponded with relational damage, and the number of hurtful events and relational damage interacted to predict relational quality at the end of the study.

Keywords:

• Contextual Model
• Diary Study
• Emotion
• Hurt
• Hurtful Messages

Notes

Note. The correlations between intensity of hurt, perceived intentionality, and relational damage were performed level of the diary entry (N = 165). The correlations between the relational quality variables and the other variables were performed at the level of the individual (N = 52), using aggregate measures related to hurtful events across the diary entries reported by each person.

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Note. Cell entries for the intercept are the change in the intercept that can be attributed to the within-person mean, which represents the between-persons effect on consequences. The cell entries for slopes represent the within-person slope over the 14 days of the study. The cell entries for random effects (τ) are not reported here because there were not enough cases to calculate the statistic accurately.

**p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Note. N = 52, Level 1 units = 113. The cell entries for random effects (τ) are not reported here because there were not enough cases to calculate the statistic accurately.

**p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Note. N = 52. Cell entries for the variables are unstandardized slopes. The relational damage variable represents a score averaged across repeated measures. Relationship type was coded 0 = dating, 1 = friendship. Sex was coded 0 = male, 1 = female.

*p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel M. McLaren

Rachel M. McLaren (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2008) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.

Denise Haunani Solomon

Denise Haunani Solomon (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1992) is a professor of communication arts and sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. A portion of the data came from R. M. McLaren's master's thesis, under the direction of Dr. Dennis Gouran.