Attachment Styles, Romantic Jealousy and Marital Satisfaction among Married Individuals

Abstract

The aims of the current study were to find out relationship of attachment styles (secure, dependent & Anxious) and romantic jealousy (cognitive emotional & behavioral) with marital satisfaction. It was also aimed to explore the predictors (attachment styles, romantic jealousy) of marital satisfaction. Moreover, gender differences were also explored. These objectives were explored in two phases. The guidelines of forward-back translation (Brislin, 1976) were followed to translate the first: Multidimensional Jealousy Scale (MJS) and Marital Satisfaction Scale (ENRICH-MSS) into Urdu language. Sample of main study consisted N = 226 married individuals Men’s (N=162), Women’s (N=64) with age range of 25 to 50 years (M = 33.06, SD = 8.45). They differed in their level of education from matriculation to PhD. The Revised Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS) by Collins (1996) α = .74, Multidimensional Jealousy Scale (Pfeiffer & Wong, 1989) α = .93 and The Marital Satisfaction Scale (Fowers& Olson, 1993) α = .46 were used. Results showed that most of the participants scored high on Close attachment, Dependent attachment and anxious attachment, 128, 115 and 117 respectively with cut of scores of 17 and 18. In the same way, they scored high on Marital satisfaction = 139 and idealistic distortion = 116 with cut of scores 31 and 18 respectively. In contrast, they had low scores on Multidimensional Jealousy scale and its three sub scales. Highly significant positive relationship was found between attachment styles and ENRICH-Marital Satisfaction (r = .40, p˂.001) while inverse and significant relationship was found between ENRICH Marital Satisfaction and romantic jealousy (r = -.16, p˂.05). The results of the multiple regression analysis revealed that revised adult attachment and three sub-scores, multidimensional jealousy scale and three sub-scores were predictive of marital satisfaction and explained 32% of the total variance. In contrast, gender difference was not observed to be significant. The implications of the study were discussed in cultural context of Pakistan.