Hint of the Month and News Update - February, 2007
Past Hints
 
Avoidant Men and Assertive Women

Couples often present with serious communication issues. This can sometimes be seen in the pattern of scores in the Conflict Resolution category (individual dissatisfaction and low couple positive agreement scores).  It can also be evident in the avoidance scores – sometimes one partner is avoidant of conflict whereas the other is happy to tackle it head on. 

Some years ago a US study (see reference below) revealed that when critical, verbally disinhibited women (perhaps also likely to be low on avoidance and highly assertive) are paired with verbally inhibited men (likely to be low on avoidance and unassertive), relationship quality suffers. 

This effect appears to emerge when verbally disinhibited women pair with relatively inhibited men and the disinhibition of women in man-more-inhibited couples amplifies women’s criticalness because they are frustrated with their partners’ avoidance and reluctance to discuss the issues and alienates men who feel they are being pressured to deal with issues that they are reluctant to confront. 

The authors commented: “Three studies provided evidence that relationship quality suffered in man-more-inhibited couples; a 4th study showed that the criticalness of women in man-more inhibited couples did indeed undermine relationship quality.” 

This is a pattern worth looking for in couples taking Prepare-Enrich inventories.  It should prove helpful to assist such couples to explore ways for the men to be less frustratingly avoidant and for the women to be more constructively assertive. 

Reference: 

William B. Swann Jr., Peter J. Rentfrow, & Samuel D. Gosling (2003). The Precarious Couple Effect: Verbally Inhibited Men - Critical, Disinhibited Women - Bad Chemistry. 
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1095–1106. 
 
  Past Hints  Last Month : Common problems in the early years of marriage
 
News Update:  

    The December 2006 issue of the Newsletter, the Prepare Diary, is available on this web site: To read, click on: December 2006 Diary    The next newsletter will be posted in mid-June. 

    PROCESSING FEE NOW $44.00  
    This is the first increase in the base cost of processing since 1999.  Our aim is to maintain the new processing charge for a lengthy period of time (as we have done before). We always aimed to make the processing cost comparable to that of a modest meal for a couple – we feel sure that $44 (for a couple) is still well and truly within those limits.