Stage of Family Life Cycle, Ego Development, and the Marriage Relationship

Abstract

A series of studies was conducted to examine the marriage relationship in relation to the personality of the partners' and the context within which the relationship exists. The marriage relationship was assessed by measuring the love expression and the problems within the marriage. The personality variable assessed was stage of ego development. The context was the stage of the family life cycle. It was found that both the amount of love expressed and the amount of marriage problems declined from the first stages of marriage to the last. However, retired couples in the post-conformist stages of ego development expressed significantly more love to each other than couples who were in the conformist stage of ego development. This was interpreted as indicating that as a consequence of demands external to their marriage relationship which are different for husband and wife, the husband and wife follow different paths of personal development. These external demands prevent the husband and wife from maintaining intimate contact with each other so that they increasingly interact with each in stereotypic ways and become estranged from each other as individuals. When retirement provides the opportunity for the husband and wife to become reacquainted, postconformist stage couples have the sensitivity and skill to overcome this estrangement, but conformist stage couples lack this skill and avoid coping with it.