Processes of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships (PAIR) Project

People who watch a man and a woman courting or learn about their marriage almost invariably wonder about the fate that awaits them as a couple. The PAIR Project, a longitudinal study of couples that began when they were newlyweds, sought to provide a sophisticated analysis of the circumstances that influence how marriages work themselves out. The Project was initiated in 1981 by Ted Huston with data gathered from 336 new-lyweds (168 couples) identified through marriage license records maintained in four county courthouses in central Pennsylvania. The initial premise of the study was that the psychological and social qualities that partners bring to their relationship shape their experiences together, both during courtship and in marriage. The Project also sought to delineate key features of couples' courtships and to link these features to how well the spouses got along and how they felt about each other as newlyweds and then at yearly intervals over the ensuing 2 years. This tidy short-term longitudinal study became embedded in a long-term longitudinal study when the PAIR Project team returned nearly 14 years after couples were wed to see how the marriages had fared.

The PAIR Project used social-psychological theory and developmental methods to track how couples progress through relationship stages and how what happens in one “stage” of a relationship foreshadows what happens later. The Project ultimately traced couples' relationships from courtship, to the early years of marriage, to parenthood (for most), and to divorce (for some).

The Project had several notable design features that in combination set it apart from other research seeking to understand the etiology of marital success and failure, including (a) the large and economically diverse makeup of the sample; (b) the success the research team had in gaining the cooperation of both spouses, affording the opportunity to examine compatibility, gender issues, and cross-partner effects; (c) the in-depth information gathered concerning both partners' social background and psychological makeup; (d) the extensive data obtained about the couples' courtships, gathered independently from the husbands and wives when they were newlyweds; (e) the fact that the initial data were gathered from the couples shortly after they were wed, prior to when marital disenchantment would have had a chance to develop; (f) the diary-based information gathered each year from both spouses about their day-to-day activities, making it possible [Page 1296]to portray the division of labor, marital companionship, social contact with kin and friends, and the interpersonal climate of each marriage; (g) the longitudinal nature of the original study, which allowed the team to study changes in couples' married life over time; (h) regular assessments of husbands' and wives' views of each other's qualities, their love, and satisfaction; and (i) the Project's success in tracking down the original sample, making it possible to identify the fate of 97 percent of the marriages at the long-term follow-up.

The PAIR Project has produced more than 40 book chapters and publications in scientific journals. Some of the more notable findings were:

• Men's investment in the relationship during courtship plays a stronger role than women's in accounting for how quickly and smoothly courtships progress toward marriage.
• Partners' personality qualities reveal themselves before marriage, creating courtships that differ in the mix of sweet and sour elements.
• Women who sense future problems while courting generally find out after they marry that their concerns were well founded.
• Newlyweds are not blissful lovers, on the whole. Some spouses enter marriage after a rocky, arduous courtship; others take a smooth, even pathway; and still others marry after a short, intense romance. These differences in courtship experiences carry over into marriage and are reflected in the intensity of spouses' feelings toward each other as newlyweds.
• Having a baby transforms couples' lifestyles, but it does not change the interpersonal climate of their marriages or undermine spouses' feelings of love or satisfaction.
• Whether a marriage will be happy or whether it is headed for divorce can be foretold by how it evolves during the first 2 years.
• Couples that stay married and are happy nearly 14 years after their wedding day are more affectionate and less antagonistic toward each other as newlyweds than couples that stay together in unhappy unions. Both groups evince modest declines in affection early in marriage, but antagonism does not increase for either group as the honeymoon period recedes into the past.
• Two personality qualities shape the emotional climate of marriages. Men and women who possess stereotypical feminine traits—warmth, concern for others, kindness—make better spouses, whereas spouses whose nature is to be moody and emotionally up and down make worse spouses.
• Whether a marriage is fated for divorce cannot be foretold from how spouses function together shortly after they marry. The newlywed marriages of to-be-divorced couples are a particularly diverse lot: Some are intensely in love and affectionate, whereas others appear to marry despite having lukewarm feelings for each other. The long-term fate of a marriage is predictable instead from how much the spouses' romance, whatever it was at the beginning, dissipates over the first 2 years of marriage. The timing of divorce, however, depends on the intensity of the couples' newlywed romance: Initially lovey-dovey couples whose marital bliss quickly goes amiss take longer to divorce than those less enamored with each other to begin with.
• Antagonism does not develop early in marriage among the couples that divorce. Further, divorcing couples are not less compatible than couples that stay married, but their feelings toward each other early in marriage are more strongly tied to their level of compatibility, suggesting that couples that divorce are more attuned to issues of compatibility.

PAIR Project papers also have examined such matters as the carryover of work-related stress into marriage, the division of household labor, role balance, marital companionship, types of marriage, sex in marriage, and the role friends and kin play in courtship and marriage.

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