Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model

Enduring Vulnerabilities

Each partner brings to their relationships a unique set of qualities, dispositions, and experiences, including attachment styles, personality traits, levels of psychopathology, and family history. What links all these disparate variables is that they are presumed to be relatively stable by the time a specific relationship begins. Each of these enduring traits may then contribute to or detract from an individual's ability to function effectively within the relationship. All else being equal, individuals with enduring sources of vulnerability (e.g., parental divorce, substance abuse, personality problems, a history of depression or trauma) have greater difficulty maintaining satisfying and enduring intimate relationships than do individuals with fewer sources of vulnerability.

External Stress

Every relationship takes place within a physical, social, cultural, and historical context. Elements within this context may support or interfere with a couple's efforts to maintain the quality of their relationship. For example, financial strain, demanding friends or relatives, and health problems all present couples with difficult issues to resolve, taking up time that might otherwise be spent promoting and maintaining intimacy. In contrast, supportive family and friends, financial assets, and good health serve as sources of resilience, buffering couples from the effects of other stressful circumstances and freeing time for enriching the relationship.

Adaptive Processes

Adaptive processes include all the ways that couples interact, understand, support, and react to each other. These processes include overt behaviors that take place within the dyad, such as showing affection and resolving conflict, as well as cognitive and emotional reactions that take place within each partner, such as how they explain behavior and evaluate an interaction. Processes are adaptive to the extent that they minimize negativity and capitalize on positive aspects of the relationship. Satisfied couples, for example, are able to discuss differences of opinion without involving negative emotions, and are able to acknowledge specific problems without threatening their generally positive views of their relationships. Processes are maladaptive to the extent that they exacerbate negativity. Distressed couples, for example, tend to reciprocate each other's negative behaviors, leading to destructive cycles of escalating conflict.

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