The Experience of Happily Married Couples Who Consider Themselves as Opposites| A Generic Qualitative Inquiry

• Main Author: Dinovitser, Irina
• Language: EN
• Published: Capella University 2018
• Subjects: Social psychology|Counseling Psychology
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10823513

<p> The concept of attraction and couple satisfaction has been of great interest in the field of psychology. However, there is limited research in relation to the factors of marital happiness and opposite personalities, particularly in how these are expressed through after dating or their relationship when evaluation through a time-span approach. This study attempted to fill this gap. The research question for this study was: What is the experience of being happily married among couples who have been together for at least five years and consider themselves as opposite from each other? This study used a generic qualitative inquiry, purposive sampling, and thematic analysis of the data. The generic qualitative study focused on six opposite-in-personality, happily married couples, most of whom were African American. These couples provided a rich description of their experiences of being married to their spouse, whom they believed to be opposite in personality. The 12 participants had the average age of 46.83 years, and couples were married an average of 14.33 years. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to describe the experience of happily married couples who considered themselves opposites in terms of personalities. The major themes that emerged from the data were accepting the differences, complementary traits, foundation of the relationship, wanting a partner who is different, being around each other, conflict resolution, and communication is key. It is the hope of the researcher that this study will spark additional research that utilizes personality inventories and evaluate how personality differences impact marital satisfaction over time.</p><p>