Psychology

Mindful relating: Exploring mindfulness and emotion repertoires in intimate relationships

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This study tested the theory that mindfulness contributes to greater intimate relationship satisfaction by fostering more relationally skillful emotion repertoires. A sample of married couples was administered measures of mindful awareness, emotion skills, and marital quality. We hypothesized that mindfulness would be associated with both marital quality and partners' emotion skills and that the association between mindfulness and marital quality would be mediated by emotion repertoire skill. Findings suggested that emotion skills and mindfulness are both related to marital adjustment, and that skilled emotion repertoires, specifically those associated with identifying and communicating emotions, as well as the regulation of anger expression, fully mediate the association between mindfulness and marital quality. Theoretical implications are discussed. © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Publication Title

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy

Publication Date

10-1-2007

Volume

33

Issue

4

First Page

464

Last Page

481

ISSN

0194-472X

DOI

10.1111/j.1752-0606.2007.00032.x

Keywords

intimacy, relationship quality, marital quality, marital adjustment, married people, emotions

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