Marital strain trajectories over a quarter century and spouses’ loneliness: Couple-level and individual pathways

Abstract

Although research suggests that stressful marital experiences may lead to feelings of loneliness in later life, little is known about the influence of marital strain over an extended period of time on loneliness in later years. Thus, in the present study, drawing from family systems and cognitive theories along with common fate and actor–partner interdependence modeling approaches, we hypothesized a hybrid model comprised of two multilevel pathways explaining the persistent influence of marital strain on loneliness, including: (a) a couple-level pathway and (b) an individual pathway involving within-spouse and between-spouse effects. Specifically, we investigated the influences of individual- and couple-level trajectories of marital strain over a period of 25 years (from 1991 to 2015) on loneliness outcomes in later years with a sample of 257 couples in enduring, long-term (over 40 years) marriages. The results mostly supported both hypothesized pathways. Consistent with the pathway involving a couple-level process, couple-level trajectories of marital strain predicted couples’ later-life loneliness as reflected by both spouses’ reports of loneliness (shared perceptions). In addition, at the individual level, each spouses’ unexplained variances (unique perception) in marital strain trajectories predicted his/her own later-life loneliness outcomes (within-spouse effect or actor effect). Findings are discussed as they relate to intervention and prevention programs focusing on the well-being of married couples in later life.