Military Marriages: Do Adaptive Processes Promote Marital Resilience?

Abstract A variety of factors can influence job performance and retention of military personnel, including family-related stress and satisfaction. Maintaining satisfying romantic relationships can be challenging for all couples, but the military lifestyle adds unique challenges that military couples must overcome. Our study included 702 female civilian spouses of Canadian Armed Forces members. We examined a selection of enduring traits, emergent traits, relationship resources, military experiences, and nonmilitary circumstances to predict perceived marital stability and the mediating and interactive influence of adaptive processes. We found that adaptive processes mediated the relationship between select risk factors and perceived marital stability. A less insecure attachment style, a lower degree of financial instability, and fewer children were all associated with better adaptive processes, which was in turn associated with more perceived marital stability. Current deployment did not influence these results, nor did adaptive processes moderate the relationship between any risk factor and perceived marital stability. These findings suggest that promoting healthy and positive spousal interactions, communications, and support among military couples may mitigate the risk associated with a variety of military and nonmilitary challenges that military marriages face.