Ted L. Huston’s research while affiliated with University of Texas at Austin and other places

We examined the interplay between husbands' and wives' positive and negative nonsexual interpersonal behaviors, frequency of sexual intercourse, sexual satisfaction, and feelings of marital satisfaction. To do this, we conducted an in-depth face-to-face interview and completed a series of telephone diaries with 105 couples during their second, third, and fourteenth years of marriage. Consistent with the argument that women's sexual response is tied to intimacy (Basson, 2000), multilevel analyses revealed that husbands' positive interpersonal behaviors directed toward their wives-but not wives' positivity nor spouses' negative behaviors (regardless of gender)-predicted the frequency with which couples engaged in intercourse. The frequency of sexual intercourse and interpersonal negativity predicted both husbands' and wives' sexual satisfaction; wives' positive behaviors were also tied to husbands' sexual satisfaction. When spouses' interpersonal behaviors, frequency of sexual intercourse, and sexual satisfaction were considered in tandem, all but the frequency of sexual intercourse were associated with marital satisfaction. When it comes to feelings of marital satisfaction, therefore, a satisfying sex life and a warm interpersonal climate appear to matter more than does a greater frequency of sexual intercourse. Collectively, these findings shed much-needed light on the interplay between the nonsexual interpersonal climate of marriage and spouses' sexual relationships.

According to the disillusionment model, dating partners may idealize each other due to romantic feelings and partners’ presenting themselves favorably to each other. However, this idealization can fade once couples marry and experience routine daily living. Highly passionate (i.e., quickly accelerating) courtships, replete with idealization, likely make partners vulnerable to subsequent declines in marital affection—or disillusionment. To test this notion, 168 newlywed couples provided retrospective survey and interview information on how passionate their courtship was and brief series of daily assessments of affectionate behavior during the first 2 years of marriage. Results from multilevel analyses showed that respondents who experienced highly passionate courtships reported their spouses as behaving more affectionately toward them as newlyweds, but experienced declines in perceived affectionate expression as the marriage progressed. Results persisted after controlling for possible confounding variables (e.g., age at dating onset, courtship length, premarital love, cohabitation, and conflict). Findings support the disillusionment model.

This study provides evidence that newlywed pairs who have a shared and well-grounded understanding of their courtship are better able to establish unions that endure. Using a sample of 168 couples, the authors found that marriages were more likely to survive when courting partners (a) loved each other to a similar degree, (b) depicted the probability of marriage and changes in the likelihood of marriage in a corresponding fashion over the course of their courtship, and (c) portrayed the courtship as escalating from a low (25%) to a high (75%) probability of marriage as spanning a comparable period of time. The durability of marriages was reflected, as well, in how solidly courting partners' feelings for each other were interwoven with their courtship experiences. More specifically, courtship difficulties were not as associated with weakened feelings of love or with heightened feelings of ambivalence among couples who later divorced as compared to those who stayed married.

In Western societies, women are considered more adept than men at expressing love in romantic relationships. Although scholars have argued that this view of love gives short shrift to men's ways of showing love (e.g., Cancian, 1986; Noller, 1996), the widely embraced premise that men and women "love differently" has rarely been examined empirically. Using data collected at four time points over 13 years of marriage, the authors examined whether love is associated with different behaviors for husbands and wives. Multilevel analyses revealed that, counter to theoretical expectations, both genders were equally likely to show love through affection. But whereas wives expressed love by enacting fewer negative or antagonistic behaviors, husbands showed love by initiating sex, sharing leisure activities, and doing household work together with their wives. Overall, the findings indicate that men and women show their love in more nuanced ways than cultural stereotypes suggest.

Although most mate selection research has focused on what people want in a marriage partner, this research focuses on what people think they can get. Using survey data from a large, representative sample of unmarried individuals, this study revealed that people who believed they possessed fewer qualities that are valued in the mating marketplace and who reported meeting lower quality potential mates felt less confident about their chances of securing an acceptable partner to marry; these associations were no weaker for people who held lower versus higher standards for a mate. Consistent with predictions, individuals' perceptions of the desirability of the people in their mating pools partially mediated the link between their self-reported market value and their confidence about marrying.

This essay summarizes a 13-year longitudinal study carried out in the United States that challenges conventional wisdom about courtship and the early marital roots of connubial distress and divorce. The study traced relationships from courtship, to the early years of marriage, to parenthood (for most), and to divorce (for some). The essay describes the germination of the study, how it was implemented, and what it reveals about why some marriages succeed and others fail. Couples' courtship and early marital experiences foreshadow: (a) whether they stay married or divorce, (b) whether they sustain satisfying unions if their marriage lasts, and (c) how quickly marriages that end in divorce break apart. Mutually satisfying marriages are differentiable from those that fail in that they both promise marital consanguinity and deliver on the promise.

This study examined the long-term consequences of idealization in marriage, using both daily diary and questionnaire data collected from a sample of 168 newlywed couples who participated in a 4-wave, 13-year longitudinal study of marriage. Idealization was operationalized as the tendency for people to perceive their partner as more agreeable than would be expected based on their reports of their partner's agreeable and disagreeable behaviors. Spouses who idealized one another were more in love with each other as newlyweds. Longitudinal analyses suggested that spouses were less likely to suffer declines in love when they idealized one another as newlyweds. Newlywed levels of idealization did not predict divorce.

This chapter provides a practical guide to advising social science students based on the experiences of two social scientists, a sociologist and psychologist, each of whom has taught in both discipline-based and interdisciplinary departments.

This article presents a conceptual, time-ordered, and developmental framework, centered on courtship processes, to study the premarital roots of marital success and failure. In this model, we assume that partners bring relatively stable qualities to their courtship that independently and in combination affect the course of the courtship and, in turn, shape how well couples fare in marriage. We argue that to appreciate the courtship features that predict marital success or failure, social scientists must understand the importance of moving beyond static variable-centered approaches to more developmental ones (both conceptually and analytically) that emphasize the interplay among premarital partners' qualities, the dynamics of their courtships, including the social and cultural contexts within which they are embedded, and the stability and satisfactoriness of the marriages they establish.