Healthy Relationships Vs Unhealthy

Relationships Healthy Vs Unhealthy

There is mounting evidence that romantic relationships during adolescence are a "mixed bag," in that they can promote either positive or negative developmental outcomes. Adolescent romantic relationships, for example, have the potential to promote interpersonal competence, a more complex and differentiated self, and positive future attachments (Furman & Wehner, 1994). Adolescent romantic relationships, on the other hand, may facilitate the occurrence of risky behavior, such as substance abuse and unprotected sex (Barber, 2006; Crouter & Booth, 2006; Seefeldt, Florsheim, & Benjamin, 2003). When a problem between romantic partners arises, it is frequently the result of a complex interpersonal process and is likely to have an impact on one or both partners' psychological well-being (Fortenberry, 2003).

For example, the decision to have unprotected sex is influenced by both partners' attitudes, beliefs, competencies, and behaviors (Snyder, 2006). Furthermore, violence between romantic partners is frequently reciprocal and part of a longstanding pattern of dysfunctional relational beliefs and behaviors (Jouriles, Wolfe, Garrido, & McCarthy, 2006). 

These findings suggest that researchers should pay close attention to how interpersonal processes influence the occurrence of both healthy and risky behaviors. Because adolescent romance is such a "mixed bag," researchers and clinicians have become increasingly interested in distinguishing between positive and negative romantic processes and identifying the circumstances under which romantic relationships disrupt versus facilitate development.

Unfortunately, distinguishing between abnormal/dysfunctional adolescent romantic relationships and normal/adaptive adolescent romantic relationships is difficult. Part of the reason for this is that many dysfunctional romantic relationships contain some positive elements, whereas most healthy romantic relationships contain some level of strife and unhappiness.

Clinical researchers interested in adolescent developmental processes are challenged to develop or identify methodologies that can effectively distinguish between healthy and dysfunctional romantic relationships, recognizing that adaptive and maladaptive behaviors may overlap significantly. In addition to this challenge, clinical researchers must choose external indicators of health and dysfunction, such as diagnoses and/or health indicators, to validate these methodologies. Even if a methodology includes an explicit theory of healthy and dysfunctional relationships, the validation process necessitates the use of some well-established reference point that exists (at least theoretically) outside the context of adolescent romance.

Several researchers, for example, distinguish high-risk and low-risk couples based on the psychopathology of one or both partners (Floyd, Cranford, Daugherty, Fitzgerald, & Zucker, 2006;Jacob, Leonard, & Haber, 2001). This paper's goal is to address these issues and challenges.

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An interpersonal-behavioral strategy:

The majority of adolescent romantic relationship research has relied on self-reports and interview data, which have provided valuable insights into the subjective, internal experience of adolescent romance. Self-report data have laid the groundwork for our current understanding of how romantic relationships influence adolescent development in both positive and negative ways (Carver, Joyner, & Udry, 2003; Joyner & Udry, 2000). When we rely solely on subjective reports, however, the range of our understanding is constrained by the feelings and experiences that adolescents are willing or able to disclose. Given the intense nature of adolescent love, some adolescents may perceive their romantic relationships as more positive or negative than others do. Interpersonal process research has the potential to provide a new and possibly more objective perspective on adolescent relationships.

Although subjective reports are an important component of the assessment process, another reason for including observational analysis in our arsenal of clinical–developmental research tools is that the health of a relationship cannot be fully evaluated based solely on individual perceptions (Furman & Simon, 2006; Galliher, Welsh, Rostosky, & Kawaguchi, 2004; Welsh, Galliher, Kawaguchi, & Rostosky, 1999). A young man who is violent with his girlfriend, for example, may be unwilling to provide all of the information required to assess the quality of their romantic relationship, and the girlfriend may be motivated to conceal information in order to protect both her partner and herself.

An astute observer armed with well-validated observational tools could potentially identify underlying issues in such a relationship that are contradicted by each partner's self-reports. This example emphasizes the importance of addressing the tension between objectivity and subjectivity in assessing adolescent romance (Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999), both of which are necessary for a thorough understanding of adolescent romantic relationships.

For both theoretical and clinical reasons, interpersonal process data are relevant to adolescent romantic relationships. Several developmental theorists, for example, have proposed that the way adolescent couples interact with each other is influenced (at least in part) by their respective families of origin (Furman & Wehner, 1994; Gray & Steinberg, 1999; Shulman & Scharf, 2000). Only by observing couple interactions can researchers directly test the hypothesis that patterns of dyadic communication among romantic couples are related to interactions (or other aspects of the relationships) between adolescents and their own parents or between the adolescents' own parents themselves (Collins, Hennighausen, Schmit, & Sroufe, 1997; Conger, Cui, Bryant, & Elder, 2000).

Interpersonal process data can also help us identify targets for prevention and intervention efforts in the clinical setting. In our own research, for example, we discovered that pregnant teenagers and their partners have more negative conflict interactions (including demand–withdraw interactions) than matched non-expectant couples (Moore & Florsheim, 1999), and that the quality of observed interpersonal behavior assessed prenatally is an important predictor of their adjustment to parenthood, including their functioning as parents (Florsheim & Smith, 2005; Moore & Florsheim, 2007). More specifically, we discovered that among co-parenting couples, low levels of interpersonal warmth and high levels of interpersonal hostility were independent risk factors for parental dysfunction. These findings offer some recommendations for prevention efforts that use couples' relationships as a vehicle for improving parenting and co-parenting practices. Clinicians working with young expectant couples, for example, might focus on teaching them how to fight or disagree more warmly and reduce their blaming and ridiculing behavior when conflicts arise.

Identifying research tools capable of distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy adolescent romantic relationships is a critical step in developing prevention programs that promote healthy relationship skills. We need to know exactly what healthy and unhealthy adolescent relationships "look like." Testing a tool's ability to discriminate between couples previously identified as "high risk" or "low risk" in some regard, such as psychological functioning, is one way to validate its clinical utility. As such, the primary goal of this study was to differentiate between clinically distinct groups of adolescent couples using an observational method. More specifically, we used an observational coding scheme based on Benjamin's (1974) Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) to test the hypothesis that adolescent couples with a substance use disorder (SUD) in one or both partners would engage in higher rates of hostile behavior and lower rates of warm behavior than couples in which both partners were determined to be free of psychopathology.

Substance abuse and interpersonal relationships :

For many years, marital researchers have investigated the interpersonal processes of couples in which one or both partners use drugs or alcohol (Floyd et al., 2006; Haber & Jacob, 1997; Jacob et al., 2001; Marshal, 2003). The findings were generally consistent across multiple research teams: When compared to married couples who do not have psychopathology, couples with one partner who uses drugs or alcohol tend to engage in more hostile and less warm interpersonal behavior. Not surprisingly, couples who struggle with substance abuse are more likely to report lower marital satisfaction. For example, Fals-Stewart and Birchler (1998) examined observed interpersonal differences between 17 drug-abusing married couples and 17 distressed but non-drug-using married couples using the clinical rating of adult communication coding scheme (CRAC; Basco, Birchler, Kalal, Talbott, & Slater, 1991). 

The results showed that drug-abusing couples were more verbally abusive, blamed more, and were less adept at problem solving than the control group, demonstrating the utility of observational techniques.

It has not previously been investigated whether research on substance abuse among married couples is relevant to adolescent romantic relationships, and it raises some important theoretical issues. On the one hand, there are reasons to believe that the relationship between substance use and the interpersonal process differs between adolescent dating couples and adult married couples.

For starters, there is evidence that adolescents are less likely than adults to view substance use (and abuse) as a problem, possibly because many adolescents have yet to experience the negative consequences of long-term substance abuse (Barkin, Smith, & DuRant, 2002; Dustman & Colbry, 1995; Musher-Eizenman, Holub, & Arnett, 2003). As a result, the relational distress and dysfunction associated with heavy substance use in adults may be less visible in adolescents.

Furthermore, because adolescent romantic relationships are expected to be less stable than adult marriages, the link between individual-level problems (such as substance abuse) and couple-level problems (such as high rates of hostility and low rates of satisfaction) may be weaker among younger, unmarried romantic partners. Individual psychopathology in the context of a marriage is interpersonally challenging because husband and wife are more interdependently linked, especially when children are present. When individual-level psychopathology begins to have a negative impact on adolescent romantic relationships, either partner can more easily end the relationship and move on (Rostosky, Welsh, Kawaguchi, & Galliher, 1999). Individual psychopathology may be a less reliable predictor of dysfunctional relationships in adolescents for these reasons.

Individual psychopathology, on the other hand, is one of the most straightforward ways of distinguishing between psychologically healthy and unhealthy interpersonal processes. We can expect psychologically compromised or high-risk adolescents to engage in less healthy interpersonal behavior, at least with parents and friends, based on previous research (Dishion, 2000; Florsheim, Tolan, & Gorman-Smith, 1996). Allowing for typical levels of individual variability, psychologically unhealthy youth would be more likely to engage in dysfunctional interpersonal processes with romantic partners than psychologically healthy youth. Indeed, there is some evidence to support this hypothesis among antisocial youth (Kim & Capaldi, 2004). As a result, it appears plausible that adolescent couples with one or both partners suffering from SUD would behave differently than adolescent couples with both partners being psychologically healthy.

Method:

Participants:

30 adolescent, heterosexual couples were recruited through advertisements in high school newspapers and various teen hangouts in the community. The inclusion criteria for this study were as follows: (a) neither partner had any psychopathology, or (b) at least one partner had an SUD. As compensation for their time, each participant received $40.00 ($80.00 per couple). The data was gathered at university offices. Female partners had an average age of 16.6 (SD 14 1.3; range: 14–18), while male partners had an average age of 17.5 (SD 14 1.0; range: 15–19). The sample's ethnic composition was 96 percent White and 4 percent Hispanic.

According to Hollingshead's (1975) Four-Factor Index of Social Status, the sample's mean socioeconomic status (SES) was in the middle-class range (based primarily on information about parents' occupation and education). A total of 55% of the adolescents in the sample fell into this category, with 24% classified as upper-middle class, 9% as upper class, and 12% as lower class (i.e., machine operators and semi-skilled workers). The average length of a dating relationship was 13.7 months (standard deviation 14 9.5; range: 3–48 months).

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