The Relationship between Gender Stereotypes, Sense of Power, and Demographic Variables with the Cycle of Demand-Withdrawal Marital Communication

Marital life is an important dimension of life for anyone. One of the most important qualities of marital relationships is communicational cycles and patterns which are formed between couples and often are stabilized by repetition through lapse of time. That is, when any of the partners do something with regard to the other, and it is continued for some time, it may lead to the formation of some communicational patterns between them and becomes stable. If patterns which direct the couple’ interactions suffer from dysfunctional characteristics, conflicts may arise, leading couples to experience dissatisfaction in their marital relationships. The demand – withdraw marital communicational cycle is one of the most prevalent communicational patterns in which one spouse demands intimacy, criticizes the other and complains about his or her partner’s apathy while the other avoids intimacy and reacts with withdrawal and/or passivity. This pattern usually appears as wife demand/husband withdrawal. It intensifies little by little and leads to marital dissatisfaction. In this research we want to know how such variables as gender stereotype and power differences between men and women can influence this cycle. The purpose of this investigation was to study the relationship between sociological variables and demand – withdraw marital communicational cycle and to determine the intensity of the relationship between gender stereotype, sense of power and demographic variables with the aforementioned cycle. The research tools included: gender beliefs questionnaire (in order to assess gender stereotypes), sense of power questionnaire (in order to assess sense of power), demographic questionnaire (in order to assess demographic variables, i.e. age, job, length of marriage, number of children) and Christensen & Sullaway’s communicational patterns questionnaire (CPQ) (in order to assess the demand–withdraw marital communicational cycle). Discussion of Results & The regression results showed that gender stereotypes, sense of power and number of children were all significant predictors for demand/withdraw pattern. The correlation results showed that increasing in stereotypical thinking and the number of children can lead to an increase in the probability of demand/withdraw cycle. Also, more sense of power has a positive correlation with the “withdrawal pattern” and less sense of power has a positive correlation with the “demand pattern”. The results demonstrate that the variables which were considered in the analysis of the cycle in this research are important and can help relevant agents to provide opportunities for improving couple relationships.