Abstract
The article focuses on the role of personal choice and its consequences on the resilience of marriage. The limits of personal choice include situations where one of the spouses decides to benefit one or two participants in a conflict or a significant life change. The identified gap in qualitative research that focuses on the nature of choice and analyzes its consequences on the strength of marriage shows a need for this research. It is proposed that journaling be used as a primary method as it allows for more complex analysis and identifying links that may be omitted in quantitative research.
The journal’s contents will be grouped based on the primary beneficiary of most choices and compared to the number of conflicts in the household. The hypothesis states that couples who perceive mutually beneficial outcomes of choice as the primary goal of addressing the conflict experience fewer marital issues and have more effective daily communication skills. The results of this research may be used in psychological and sociological practice as a basis for couple counseling and divorce prevention programs.
Introduction
The institute of marriage is critical to maintaining a prosperous society. It guarantees a stable basis for an increasing population, an option to share a typical household, and creates an opportunity to achieve life goals in collaboration with a partner. Moreover, it is a crucial social mechanism for increased population and societal progress. Therefore, supporting it and researching the factors that affect its strength and longevity is extremely important.
The concept of choice is more challenging to define. In the context of marriage, it can mean a calculated and sometimes emotionally charged decision that leads to an inevitable consequence. The result of choice may be positive, negative, and, more rarely, neutral. However, most choices affect the home environment and may cause issues that will bring a marriage to an end. Interestingly, a particular regular outcome of a choice that benefits one or both actors may change the relationship. Thus, spouses’ choice-making habits may affect the household’s communication and issue-solving skills, and it is not clear whether it can be effectively used in psychology and sociology.
Literature Review
Introduction
To properly assess how the results of personal choices during domestic conflicts and substantial life changes affect the longevity and strength of marriage, it is necessary to outline the known data. The discussed choices are the ones that lead to one or both sides of the issue receiving some benefit because of a decision. This topic should include modern knowledge about marriage’s sociological and psychological sides and issues that may lead to conflict. These sources may show how the outcome of choice-dependent interactions affects the long- and short-term relationship depending on the side or sides that benefit from the result.
The conflict-solving strategies and psychological counseling methods are widely discussed in modern literature, but these works omit the role of personal choice in decision-making when addressing the problem. This results from using quantitative data that may not represent specific cause-effect links. As a result, the gaps in modern articles consist of a lack of qualitative research or a focus shifted from sociological aspects, risk factors, and roles of communication skills and subjective choice.
Qualitative Approach
The articles discussing the theme of choice in a home environment usually focus on numerical and impersonal data. Modern literature on marital problems, conflict management, and subjective choice in domestic interactions use a quantitative approach that does not fully represent respondents’ opinions (Cohen, 2019; Raley & Sweeney, 2020). Alternatively, qualitative research on adjusted topics usually focuses on other aspects, such as divorce experience or family problems (Zaitov& Teshayev, 2022). Journaling has become widely used in recent years as it provides detailed answers. It lets the researcher find the cause-effect links that are not obvious in qualitative research (Lutz & Paretti, 2019).
Meyer and Willis (2019) also emphasize the option to revisit the records when needed and analyze them using a different prism if the findings provide the author with additional information. Kross and Giust (2019) add that the researchers may use specific question constructions to help the respondents focus on the observed phenomenon, which is a great way to collect relevant data. This lack of qualitative research regarding the topic should be addressed by analyzing qualitative data that may discover new points of view on the subject.
Sociological Aspects of Divorce
The problem of divorce and its effect on society should be discussed to reflect on how it factors subjective perspective on marriage. According to the latest research, divorce rates are gradually falling (Cohen, 2019; Zaitov & Teshayev, 2022; Manning & Payne, 2021; Raley & Sweeney, 2020). Cohen (2019) connects it partially to an increased awareness of mental health and the benefits of therapy but also makes an accent on socioeconomic uncertainty that may postpone big decisions for troubled couples.
The latter is supported by Manning and Payne (2021), who note that the COVID-19 epidemic led to a decrease in weddings and divorces, demonstrating how people tend to avoid significant change in this economic environment. At the same time, individual experiences may have drastically different perspectives, which makes the gap for a good qualitative analysis obvious. Therefore, the statistical literature shows that the current trend is aimed at avoiding separation.
The social consequences of divorce are also well-presented in the literature. Zaitov and Teshayev (2022) introduce the results of this action on society: a decrease in individual economic stability, child trauma, and a psychological rehabilitation period that may be detrimental to ex-partners. Sbarra and Whisman (2022) focus on the traumatic complications that may affect personal income or productiveness, which damages the prospects of returning to a healthy way of life.
Both articles state that public opinion on separation continues to be stigmatized. However, the literature lacks qualitative research on divorce anxiety and the reasons that may lead to it. Thus, quantitative studies suggest that the individual perception of divorce as a conflict resolution option is less likely but still may happen, which helps discuss the possible outcomes of detrimental choices in marriage.
Family Risk Factors
One crucial piece of knowledge is identifying the risk factors that negatively impact marriage quality. When analyzing the results, encoding the keywords that signify issues may be helpful for later conclusion-making. According to Zaitov andTeshayev (2022), the most relevant reason for separation is family disruption of different kinds: ones involving the couple, the closest family, and others. It needs to be clarified how personal choice is involved in the mechanism, which accents the gap in research.
This also holds true for the article by Prime et al. (2020), which talks about the dangers that come with the necessity of continuous communication in COVID-19 situations. The absence of personal space is highlighted in the work as an example of a danger factor, but it offers no strategies for avoiding it. A similar gap may be found in the research by Humphreys et al. (2020), which states the increased domestic violence rates in the isolation period but fails to present an option to prevent it using personal choice. Thus, personal choice and its consequences as risk factors are underrepresented in the literature.
Communication Skills
The COVID-19 pandemic also increased the focus on communication skills as essential personal relationship choices. The article by Kılıçarslan and Parmaksız (2023) is an excellent example of communication being central to increasing the strength of marriage and preventing problems. It does not examine this mechanism from the standpoint of the choice-effect link, even if it offers the option to focus on the partner.
The same gap may be illustrated by the work of Prime et al. (2020), who feature the choice to increase the level of communication in an isolated situation but do not feature it as a personal decision. In a similar vein, Evans et al. (2020) address forced communication in stressful settings and domestic relationships, but they do not specifically mention choice. Thus, even though literature features the effects of good communication skills on marriage, there is a gap in analyzing it from the perspective of personal choice.
Subjective Choice
The problem of subjective choice and its effect on individuals is highly underrepresented in modern research. The literature usually focuses on the consequences of personal decisions for the community, as illustrated by Atkinson et al. (2020). However, this research needs to include an analysis of how subjective choice affects a person’s psychology. Moreover, there is a substantial gap in academic knowledge on decision-making in relationships, especially in marriage. Therefore, this scale of decision-making should be explored more thoroughly.
Conclusion
In conclusion, current literature varies in coverage of topics that should be addressed in the research. While it provides substantial information on problems that should be addressed during marriage analysis and how it should be researched, most articles discuss slightly different topics. They include marriage issues, communication skills, personal choice as a societal factor, and quantitative divorce data. All of these represent a part of what should be researched when analyzing the role of personal choice and its consequences for marriage. The gap in qualitative research that addresses the outcomes of choice-based conflicts and life changes and their effects on long- and short-term marriage strength should be closed.
Methodology
This research will use journaling as a part of the qualitative approach to collecting, analyzing, and presenting data. A sample of 20-30 married couples will be used to achieve well-supported and conclusive results. They will be asked to fill the presented templates in identical journals daily. If any of the notes’ contents need to be explained, they will be asked to have an interview to give more context to the situation described in the journal. The research should continue for an extended period, preferably more than three months, to guarantee the amount and quality of the data used in later stages. These features will make the results more reliable and usable for further interaction.
The journal will have prepared forms asking the respondent to answer questions. These questions will allow them to describe conflicts or big life chances that forced them to make a subjective choice that affected one or both people in the couple. Then, they will be asked to analyze the results of their choice and explain who the biggest beneficiary of that decision was: them, their partner, or both spouses. They will also be asked to monitor any conflicts that happen regardless of how they are connected to previously described choices. That will be the data for dependent and independent variables.
The analysis of the journals will include encoding as the primary method. The results of choices will be separated into groups considering the primary beneficiary of the choice, and specific communicational problems and conflict risk factors will be counted. Then, the dependent and independent values will be compared, and the thesis will be proven if there is any correlation among a substantial number of couples over a long period. It would be confirmed by a -0.5 to -1.0 Pearson correlation coefficient between the number of mutually beneficial choices and conflicts. Therefore, the data will both conclude the hypothesis and provide insight into the mechanisms behind the link between personal choices and marriage resilience.
Rationale
The topic of personal choice and its effects during conflict and significant life changes is crucial to forming a new approach to conflict management. The findings are expected to increase the percentage of conscious and productive decisions in domestic environments and affect the quality of daily communications between spouses. The current literature provides a decent amount of information on factors crucial for a successful marriage but lacks a personal approach that can be achieved by analyzing qualitative research. It also needs to explain the nature of personal choice and its significance in this subject. Therefore, the main benefits of this article are practical usability and in-depth analysis of the choice-effect link.
The results of this study may be a basis for later research that will focus on more specific strategies for making choices and the ways they factor into the quality of marriage. The psychological sphere will have qualitative data that explains the connection between the issues, the couple’s approaches to them, the results of personal choices, and the outcome of these decisions. This will allow the professionals to specify the problem of issue-solving and increase the quality of provided help in long-term care.
The new methods will benefit specific couples and society as they may be used to prevent future divorces. Current approaches to couple consulting may have a similar algorithm and goal. Still, they do not focus on the personal side of the question and discuss the partner’s habits without further inspection (Kılıçarslan & Parmaksız, 2023; Prime et al., 2020). Thus, data from the qualitative research on personal choices’ effects on marriage will increase the quality of that approach and let the professionals better help couples that need it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper aims to determine whether a choice is a significant factor in a marriage. While choice is a rather broad term, this article uses it regarding household conflicts and life changes. The choices are divided into groups depending on the greatest beneficiary of the outcome and compared to individual conflict statistics that occur in the couple. This research suggests that making mutually beneficial results the most desirable while approaching a problem is the most effective to achieve an understanding, loving, and supportive relationship with a partner. This will have a practical effect on marriage counseling and social programs, increasing the stability of future and existing couples.
References
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Cohen, P. N. (2019). The Coming Divorce Decline. Socius, 5. Web.
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Raley, R. K., & Sweeney, M. M. (2020). Divorce, repartnering, and stepfamilies: A decade in review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 82(1), 81–99. Web.
Sbarra, D. A., & Whisman, M. A. (2022). Divorce, health, and socioeconomic status: An agenda for psychological science. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 75–78. Web.
Zaitov, E., & Teshayev, D. M. (2022). Family conflict and divorce as a social problem. Eurasian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 5, 1–5. Web.
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