The role of enacted and perceived dyadic coping for young couples’ satisfaction

Dyadic coping refers to the way partners manage their everyday stress as a couple and is an emergent topic within the research on stress and coping processes. The role of dyadic coping for partners’ well-being and couples’ functioning has been explored in numerous studies, proving that, when positive, dyadic coping has potential benefits for the well-being of the relationship as well as of the partners themselves. However, still little is known about how its beneficial effects are delivered. In particular, little research has been devoted to the examination of the interplay between one partner’s dyadic coping behaviors and the perceptions of such behaviors as they are received by the other partner. The link between enacted and perceived dyadic coping, as well as their influence on relationship satisfaction, has been theoretically formulated, but this mechanism has never been empirically tested. The purpose of this chapter is to present a study examining the role of enacted and perceived dyadic coping for the relationship satisfaction of young couples facing the transition to marriage. Results highlighted that partner enacted dyadic coping was moderately reflected in the other partner’s perceived dyadic coping, though men and women differed in how accurately they perceived positive vs. negative dyadic coping behaviors, with women being more accurate in detecting partner’s negative behaviors and men in perceiving partner’s positive ones. Moreover, perceived positive dyadic coping mediated the effect of women’s enacted positive dyadic coping on men’s relationship satisfaction, whereas perceived negative dyadic coping mediated the effect of men’s enacted negative dyadic coping on women’s relationship satisfaction.