Flipping the Curve: Patterns of Emotional Communication in Same-Sex Female Couples Before and After Couple Therapy

Distressed couples seeking therapy often engage in problematic patterns of communication, including emotional avoidance or rapid escalation of negative emotions. While couple therapy can alter couples’ emotional communication, research to date has largely focused on different-sex, cisgender couples. Because same-sex couples have been understudied in couple therapy treatment research, particularly female, same-sex couples, it is unclear how couple therapy may alter their communication. This investigation examined couples’ vocally expressed emotional arousal within conversations held before and after a novel couple therapy tailored for same-sex, cisgender female couples (Pentel et al., 2021). At pre- and post-therapy, couples (N = 11) completed two recorded interactions. Emotional arousal was assessed using vocal fundamental frequency (f0). Multilevel growth curve models were used to estimate trajectories of f0 across each pre- and post-therapy conversation. Findings indicate significant differences between the pre- and post-therapy f0 trajectories. At pretherapy, couples’ f0 initially increased (indicating higher emotional arousal) but then decreased later in the conversation. At posttherapy, couples initially decreased in f0 and then increased later in the conversation. Taken together, these findings suggest that, before therapy, couples may associate emotion with conflict and quickly minimize emotion after it initially escalates. After therapy, these couples may have learned how to better express and tolerate emotions when resolving conflict; therefore, the elevated arousal later in the conversation may be adaptive. These results point to the continued importance of understanding adaptive communication processes in diverse constellations of couples and how couple therapy facilitates changes.