The Effects of Primary and Secondary Assortative Mating for Alcohol Misuse on Relationship Satisfaction Alcohol use and Alcohol Consequences

This study examined undergraduate, emerging-adult men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 and their dating partners. The AUDIT (Babor, Higgens-Biddle, Saunders, & Monteiro, 2001) was used to assess their own and their partners'eports ofhazardous alcohol misuse. Four types of couples were identified: alcohol misusing participants with alcohol misusing partners (i.e., alcohol concordant couples), alcohol misusing female participants with a non-alcohol misusing partner, alcohol misusing male participants with an non-alcohol misusing partner and non-alcohol misusing women and men (i.e., nonmisuse concordant couples). Participants and their relationship partners were also assessed for their status as an adult child of an alcoholic (ACOA) using the CAST-6 (Hodgins, Maticka-Tyndale, EI-Guebaly, & West, 1993). Alcohol concordant couples were compared to other couple types to examine possible differences in relationship satisfaction, alcohol consumption, and alcohol consequences. A chi-square test of independence was used to investigate whether one's own alcohol misuse is independent of partner alcohol concordance. It was expected that partners' alcohol misuse is not independent. This hypothesis was supported, indicating more risk for women to be in alcohol concordant relationships. In addition, it was expected that concordant couples would report greater alcohol consumption and consequences as compared to the other three couple types and higher relationship satisfaction as compared to discordant couples, but lower relationship satisfaction compared to non-misuse concordant couples. These hypotheses received partial support and important gender differences emerged. Non misuse concordant couples reported the highest degree of relationship satisfaction. Men' relationship satisfaction was uniformly higher than women's relationship satisfaction and alcohol misusing women had uniformly low satisfaction, regardless of whether they were in a relationship with an alcohol misusing partner. Regarding alcohol use, the alcohol misusing men but not the women in the couples have higher alcohol consumption and consequences by virtue of being in an alcohol concordant relationship. Another chi-square test was conducted to test whether alcohol concordance between couples differs as a function of ACOA status. ACOA status was unrelated to which type of alcohol concordance couple one was in.