Search

Despite couples with similar financial values tending to experience higher relationship satisfaction, individuals with dissimilar spending tendencies often marry each other. Research has not yet established strategies for therapists to encourage for newlywed couples with dissimilar financial values. We examined associations between similarity of financial values and relationship flourishing among 1,486 different-sex newlywed couples. In these associations, we tested both husbands' and wives' forgiveness as moderators. Only wives' forgiveness significantly moderated associations between similarity of financial values and husbands' and wives' relationship flourishing. Therapists may consider encouraging forgiveness—especially for wives—in different-sex newlywed couples with dissimilar financial values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As baby boomers reach retirement age, the number of older adults living in long-term care will inevitably increase. Living in long-term care often brings psychological, relational, and emotional challenges for older adults, their families, and professional care-providers. Despite these trends and associated challenges, there appears to be an underrepresentation of attention addressing the mental health care of older adults and their families in marriage and family therapy (MFT) literature. Emphasis needs to be turned to assessing the quality and effectiveness of mental health resources for older adults in residential facilities, and to filling the gap where needed services are unavailable. The current review summarizes research addressing residential care for older adults, detailing a) mental health challenges faced by residents, families, and professional care-providers, b) effective mental health treatment options, and c) how MFTs are uniquely suited to working in long-term care settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forgiveness is a powerful relationship repair experience, perhaps essential to healing following offense. Therapy intervention and research attention to forgiveness has increased over the past two decades. Conversely, anger and indignation, while endemic to interpersonal offense, is overlooked or negated in relationship repair models; further, the experience or expression of offense is often viewed as antagonistic rather than catalytic to forgiving. Few scholars have conceptualized the facilitative role that the experience and expression of offense may play in forgiving and healing, both for the individual and relationship. Disparate conceptualizations of anger and/or indignation may impede therapeutic progress. This study presents a review of social science literature on forgiveness as well as the results of a statistical analysis of the Indignation and Forgiveness Scale (IFS) administered to a group of relational therapists (N= 98). Therapists expressed a strong belief in the compatibility of anger or indignation and forgiveness. The IFS displayed multidimensionality, with items loading onto four subscales. Greater professional involvement leads to more favorable views of anger or indignation in couple therapy following infidelity. A dearth of theoretical and practical literature on these topics, combined with the potential significance of anger/indignation work to forgiving and healing, recommend research and model development on the role of constructive indignation in forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]