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AbstractThe importance of studying specific and expressed emotions after a stressful life event is well known, yet few studies have moved beyond assessing self‐reported emotional responses to a romantic breakup. This study examined associations between computer‐recognized facial expressions and self‐reported breakup‐related distress among recently separated college‐aged young adults (N = 135; 37 men) on four visits across 9 weeks. Participants' facial expressions were coded using the Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox while participants spoke about their breakups. Of the seven expressed emotions studied, only Contempt showed a unique association with breakup‐related distress over time. At baseline, greater Contempt was associated with less breakup‐related distress; however, over time, greater Contempt was associated with greater breakup‐related distress.

Mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) grew rapidly in the last few decades as a result of high divorce rates, frequent conflicts between parting parents, the resulting administrative burden on courts, and especially concerns about damaging effects on children and postdivorce family relationships. This article focuses on our longitudinal research involving randomized trials of mediation and adversary settlement to support the conclusions that mediation can: (1) settle a large percentage of cases otherwise headed for court; (2) possibly speed settlement, save money, and increase compliance with agreements; (3) clearly increase party satisfaction; and (4) most importantly, lead to remarkably improved relationships between nonresidential parents and children, as well as between divorced parents—even twelve years after dispute settlement. The key "active ingredients" of mediation are likely to include: (1) the call for parental cooperation over the long run of co‐parenting beyond the crisis of separation, (2) the opportunity to address underlying emotional issues (albeit briefly), (3) helping parents to establish a businesslike relationship, and (4) the avoidance of divisive negotiations at a critical time for family relationships. We call for more research on mediation and other forms of ADR, as well as a renewal of the excitement and optimism of the "first generation" of mediators, qualities that are "active ingredients" in any successful social or psychological intervention.

Marital separation and divorce increase risk for all‐cause morbidity and mortality. Using a laboratory analog paradigm, this study examined attachment anxiety, language use, and blood pressure (BP) reactivity among 119 (n = 43 men, 76 women) recently separated adults who were asked to mentally reflect on their relationship history and separation experience. A language use composite of verbal immediacy from participants' stream‐of‐consciousness recordings about their separation experience as a behavioral index of attachment‐related hyperactivation was created. Verbal immediacy moderated the association between attachment anxiety and BP at the beginning of a divorce‐specific activation task. Participants reporting high attachment anxiety who discussed their separation in a first‐person, present‐oriented, and highly engaged manner evidenced the highest levels of BP at the start of the divorce‐specific task. Results provide a deeper understanding of the association between marital dissolution and health and suggest that verbal immediacy may be a useful behavioral index of hyperactivating coping strategies.

Attachment classification derived from narrative analysis is widely used as a marker of psychological organization. In contrast to this top‐down approach, bottom‐up, word count–based analyses of narratives are also used to measure psychological states. The current study integrates these 2 approaches by examining their overlap in 93 school‐aged children. Participants completed the Child Attachment Interview; transcriptions of this interview were subjected to word count–based linguistic analysis. Compared with secure children, dismissing children showed less and preoccupied children showed more signs of experiential connectedness. Disorganized children decreased in experiential connectedness during loss discussions and used more words related to death during nonloss sections of the interview. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to attachment and relationship research.

AbstractSavoring, or prolonging emotions associated with positive events, improves emotion and life satisfaction; little work, however, focuses on the savoring of interpersonal experiences, termed relational savoring. In a sample of 435 parents, the authors evaluated the impact of relational savoring on emotion and parent–child relationship satisfaction compared to a personal savoring and neutral control condition. Two years later, the authors reassessed parents' feelings of closeness with their children in a subsample of the original participants (n = 64). Both savoring conditions resulted in higher positive emotion for all parents, whereas the effects on negative emotion, relationship satisfaction, and closeness were only present for those higher in attachment avoidance. This study opens new avenues of investigation in both relational savoring and parent–child relationships.

AbstractThis study recruited participants whose partners were deployed for active‐duty military service to examine whether anticipatory relational savoring moderated the association of psychological distress with relationship satisfaction. Two weeks prior to their partner's deployment (T1), participants (N = 73) completed a self‐report measure of relationship satisfaction. Then, 2 weeks into their partner's deployment (T2), participants completed self‐report measures of stress, loneliness, and depression (combined into a composite index of psychological distress), and relationship satisfaction. Participants also completed a stream‐of‐consciousness task at T2 in which they imagined and discussed their partner's return from deployment. We coded the stream‐of‐consciousness task for anticipatory relational savoring regarding their upcoming reunion with their deployed partner. We found that anticipatory relational savoring moderated the association of psychological distress with during‐deployment relationship satisfaction after adjusting for demographics, interpersonal variables, and deployment‐specific variables; the association did not hold after adjusting for pre‐deployment relationship satisfaction, and thus was robust when considering the distress‐satisfaction association during the deployment but was not when considering changes in relationship satisfaction from pre‐ to during‐deployment. We discuss the potential importance of anticipatory relational savoring for this unique population.

Romantic breakups arouse fundamental questions about the self:Who am I without my partner?This study examined self‐concept reorganization and psychological well‐being over an 8‐week period in the months following a breakup. Multilevel analyses revealed that poorer self‐concept recovery preceded poorer well‐being and was associated with love for an ex‐partner, suggesting that failure to redefine the self contributes to post‐breakup distress. Psychophysiological data revealed that greater activity in the corrugator supercilia facial muscle while thinking about an ex‐partner predicted poorer self‐concept recovery and strengthened the negative association between love for an ex‐partner and self‐concept recovery. Thus, the interaction between self‐report and psychophysiological data provided information about the importance of self‐concept recovery to post‐breakup adjustment not tapped by either method alone.

Adult attachment classification is traditionally based on qualitative coding of participants' discourse about their attachment history. Word count‐based analyses have proven useful for assessing emotional states from narrative. To expand the understanding of how language is used in emotion regulation processes related to attachment, the authors assess 102 college‐aged adults' language on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Autonomous adults use more emotion words and, in particular, negative emotion words. Preoccupied adults use more anger words. Disorganized adults use more experientially connected language and more death/dying words, but also use more second‐person pronouns when discussing loss. Language use during the AAI explains variability in self‐reported emotional distress above and beyond attachment classifications. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to emotion and attachment.

Military deployment affects thousands of families each year, yet little is known about its impact on non-deployed spouses (NDSs) and romantic relationships. This report examines two factors–attachment security and a communal orientation with respect to the deployment– that may be crucial to successful dyadic adjustment by the NDS. Thirty-seven female NDSs reported on their relationship satisfaction before and during their partner's deployment, and 20 also did so two weeks following their partner's return. Participants provided a stream-of-conscious speech sample regarding their relationship during the deployment; linguistic coding of sample transcripts provided measures of each participant's (a) narrative coherence, hypothesized to reflect attachment security with respect to their deployed spouse; and, (b) frequency of first person plural pronoun use (we-talk), hypothesized to reflect a communal orientation to coping. More frequent first person plural pronouns— we-talk— was uniquely associated with higher relationship satisfaction during the deployment, and greater narrative coherence was uniquely associated with higher relationship satisfaction post-deployment. Discussion centers on the value of relationship security and communal orientations in predicting how couples cope with deployment and other types of relationship stressors.