An investigation of relational turbulence and depressive symptoms in newly married women

This study uses the relational turbulence model to examine depressive symptoms in newly married women. It reports data from a pre-/posttest study in which 152 women completed an online survey during their engagement and 6 months after their wedding. Nearly 12% of the women reported reliable and clinically meaningful increases in depressive symptoms after their wedding. Using panel data analysis, this study found that increases in self uncertainty, partner uncertainty, and relationship uncertainty as well as in partner interference were associated with increases in depressive symptoms. This novel test of the relational turbulence model examined the impact of change in (rather than level of) relational turbulence, and the findings extend previous work by demonstrating how mechanisms of relational turbulence impact mental health. Recent media and scholarly attention has focused on the phenomenon of postnuptial depressive symptoms, or the experience of feeling sad, purposeless, or let down after the wedding. Previous research suggests that depressive symptoms are relatively common among newly married women and manifest in feelings of sadness, disappointment, hopelessness, loneliness, and despair (Stafford & Scott, 2016). In some cases, postnuptial depressive symptoms can be severe. In 2013, one woman in Montana used the “wedding blues” as her legal defense in the criminal case against her for murdering her new husband by pushing him off a cliff on their honeymoon, telling police investigators, “I wasn’t feeling like I should after you get married. I thought after a girl got married she should be on Cloud Nine” (Miller, 2013). Newly married men also may experience postwedding disappointment, but Allison M. Scott, Department of Communication, University of Kentucky; Laura Stafford, School of Media and Communication, Bowling Green State University. Correspondence should be addressed to Allison M. Scott, University of Kentucky, Department of Communication, 231 Grehan Building, Lexington, KY 40506-0042, e-mail: allison.scott@uky.edu. most media and popular press coverage of postwedding depression focuses on the bride’s experience given that, culturally speaking, most of the work of planning the wedding (and hence, the investment of time, energy, and emotion) remains the domain of the bride-to-be (Blakely, 2008; Corrado, 2002), which is evidenced by the fact that the commercial wedding industry almost exclusively targets women (Sniezek, 2005). The association between depression and relational factors in marriage is well established (for reviews, see Rehman, Gollan, & Mortimer, 2008; Whisman, 2001), and depressive symptoms can have potentially devastating consequences for newly married couples in particular. Depression in the first year of marriage sets the stage for dysfunctional interaction patterns between spouses in later years of marriage (Davila, 2001; Johnson & Jacob, 1997). For example, previous research has found that feeling depressed in the first year of marriage is a strong predictor of divorce by the third year (Buehlman, Gottman, & Katz, 1992) and by the sixth year (Carrere, Buehlman, Gottman, Coan, & Ruckstuhl, 2000). Despite the negative fallout