Social support: Distinguishing clinical and volunteer couples

Social support or husbands' and wives' friendships have theoretical and empirical support, showing benefit on marital satisfaction. The current study was designed to assess the association between friendships and couples in therapy as compared with a sample of volunteer couples. Discussions with friends about family problems were positively associated with both marital satisfaction and stability. Logistic regression revealed that clinical husbands are less likely to talk about marital problems with their friends, in contrast to clinical wives, who are likely to talk about marital stability with their friends. The wives' marital stability was also a significant predictor for the clinical couples.