Healthy Relationships Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, 2022

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The data deposited consists of interview transcripts (with identifying information obscured) from two samples of intact couples, the collection of which was made possible by the secondment of the Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Jan Ewing (University of Exeter) to the Relationship Support charity, OnePlusOne. Sample 1 consists of the 24 of 33 married couples interviewed separately but consecutively at year 15 of marriage, who agreed to deposit their data in the UK Data Archive. Ewing recruited the original sample of 52 couples before marriage and interviewed couples four times over the first 10 years of marriage between 2007 and 2017. In 2017, the sample comprised 45 couples; 39 intact and six separated couples). In 2022, 32 intact couples and one couple who separated the previous year agreed to a further interview. In 2017, this sample was complemented by a cross-sectional relationship-diverse sample of a further 10 couples (4 same-sex and 6 different-sex), some of whom were cohabiting (4) or civil partnered (2), and all of whom had lived together for more than 15 years. In 2022, all ten couples (Sample 2) agreed to a further interview and the deposit of the obscured interview data in the UK data archive. The data collection therefore comprises 68 individual interviews from 34 couples, each approximately 20 pages long. The study sought to test longitudinally for the first time and within the context of couples navigating the Covid pandemic, the Relational Capability Framework developed by OnePlusOne drawing on the capability approach of Sen and Nussbaum. Relational capability is the ability to initiate and maintain relationships (internal capability) and the opportunity and the conditions that enable individuals to form and maintain relationships (relational opportunity). As the Fellowship coincided with the country emerging from Covid lockdowns, this enabled an exploration of how intact couples have coped (or not) with the relationship stress caused by Covid compared to other stressful periods they have lived through as a couple (e.g., the financial crash in 2008). In particular, the enforced lockdowns and restrictions to everyday life that the participants had lived under in the period immediately before the project proved a perfect ‘petri dish’ to test the theory of relational opportunity. As hypothesised, both the home and communities in which couples lived and the response from schools, employers, and the government profoundly affected the couple’s experience of Covid and their ability to nurture their relationship at this time of national and personal crisis. Age, life stage, and personality type were also significant moderators of how couples experienced and navigated Covid, underscoring the need for a greater understanding of and nuanced response to couples’ needs at different life stages to optimise the conditions and circumstances in which relationships may flourish. Additionally, the couples who navigated the Covid crisis well tended to be those in which one or both members of the couple were relationally capable, displaying the individual-level skills and attributes required to sustain relationships, such as empathy, flexibility, friendliness, likability, understanding, the ability to see the other’s perspective, and altruism (Mansfield and Reynolds, 2014:4).

The project used semi-structured interview methods with two samples of couples in intimate relationships followed longitudinally over a 15-year and a 5-year period respectively to identify what drives thriving relationships across the life course and test the 'Relational Capabilities Framework' model developed by the relationship support charity, OnePlusOne. The data deposited consists of interview transcripts (with identifying information obscured) from two samples of intact couples, the collection of which was made possible by the secondment of the Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Jan Ewing (University of Exeter) to the Relationship Support charity, OnePlusOne. Sample 1 consists of the 24 of 33 married couples interviewed separately but consecutively at year 15 of marriage, who agreed to deposit their data in the UK Data Archive. Ewing recruited the original sample of 52 couples before marriage and interviewed couples four times over the first 10 years of marriage between 2007 and 2017. In 2017, the sample comprised 45 couples; 39 intact and six separated couples). In 2022, 32 intact couples and one couple who separated the previous year agreed to a further interview. In 2017, this sample was complemented by a cross-sectional relationship-diverse sample of a further 10 couples (4 same-sex and 6 different-sex), some of whom were cohabiting (4) or civil partnered (2), and all of whom had lived together for more than 15 years. In 2022, all ten couples (Sample 2) agreed to a further interview and the deposit of the obscured interview data in the UK data archive. The data collection therefore comprises 68 individual interviews from 34 couples, each approximately 20 pages long. The study sought to test longitudinally for the first time and within the context of couples navigating the Covid pandemic, the Relational Capability Framework developed by OnePlusOne drawing on the capability approach of Sen and Nussbaum. Relational capability is the ability to initiate and maintain relationships (internal capability) and the opportunity and the conditions that enable individuals to form and maintain relationships (relational opportunity). As the Fellowship coincided with the country emerging from Covid lockdowns, this enabled an exploration of how intact couples have coped (or not) with the relationship stress caused by Covid compared to other stressful periods they have lived through as a couple (e.g., the financial crash in 2008). In particular, the enforced lockdowns and restrictions to everyday life that the participants had lived under in the period immediately before the project proved a perfect ‘petri dish’ to test the theory of relational opportunity. As hypothesised, both the home and communities in which couples lived and the response from schools, employers, and the government profoundly affected the couple’s experience of Covid and their ability to nurture their relationship at this time of national and personal crisis. Age, life stage, and personality type were also significant moderators of how couples experienced and navigated Covid, underscoring the need for a greater understanding of and nuanced response to couples’ needs at different life stages to optimise the conditions and circumstances in which relationships may flourish. Additionally, the couples who navigated the Covid crisis well tended to be those in which one or both members of the couple were relationally capable, displaying the individual-level skills and attributes required to sustain relationships, such as empathy, flexibility, friendliness, likability, understanding, the ability to see the other’s perspective, and altruism (Mansfield and Reynolds, 2014:4).