The Role of Husbands’ and Wives’ Emotional Expressivity in the Marital Relationship

The current investigation was designed to examine the role of positive and negative emotional expressivity in the marital relationship. Data from 58 married couples were used to assess spouses’ levels of emotional expressivity and how these levels predicted reports of marital functioning. Regression analyses indicated that positive emotional expressivity had limited influence on marital functioning. Negative expressivity, however, had a strong impact on marital love, conflict, and ambivalence. Post-hoc analyses revealed significant differences between pairings in which the husband was high in negative expressivity, irrespective of wives’ negative emotional expressivity, and pairings in which both partners were low in negative emotional expressivity. These findings are discussed with respect to previous research that suggests that wives’ emotional expressivity is the major determinant of marital functioning.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45641/1/11199_2005_Article_3726.pd

What’s a (Childless) Man Without a Woman? The Differential Importance of Couple Dynamics for the Wellbeing of Childless Men and Women in the Netherlands

Using rich couple data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, we investigated to what extent there were gender differences in couple dynamics within childless couples (N = 163). Though the childless partners reported similar relationship satisfaction, we found gender differences in the link between relationship conflict and relationship satisfaction - the childless men were more strongly affected by the negative aspects of the partnership. This gender difference was not evident for the association between partner support and relationship satisfaction - the positive aspects of the partnership were equally important for the male and the female childless partners. Furthermore, the association between relationship satisfaction and health was stronger for the childless men than for the childless women and this difference was particularly evident when the levels of relationship satisfaction were low. These results indicate that when they are in unsatisfying romantic relationships, childless men are at a greater risk than childless women of physical and mental ill health

A strange thrombus in the left atrial appendage

Two-dimensional-transoesophageal-guided cardioversion is an established strategy for managing atrial arrhythmias and is commonly used to detect left atrial appendage thrombi with a high level of diagnostic confidence. In this case, we describe a challenging case of left atrial appendage mass characterization solved by a multimodality imaging approach