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COUPLES COPING
WITH STRESS
Emerging Perspectives on Dyadic Coping

Edited by Tracey A. Revenson,

Karen Kayser, and Guy Bodenmann

T.°°0
/•—"Vt>
DECADE
^/BEHAVIOR/

American Psychological Association • Washington, DC

Copyright © 2005 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. Except as per-
mitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be repro-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Couples coping with stress : emerging perspectives on dyadic coping / edited by Tracey A.
Revenson, Karen Kayser, and Guy Bodenmann.
p. cm. — (Decade of behavior) (APA science volumes)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59147-204-0 (alk. paper)
1. Marital psychotherapy. 2. Couples. 3. Stress (Psychology) 4. Adjustment (Psychology)
I. Revenson, Tracey A. II. Kayser, Karen. III. Bodenmann, Guy. IV. Series. V. Series: APA
science volumes

RC488.5.C64343 2005
616.89'1562—dc22
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A CIP record is available from the British Library.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition
 To Richard S. Lazarus,
whose creativity and ideas influenced
the work of all the authors in this book.
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Couples Coping With Stress: Emerging Perspectives on Dyadic Coping
Experimental Cognitive Psychology and Its Applications
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Memory Consolidation: Essays in Honor of James L. McGaugh
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New Methods for the Analysis of Change
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 Contents

Contributors xi
Foreword xiii
Preface xv
Introduction 3
Tracey A. Revenson, Karen Kayser, and Guy Bodenmann

Part I. The Role of Stress in Dyadic Coping Processes 11

1. Marriages in Context: Interactions Between Chronic and Acute
Stress Among Newlyweds 13
Benjamin R. Karney, Lisa B. Story, and Thomas N. Bradbury
2. Dyadic Coping and Its Significance for Marital Functioning ... 33
Guy Bodenmann
3. A Contextual Examination of Stress and Coping Processes in
Stepfamilies 51
Melody Preece and Anita DeLongis

Part II. Social Support, Dyadic Coping, and Interpersonal

Communication 71
4. The Relationship Enhancement Model of Social Support 73
Carolyn E. Cutrona, Daniel W. Russell, and
Kelli A. Gardner
5. How Partners Talk in Times of Stress: A Process Analysis
Approach 97
Nancy Pistrang and Chris Barker
6. My Illness or Our Illness? Attending to the Relationship
When One Partner Is 111 121
Linda K. Acitelli and Hoda J. Badr
1. Couples Coping With Chronic Illness: What's Gender Got
to Do With It? 137
Tracey A. Revenson, Ana F. Abraido-Lanza,
S. Deborah Majerovitz, and Caren Jordan

Part III. Interventions to Enhance Dyadic Coping 157

8. A Model Dyadic-Coping Intervention 159
Kathrin Widmer, Annette Cina, Linda Charvoz,
Shachi Shantinath, and Guy Bodenmann
x CONTENTS

9. Enhancing Dyadic Coping During a Time of Crisis:

A Theory-Based Intervention With Breast Cancer Patients
and Their Partners 175
Karen Kayser
Author Index 195
Subject Index 203
About the Editors 209
 Contributors

Ana F. Abraido-Lanza, PhD, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia

University, New York, NY
Linda K. Acitelli, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Houston,
Houston, TX
Hoda J. Badr, PhD, Department of Behavioral Science, M. D. Anderson
Cancer Center, University of Texas, Houston
Chris Barker, PhD, Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology,
University College London, London, England
Guy Bodenmann, PhD, Institute for Family Research and Counseling,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Thomas N. Bradbury, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of
California—Los Angeles
Linda Charvoz, PhD, Institute for Family Research and Counseling,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Annette Cina, PhD, Institute for Family Research and Counseling,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Carolyn E. Cutrona, PhD, Institute for Social and Behavioral Research
and Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames
Anita DeLongis, PhD, University of British Columbia, Department of
Psychology, Vancouver, Canada
Kelli A. Gardner, MS, Institute for Social and Behavioral Research and
Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames
Caren Jordan, PhD, Department of Psychology, East Carolina University,
Greenville, NC
Benjamin R. Karney, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of
Florida, Gainesville
Karen Kayser, PhD, Graduate School of Social Work, Boston College,
Chestnut Hill, MA
S. Deborah Majerovitz, PhD, Department of Political Science and Psychology,
York College, The City University of New York, New York, NY
Melady Preece, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Nancy Pistrang, PhD, Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology,
University College London, London, England
Tracey A. Revenson, PhD, Social-Personality Psychology, The Graduate
Center of The City University of New York, New York, NY
Daniel W. Russell, PhD, Department of Human Development and Family
Studies, Iowa State University, Ames
Shachi Shantinath, PhD, Institute for Family Research and Counseling,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
Lisa B. Story, MS, Department of Psychology, University of California—
Los Angeles
Kathrin Widmer, PhD, Institute for Family Research and Counseling,
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
 Foreword

In early 1988, the American Psychological Association (APA) Science Direc-

torate began its sponsorship of what would become an exceptionally success-
ful activity in support of psychological science—the APA Scientific
Conferences program. This program has showcased some of the most impor-
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among many leading figures in the field.
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edge work in all areas of psychology. At the turn of the millennium, the series
was renamed the Decade of Behavior Series to help advance the goals of this
important initiative. The Decade of Behavior is a major interdisciplinary
campaign designed to promote the contributions of the behavioral and social
sciences to our most important societal challenges in the decade leading up to
2010. Although a key goal has been to inform the public about these scientific
contributions, other activities have been designed to encourage and further
collaboration among scientists. Hence, the series that was the "APA Science
Series" has continued as the "Decade of Behavior Series." This represents one
element in APA's efforts to promote the Decade of Behavior initiative as one
of its endorsing organizations. For additional information about the Decade of
Behavior, please visit http://www.decadeofbehavior.org.
Over the course of the past years, the Science Conference and Decade of
Behavior Series has allowed psychological scientists to share and explore
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forward to continuing this successful program and to sponsoring other confer-
ences and books in the years ahead. This series has been so successful that we
have chosen to extend it to include books that, although they do not arise from
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We are pleased that this important contribution to the literature was sup-
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Steven J. Breckler, PhD Virginia E. Holt

Executive Director for Science Assistant Executive Director
for Science
 Preface

In a New Yorker book review, Rebecca Mead (2003) cited John Milton's
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), in which he instructs Parliament
that "In God's intention, a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and
noblest end of marriage" (p. 80). Mead suggested that by conversation Milton
meant much more than the "marital chatter about school districts or visits to
the in-laws" ... or even the familiar, forlorn spousal inquiry, "What are you
thinking about?" (p. 80). On the contrary, we take Milton's use of the word con-
versation on its face. These small everyday concerns, worries, and challenges
are the stuff of which marriages, and more specifically marital coping, are
made.
This volume addresses the construct of dyadic coping between people in
intimate relationships. By strict definition, dyadic coping involves both
partners and is the interplay between the stress signals of one partner and the
coping reactions of the other or a genuine act of common (shared) coping. As
the chapters in this volume illustrate, the construct of dyadic coping is
nuanced, interpreted differently by the chapter authors to include processes
such as everyday communication, interpersonal conflict, joint problem solving,
the giving and receiving of emotional support, and dealing with life stressors
as a we not just two Is. We are excited to share innovative conceptualizations
and cutting-edge research on dyadic coping in this book.
This volume emerged from two international conferences on stress and
coping processes among couples organized by Guy Bodenmann of the Univer-
sity of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Karen Kayser of Boston College, Massa-
chusetts. In 1999, Bodenmann and Kayser had started collaborative work on
dyadic coping and realized the need for scientific exchange among scholars
working on these issues from different perspectives. The first invited confer-
ence, held in Fribourg, Switzerland, on September 18-19, 2000, was dedicated
to this idea and provided an excellent platform. A small group of well-known
researchers who had been working in the area of stress and coping in couples
was brought together for 3 intensive days of presentation, discussion, and
critique. Researchers came from Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzer-
land, and the United States. The conference was particularly successful in
that it brought together researchers from different psychological traditions
(close relationships, marital therapy, and health psychology) and whose schol-
arly networks had had only minimal contact to that point. A clear consensus
at the end of the conference was that many ideas had only been touched on and
that the group needed to continue working together to refine the notion of
dyadic coping and its application to clinical practice. A second conference was
held in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, at Boston College on October 12-14,
2002. With funding from the Science Directorate of the American Psychologi-
cal Association (APA), the circle of presenters and discussants was enlarged
and a small "audience" participated in the discussions as well.
xvi PREFACE

The primary aim of this book is to present current approaches on stress

and coping in couples, to bring American and European contributions
together, and to stimulate further fruitful scientific exchange on this topic of
growing importance. Intended primarily for scholars in the field of marital
research, stress and coping research, and interpersonal relationships, the book
also serves as a useful reader for practitioners. As the idea of dyadic coping is
a new and innovative approach in the area of marital therapy, this volume
should be of interest to therapists as well.
Although the conference attendees raised the idea of a collaborative pub-
lication at the first conference, it was not until the APA Science Directorate
became involved that this book became a reality. We thank the APA Science
Directorate and Boston College for funding the 2002 conference that started
the seed of this book germinating. We also would like to thank Michelle Taylor
of Boston College for coordinating the 2002 Boston Conference, Deborah
McCall of the APA Science Directorate for assisting us with the conference
planning, Mary Lynn Skutley and Phuong Huynh of APA Books for shep-
herding us through the publication process, Kate Silfen for her careful editing,
and Adeane Bregman for her diligent research on the artwork for the book. We
thank Alberto Godenzi, Dean of the Boston College Graduate School of Social
Work, who generously released Karen Kayser from her teaching responsibili-
ties to work on the conference. We are grateful to Michael Smyer, Associate
Vice President for Research at Boston College, for his encouragement and
support for the conference on which this book is based. We also thank all of the
authors of the chapters for their cooperative and engaged work (and willing-
ness to write quickly) and their contributions to this book. We would like to
thank Linda Roberts for her thorough review and helpful critique of the book
manuscript. Most important, we thank the other half of our own couples:
Edward Seidman, Fred Groskind, and Corinne Bodenmann helped us cope
with putting this book together while enjoying all the stresses and pleasures
of married life (of which our children Molly Revenson; Emma Groskind; and
Arliss, Aimee, and Ruben Bodenmann are a large part). And finally, thanks to
Kit Kittredge and Molly Mclntyre, whose images kept the first two authors
sane during the summer of 2003 as they juggled their own American girls and
editing this book.

Reference
Mead, R. (2003, August 11). Love's labors: Monogamy, marriage, and other menaces. The New
Yorker, pp. 80-81.
COUPLES COPING
WITH STRESS
 Introduction
Tracey A. Revenson, Karen Kayser, and
Guy Bodenmann

Over the past 30 years, the lion's share of research on stress and coping has
focused almost exclusively on the coping efforts used by individuals, describ-
ing types or modes of coping strategies and their effects on physical and
mental health outcomes. Major life stressors do not limit their influence to
individuals but instead spread out like crabgrass to affect the lives of others
in the individual's social network: family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and
even whole communities. Quite simply, people cope in the context of relation-
ships with others. And those "others" are affected by the same stressors in a
pattern of radiating effects (Kelly, 1971). Yet relatively few coping
researchers have investigated how intimate partners cope with stress as a
couple or how the coping efforts of partners mutually influence each other. It
seems that an essential step toward further clarification of the relationship
between stress and health involves examining coping as it naturally occurs
within the context of significant relationships, in particular, the marital or
marital-type relationship.
The past decade has witnessed the development of several theoretical
frameworks for studying how couples cope together with life stress. Whereas
there were only a few contributions published on stress and coping in couples
before the 1990s, an increasing amount of theoretical and empirical work
on this topic has emerged in the last decade (see Fig. 1). A number of
researchers, primarily in the United States and Western Europe, became
interested in how coping research could move past the individual level to

frequencies
400

300

200

100

1961-1965 1971-1975 1981-1985 1991-1995

1966-1970 1976-1980 1986-1990 1996-2001
| -e- Stress -*-Coping |
Figure 1. Growth in publications on stress and coping among couples over a 40-year
period.
4 REVENSON, KAYSER, AND BODENMANN

include the family context and began developing theoretical frameworks,

empirical research, and innovative practice models to address these issues.
These developments surfaced at a time in our social history when stress
permeates Western society and radical social changes challenge couples and
families. For example, the dramatic increase in women working outside the
home has led to juggling of work and family life (Artis & Pavalko, 2003; Crosby
& Jaskar, 1993; Shelton & John, 1996). The likelihood of becoming a caregiver
for an older family member who has a chronic mental or physical health con-
dition is increasing for both women and men and has led to the type of stress
known as caregiver burden (Marks, 1996; Marks, Lambert, & Choi, 2002;
Schulz, O'Brien, Bookwala, & Fleissner, 1995). Economic stressors and strains
have pushed many couples to increase their work hours in order to maintain
a lifestyle promoted by the larger culture. Daily fears of terrorism and violence
ranging from urban crime to political conflicts, wars, and ethnic clashes, are
present worldwide.
Coupled with this multiplicity of daily and chronic stressors are the dwin-
dling resources in our social environment to deal with them. Almost every
form of social capital has been on the decrease (Putnam, 2000). As these
resources become less available in the larger society, more pressure is placed
on intimate partners and family members to deal with the stresses of daily
life. Without the coping abilities and skills to manage the stress, many couple
relationships suffer or break down. Karney, Story, and Bradbury (see chap. 1,
this volume) suggest that this inability to cope with stress, coupled with
poverty and low social resources, is a key reason for the high divorce rate in
Western countries. At the very least, we know it is a fundamental and ubiqui-
tous reason for seeking counseling and psychotherapy.
A major critique of stress and coping theories is that coping is not an indi-
vidual process but occurs within a social and historical context (Revenson,
2003). Newer theoretical approaches such as relationship-focused coping
(Coyne & Fiske, 1992), interpersonal regulatory processes (DeLongis &
O'Brien, 1990; O'Brien & DeLongis, 1997), coping congruence (Revenson, 1994,
2003) and the systemic-transactional conceptualization of stress and coping
(Bodenmann, 1995, 1997) have expanded the original stress and coping
theories laid down in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Lazarus & Folkman, 1984;
Lazarus & Launier, 1978; Pearlin, Lieberman, Menaghan, & Mullan, 1981;
Pearlin & Schooler, 1978) and bring the notion of coping within the context of
intimate relationships to the foreground. Dyadic coping involves both partners
and is the interplay between the stress signals of one partner and the coping
reactions of the other, a genuine act of shared coping.

Themes Embedded in this Volume

This volume presents new approaches in stress and coping research that focus
on dyadic relationships, in particular, marital or long-term intimate relation-
ships. The chapters present theoretical frameworks, formative research to test
those frameworks, and translation of research findings into practice princi-
 INTRODUCTION

pies. Emerging perspectives, the phrase used in the book's subtitle, captures
the character of the scholarship presented in this volume. Although the schol-
arship is original and at times pathbreaking, it is not always fully developed
or without logical flaws. A first effort to assemble ideas that bridge several dis-
ciplines and two continents is bound to seem provisional. Definitions of dyadic
coping differ from chapter to chapter, for example. Thus, the collection of per-
spectives in this volume creates a somewhat dizzying array of overlapping
conceptualizations rather than a single cohesive conceptual model that is
ready to be widely applied. We hope that this volume serves as a necessary
first step to move the scholarship toward a heightened awareness of points of
convergence and divergence and toward more integrative models to be tested.
Five prominent themes described below emerge from the individual
chapters and are woven through the volume.

Conceptual Frameworks for Dyadic Coping Must Be Dyadic

Almost all the chapters have something to say about the conceptual under-
pinnings of dyadic coping processes: What should we be looking for? These con-
ceptual issues frame the questions that are asked in couples research and
point to methodologies that are needed to answer "couple-level" questions.
Most importantly the dyad, or relationship, should be the unit of analysis at
all stages of the research process, from conceptualizing the problem through
methods and measurement to data analyses and interpretation. Conceptual-
ization of the pattern of coping between two people—in Lazarus' terms, the
person-environment transaction (Lazarus & Launier, 1978)—is the essential
beginning of couples research. Obtaining data from both partners indicates
progress in recognizing the limitations of individual constructions of coping,
but collecting data from both partners does not in and of itself constitute
dyadic-level research. Several chapters in this book (see chaps. 1, 3, & 7) illus-
trate how analyses at multiple levels of analysis can be utilized to reveal
dyadic or couple-level coping.

Know Thy Stressor

A second theme is how the nature of the stressor affects dyadic coping
processes. Literally hundreds of studies have shown that the properties of
stressors shape coping efforts and adaptation (Cohen, Kessler, & Gordon,
1997). These properties include the magnitude of the stressor (minor stressors
such as daily hassles or small life events vs. major stressors); the duration and
nature of stress exposure (acute, intermittent, repeated, or chronic); the
domain of stress (work, family, or medical); and the stressor's radiating effects
on other stressors (i.e., stress contagion). The first chapter of this book, by
Karney and his colleagues, emphasizes the distinction between acute versus
chronic stressors as they affect marital quality among newlyweds. In chapter
3, Preece and DeLongis illustrate the confluence and reciprocal influences of
major and minor stresses within the realm of stepparenting. Other chapters
6 REVENSON, KAYSER, AND BODENMANN

focus on single major life stressors, such as chronic or life-threatening illness

(see chaps. 5, 6, & 7, this volume), depression (see chap. 5, this volume), and
the transition to parenthood (see chap. 5, this volume).

Dyadic Coping With Stress Is a Process

Apart from the differentiation of the various forms of stress, it is critical to

capture the dynamics of the coping process (Lazarus & Launier, 1978; Pearlin
et al., 1981). The experience of dyadic-level stress in couples is a process of
mutual influence in which the stress of one partner affects the other if the
partners' coping skills (independently and jointly) are not sufficient to handle
the stressor. It also makes sense to distinguish different phases within the
stress and coping process and to assess stress and coping on multiple levels
(individual and partner) within a specific social context. Bodenmann (see
chap. 2, this volume) proposes an integrative framework for studying dyadic
stress that is useful for both planning research and understanding different
coping processes in intimate relationships. Several chapters (e.g., chaps. 5, 8,
& 9, this volume) use a similar model of dyadic coping for understanding
marital interactions under stress and developing innovative interventions and
treatments.
We should note that although all the contributors share a general frame-
work of dyadic-level coping, the chapters in this volume constitute "variations
on a theme." Moreover, this volume is the first to present most of the current
models of dyadic coping in one place. It is intriguing to see how many differ-
ent models of dyadic coping are proposed and how each one captures a slightly
different perspective. For example, Cutrona and her coauthors (see chap. 4,
this volume) emphasize interpersonal trust as both a predictor of and compo-
nent of dyadic coping; whereas Revenson and her coauthors (see chap. 7, this
volume), Acitelli and Badr (see chap. 6, this volume), and Preece and DeLongis
(see chap. 3, this volume) focus more on the fit or congruence between
partners' coping and how it operates within the larger social context of family.

Dyadic Coping Within an Interpersonal Framework

The fourth theme emphasizes the interdependence of the constructs of coping

and social support. Specifically, the success of coping efforts is heavily deter-
mined by others' responses. Although coping and support are overlapping
concepts, they are not indistinguishable and each offers something unique to
the understanding of human adaptation (see chap. 2, this volume). Moreover,
it is important to separate social support transactions with persons outside of
the marriage or dyadic unit from those with the spouse or partner. Both are
essential components of dyadic coping processes, but are quite different.
Almost all the chapters in this volume explore the mechanisms by which
dyadic coping facilitates the exchange of social support and how social support
processes influence coping processes. Some chapters focus on the broad concept
of support provision as it affects marital quality (see chap. 4, this volume) or
 INTRODUCTION 7

adaptation to major stress (see chap. 7, this volume); whereas others focus on
interpersonal communication processes (see chaps. 5 & 6, this volume).

Translating Research Into Intervention

A final theme of this volume is the translation of dyadic-coping research into

psychosocial interventions. Although the last section is devoted to intervention
research on dyadic coping, applications to practice are emphasized throughout
all of the chapters. The applications are illustrated in clinical work with indi-
vidual couples (see chaps. 5 & 9, this volume) as well as more comprehensive
interventions for couples facing marital distress (see chap. 8, this volume).

Content and Organization

This book is organized into three parts. The first part, "The Role of Stress in
Dyadic Coping Processes," begins our examination of the concept of dyadic
stress, its effect on couples' coping processes and relationship outcomes, and
theoretical frameworks used to study dyadic coping processes. In chapter 1,
Karney, Story, and Bradbury use longitudinal data on newly married couples
to investigate the differential effects of acute and chronic stress on marital
outcomes. Often the role of the external environment is overlooked as
researchers focus primarily on the internal working of the couple's relationship
and not its context. These authors offer a new perspective on understanding
stress and use a multilevel methodology to systematically answer the question,
"What kinds of negative outcomes are predicted by what kinds of stress?"
In chapter 2, Bodenmann expands on the concept of dyadic stress and
coping with an innovative and dynamic theory of the dyadic coping process. He
presents a typology of dyadic coping that distinguishes both positive and
negative forms. This theory is supported by empirical findings on more than
1,000 couples, using multiple methods of data collection and various research
designs. He investigates the questions, "How does stress affect marriage?" and
"How does dyadic coping affect the relationship between stress and marital
quality?"
Preece and DeLongis (chap. 3) expand interpersonal stress and coping to
the rich context of stepfamilies. They examine how couples in stepfamilies use
five coping strategies to manage interpersonal stressors and report findings on
the connection between coping and relationship quality between parents and
children. A unique feature of their research is the focus on both short-term
(i.e., within the course of a single day) and long-term predictors (i.e., across 2
years) of relationship quality in stepfamilies. The authors illustrate how
multilevel models can assist with the methodological problems that challenge
researchers studying these complex systems of stepfamilies.
The second part of this book, "Social Support, Dyadic Coping, and Inter-
personal Communication," contains chapters that focus on the interplay
between dyadic coping and social support processes. In chapter 4, Cutrona,
Russell, and Gardner present a model of relationship enhancement in which
they explain how social support enhances health and well-being within the
8 REVENSON, KAYSER, AND BODENMANN

context of intimate relationships. They grapple with the question of how social
support influences health and bring to light a neglected mechanism in the
process through which supportive acts influence health: interpersonal trust.
Drawing on both experimental and longitudinal naturalistic studies of
couples, the authors offer compelling evidence for the interactions among
social support, attributions, and trust. For the practitioner, they offer valuable
suggestions for interventions and assessment of social support in intimate
relationships. The chapter provides a new perspective on the long-range impli-
cations of how well or poorly couples support each other during difficult
times—both for the relationship and health and well-being of each partner.
Pistrang and Barker (chap. 5) take the study of social support to a micro-
level of analysis as they examine partners' responses during conversations of
helping interactions. Using a narrative approach, they untangle partners'
communication processes as they cope with serious stresses, including breast
cancer and the transition to parenthood. Their study provides a unique
dimension to this volume, in that the analysis focuses intensively on conver-
sational analysis and has direct application to preventive therapy for couples.
In their role as therapist researchers, Pistrang and Barker extend more con-
ventional narrative approaches to what they describe as a tape-assisted recall
method in which the partners are asked to review their own conversations
and identify moments of empathy and lack of empathy and provide alterna-
tives for communication. This communication analysis is embedded in a
broader discussion of why social support is important for couples under
stress, how this particular approach fills some gaps in the communication
and psychotherapy literatures, and how an understanding of empathy and
support needs to recognize the full range of formal and informal support. It is
interesting to note that the research procedures in themselves seem to have
therapeutic benefits to the couples.
The last two chapters of this part focus on how gender influences the
coping process and exchange of support within a relational context. Although
both chapters also focus extensively on a particular stressor, chronic illness,
the chapter by Acitelli and Badr builds on an interpersonal relationships
framework and emphasizes the notion of relationship awareness; in contrast,
the chapter by Revenson and her colleagues comes from a health psychology
perspective and focuses on how the context of the illness shapes dyadic
coping processes.
In chapter 6, Acitelli and Badr contend that how couples cope with chronic
illness may depend on who is the ill spouse—the husband or wife. Whether
spouses perceive the illness as my illness or our illness has implications for
coping and the provision of support. They propose that it is better for the well-
being of a relationship for partners to view the illness as a relationship issue
rather than an individual issue. In support of this, they present findings from
two studies that address the relationship between gender and relationship
talk, with samples of "healthy" couples and couples coping with a serious
illness. These data present a compelling case that men and women behave dif-
ferently and expect different types of support from their partners depending
on whether they are in the role of the patient or the well spouse. Furthermore,
which spouse—the husband or the wife—engages in relationship talk will
have an impact on the relationship satisfaction.
 INTRODUCTION 9

Revenson, Abraido-Lanza, Majerovitz, and Jordan expand on the influ-

ence of gender on dyadic coping in chapter 7 but use a social ecological model
to guide their work. The conceptualization of coping congruence is used as a
framework to analyze the fit between the partners' coping styles. To capture
the interpersonal nature of coping, Revenson and her colleagues conducted a
cluster analysis on coping behaviors of couples with rheumatic disease to
describe how husbands and wives cope as a unit and how the medical, inter-
personal, sociocultural, and temporal contexts affect couples' coping. The
question, "What's gender got to do with it?" is addressed not only through
these coping profiles but also by examining the division of household labor
when either the husband or wife is ill.
The third and final part of this book focuses on specific psychosocial inter-
ventions with couples designed to enhance their coping with stress in general
or with a specific stressor such as cancer. Widmer, Cina, Charvoz, Shantinath,
and Bodenmann (chap. 8) describe then- marital distress prevention program,
Couples Coping Enhancement Training (CCET). This program integrates
cognitive-behavioral approaches with theories of stress and coping and aims
to strengthen the coping competencies of both partners through enhanced
dyadic communication and dyadic coping. Based on the framework of dyadic
coping presented in chapter 2, the six modules of the program focus on fur-
thering partners' understanding and knowledge of stress, enhancing their
individual coping and dyadic coping, improving their exchange and fairness in
their relationships, fostering marital communication, and improving problem-
solving skills. The authors present two outcome studies that evaluate the
effectiveness of the program on marital quality, dyadic coping, individual
coping, communication behaviors, and dyadic adjustment.
In chapter 9, Kayser describes an innovative couple-level intervention to
assist couples who are coping with the recent diagnosis of breast cancer. The
Partners in Coping Program (PICP) consists of a series of skill-based inter-
ventions designed to help couples enhance their interpersonal functioning
(communication, coping strategies, problem solving, and emotional support),
use help from others, realign family responsibilities, and provide continuity in
their lives. This program is also based on the theory of dyadic stress and
coping as conceptualized by Bodenmann (chap. 2) and employs cognitive-
behavioral interventions with both partners. Preliminary findings from a
clinical trial using a randomized group design support the intervention to
enhance the dyadic coping of couples faced with the challenges of early-stage
breast cancer.
The study of coping on a dyadic level represents a next step in under-
standing process as well as outcome, particularly when individuals are coping
with stressors that affect both spouses. We cannot continue to separate the
study of coping processes from that of social support. Whether we choose to
conceptualize social support as a form of coping assistance (Thoits, 1986) or as
a mode of coping (Bodenmann, 1997; O'Brien & DeLongis, 1997), much of what
is considered coping involves the appraisals, actions, emotions, and feedback
of others (Lazarus, 1999). Taken together, the chapters in this volume provide
the field with both a new and exciting conceptualization of dyadic coping
processes and a challenging set of unanswered questions that will guide future
research.
10 REVENSON, KAYSER, AND BODENMANN

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Parti

The Role of Stress in

Dyadic Coping Processes
 Marriages in Context: Interactions
Between Chronic and Acute Stress
Among Newlyweds
Benjamin R. Karney, Lisa B. Story,
and Thomas AT. Bradbury

In 1999, newspapers around the United States reported what many consid-
ered a startling finding. Census data collected the previous year revealed that
Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee had among the highest divorce
rates in the country, around 50% higher than the national average. This was
surprising because these four states constitute the heart of the Bible Belt, a
region where conservative values and strong connection to religious organiza-
tions might have predicted lower divorce rates, not higher ones. Within those
states and across the rest of the country, political leaders and policy makers
were hard-pressed to explain the counterintuitive data.
Initial answers focused on expectations and education. For example, Jerry
Reiger, Oklahoma's Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, sug-
gested to the press that "Kids don't have a very realistic view of marriage." To
address this aspect of the problem, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating initi-
ated the Oklahoma Marriage Policy (Johnson et al., 2002), a collection of
research and training programs designed to limit divorce and promote stable
marriages. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee declared a "marital emergency"
and promised immediate support for educational programs designed to lower
his state's divorce rate. Other states soon followed suit. In Florida, lawmakers
passed legislation offering engaged couples a discount on their marriage license
if they can show evidence of taking a premarital education class. Marital edu-
cation was also written into the high school curriculum, in the form of required
classes teaching communication skills and relationship values. The theory
underlying these efforts has rarely been made explicit, but it seems to be that
high divorce rates are the result of a general misunderstanding of the chal-

Preparation of this article was supported by Grant MH59712 from the National Institute of
Mental Health awarded to Benjamin R. Karney and by Grant MH48674 from the National Insti-
tute of Mental Health Awarded to Thomas N. Bradbury. This research was also supported in part
by a grant to Benjamin R. Karney by the Fetzer Institute. Portions of this research were
described at the 2001 meeting of the National Council on Family Relations in Rochester, NY.
We wish to thank Lisa Neff for her valuable insights and assistance with the preparation of
this chapter.

13
14 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

lenges of marriage. Correcting this misunderstanding should therefore lower

divorce rates and presumably lead to happier marriages.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that, on its face, a lack of edu-
cation about marriage does not seem like a plausible explanation for the espe-
cially high divorce rates in the Bible Belt states. It might well be argued that
there exists in the United States a romanticized view of marriage, but it would
be hard to make the case that this view is more prevalent in the Bible Belt
states than elsewhere. It may be reasonable to suggest that couples would
benefit from improved communication skills, but it is difficult to find reasons
why these skills would be especially lacking in the Bible Belt states compared
to other parts of the country.
Explaining why Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have
higher divorce rates than the other 46 states in the Union requires, as a first
step, some effort to identify how these 4 states may differ from other states. To
this end, the same data that revealed state-by-state disparities in divorce also
point out other ways that these 4 states are distinct. According to the National
Center for Health Statistics (National Center for Health Statistics, 2003),
Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee rank near the bottom of the 50
states in terms of employment rate, annual pay, household income, and health
insurance coverage. At the same time, these states have among the highest
rates of murder, infant mortality, and poverty in the nation. Whereas it is
possible that couples in Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee mis-
understand the challenges of marriage, it is a certainty that life in general is
more challenging in those states. The observation that divorce rates are higher
in states where quality of life is poorer suggests an alternative explanation for
the high divorce rates that lawmakers have yet to consider: Divorce and
marital instability may sometimes result from challenges that are entirely
external to spouses and their relationship. Marriages that survive and even
thrive elsewhere may struggle in the face of unstable working conditions,
neighborhoods beset by crime, poor education, and low wages.
The idea that external circumstances affect relationships may be counter-
intuitive to policy makers, but it is an old idea within research on couples and
families. Some of the first theories to acknowledge the effects of stress on rela-
tionships were developed in the 1930s and 1940s when sociologists began to
examine how families responded to the economic strains of the Great Depres-
sion and the military separations resulting from World War II. Hill's (1949)
ABCX model of family stress made the links between the external and internal
environment of a marriage explicit by suggesting that the stability of a family
system was a product of the interaction between the stressful events experi-
enced by families and the resources that families muster to cope with those
events (for more recent elaborations, see Burr et al., 1994; McCubbin & Pat-
terson, 1983).
In the last half century, empirical research on the effects of stress on
families and relationships has generally lagged behind the pioneering theo-
retical developments of Hill and others, but a few propositions have been con-
sistently supported. For example, the experience of a number of different
stressors and stressful circumstances (e.g., receiving welfare, serving in the
military, having a heart attack, and living in poverty) is on average associated
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 15

with higher rates of marital dissolution (Bahr, 1979; Gimbel & Booth, 1994).
Furthermore, the experience of stress external to the relationship has been
specifically linked to more negative evaluations of the marriage (Bolger,
DeLongis, Kessler, & Wethington, 1989; Tesser & Beach, 1998). There is even
an emerging consensus that the quality of a couple's coping mediates the
effects of stress on the relationship, such that stress exerts its negative effects
by introducing opportunities for conflict and strain that would not otherwise
be experienced by the couple (see chap. 2, this volume; Conger et al., 1990;
Repetti, 1989). Accordingly, recent models of marriage and marital develop-
ment assign the context in which the relationship develops a central role
(Karney & Bradbury, 1995).
Despite this extensive literature, current understanding of the role of the
external environment on relationships remains relatively unrefined. Although
research and theory agree that, all else being equal, stress has adverse conse-
quences for relationships, distinctions between kinds of stressful circum-
stances have yet to be explored systematically. Similarly, although stress is
thought to predict poorer marital outcomes, research has yet to specify what
kinds of negative outcomes are predicted by what kinds of stress. Finally,
although there is an extensive literature debating the pros and cons of differ-
ent approaches for measuring stress, there have been few attempts to demon-
strate the empirical implications of different measurement strategies.
The goal of this chapter is to shed light on these issues, and in so doing,
suggest directions for refining the current understanding of the effects of
stressful circumstances on marriage. Toward this goal, the rest of the chapter
is divided into three sections. First, we explore the possible implications of dis-
tinguishing among types of stress, dimensions of marital outcomes, and meas-
urement strategies for specifying how marriages are affected by their context.
Second, we summarize our recent empirical work addressing these issues
through longitudinal data from newlywed couples. Finally, we discuss the
broader implications of this work and identify further ways that models of
stress and marriage may be elaborated.

The Context of Marriage: Life Events and

Background Stressors

What does it mean to suggest that marriages are affected by their context?
The context of a marriage can be defined as all of the actual and potential
influences on a relationship that lie outside of the partners and their interac-
tion. Thus, the context encompasses the daily challenges faced by each spouse,
the major and minor life events they experience, enduring aspects of their
socioeconomic status, and the cultural and historical milieu within which the
relationship is embedded. Acknowledging the full breadth of the context of
marriages points out the need for mapping the relevant elements of that
context and identifying how those elements might interact. Yet, research to
date has been slow to consider the context of a relationship as a whole.
Instead, most research on how marriages and families are affected by their
context has focused on single elements of the context at a time. For example,
16 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

most studies examine associations between a specific life event (e.g., heart
attack, death of a child, or military service), or a specific circumstance (e.g.,
low socioeconomic status or chronic unemployment), and marital outcomes.
The consistent results of such studies—more challenging events and cir-
cumstances are associated with poorer marital outcomes—might give the
impression that different kinds of contextual factors affect marriages in basi-
cally the same way. However, these studies have generally overlooked poten-
tially important dimensions on which elements of the context of a marriage
may differ. For example, some aspects of the context are more proximal to the
relationship than others (e.g., being in an automobile accident is more
proximal than the historical milieu of the relationship). Some aspects of the
context are more controllable than others (e.g., being fired is more controllable
than experiencing a natural disaster). Some aspects of the context are current
(e.g., being diagnosed with a serious illness), whereas others are historical
(e.g., having recovered from a serious illness). Some aspects of the context
directly affect both partners (e.g., the quality of the neighborhood), whereas
some aspects directly affect only one partner (e.g., the quality of each partner's
job). It seems likely that variability on each of these dimensions may moderate
the effects of context on marriages, but to date those distinctions have been
neither elaborated by theory nor addressed by empirical research.
Examining all of the dimensions of the context relevant to marriages is
beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, we focus here on one dimension that
has been widely discussed and acknowledged, and yet seldom addressed in
research on marriage and families—the distinction between chronic and acute
stress. As commonly defined, chronic stresses or strains are those aspects of
the context that are relatively stable and long lasting (e.g., socioeconomic
status and having diabetes). These aspects of the context have also been
referred to as background stressors (Gump & Matthews, 1999) because,
although these aspects of the context represent constant drains on the
resources of the relationship, they are unlikely to be salient in the daily lives
of couples. In contrast, acute stressors are aspects of the context that have a
specific onset and offset (e.g., a legal dispute or a transition between places of
employment). Research on stressful life events has addressed acute stressors
almost exclusively because the idea of an event implies an onset and an offset.
Prior research on chronic stressors (e.g., Bahr, 1979) and acute stressors
(e.g., Cohan & Bradbury, 1997) indicate that both kinds of stressors are asso-
ciated with negative marital outcomes. Yet careful consideration of the differ-
ences between the two kinds of stressors raises the possibility that each might
give rise to those outcomes in distinct ways. For example, how should chronic
stressors affect a marriage? Because chronic stressors are stable aspects of the
environment, their effects should be enduring as well. Thus, couples experi-
encing chronically stressful conditions should experience more negative
marital outcomes from the outset of the marriage. Furthermore, to the extent
that chronic stressors create a constant drain on the resources of a couple,
chronic stressors should inhibit a couple's efforts at relationship maintenance.
Couples who must take several jobs to meet financial obligations, for example,
are likely to have less time and energy to devote to romantic and exciting
activities that may help to maintain satisfaction in less financially challenged
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 17

relationships. Thus, we might expect that chronic stress should predict both
relationship deterioration and poor relationship quality.
In contrast, how should acute events affect a marriage? Because acute
stressors are, by definition, temporary, their effects may also be time limited.
When a stressful life event occurs, partners' coping resources should be taxed,
and their moods may be temporarily altered. Both of these things should affect
the way partners experience and evaluate the relationship during that period.
When the event ends, however, the possibility of a successful resolution of the
stressor may free up previously committed coping resources. If the marriage is
still deemed worth maintaining, those resources may be reallocated to rela-
tionship maintenance. Thus, it should be possible to recover from the negative
effects of acute stress in a way that is less likely for chronic stress.
In addition to their distinct independent effects, chronic and acute stres-
sors may also interact to affect marital outcomes. To the extent that experi-
encing an acute stressor presents an immediate challenge to the coping
resources of a couple, then the experience of chronic stressor should affect the
level of resources available to respond to that challenge. Couples who experi-
ence few chronic stresses may have high levels of resources to devote to coping
with acute stressors. When such couples experience acute stress, coping may
buffer the marriage from the effects of that stress. In contrast, couples who
experience high levels of chronic stress should have fewer resources available
when an acute stressor occurs. For these couples, the same acute stressor may
present a more significant challenge to the relationship. In this way, levels of
chronic stress might be expected to moderate the effects of acute stress on
marital outcomes. Hill's (1949) original model of family stress proposed this
sort of interaction, but although such interactions have indeed been demon-
strated with respect to depression (Kuiper, Olinger, & Lyons, 1986) and phys-
iological reactivity (Gump & Matthews, 1999), we are aware of no empirical
research that has examined this interaction with respect to marital outcomes.
Can the experience of stress ever have positive effects on a relationship?
Distinguishing between chronic and acute stressors suggests a possible answer
to this question. The experience of an acute stressor may indeed be positive for
couples whose levels of chronic stress are low and who have plenty of resources
with which to cope with that stressor. For such couples, the experience of an
acute stressor may be an opportunity to reinforce feelings of closeness and
relational efficacy. Thus, accounting for the broader context of chronic stress
in which acute stressors occur may affect not only the obtained magnitude of
the effects of acute stress but the direction of those effects as well.
In sum, distinguishing between chronic and acute stressors suggests two
ways that stress can affect marital outcomes. Acute or time-limited stressors
should affect variability in marital outcomes, whereas chronic stressors should
affect the overall course of the marriage, including reactions to acute stress.
Given two couples, for example, one of whom faces financial uncertainty and
one of whom is financially comfortable, the latter couple should have opportu-
nities for romance that the former couple lacks. If both of these couples expe-
rience the same acute stressor, the couple already dealing with higher levels
of chronic stress should have a harder time coping, and that should further
affect the marriage negatively.
18 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

The Trajectory of Change in Marriage: Refining the

Dependent Variable

When researchers examine the effects of external stress on marital outcomes,

what marital outcomes are examined? The majority of research on these issues
has examined just two dependent variables: the perceived quality of the rela-
tionship (i.e., marital satisfaction) and whether or not the marriage ends in
divorce or permanent separation (i.e., marital dissolution). Both of these are
static outcomes, drawing attention to the state of the marriage at a given time.
Focusing on such outcomes may provide data on whether stress is generally
associated with successful or unsuccessful marriages, but the prior discussion
suggests that marriages can succeed or fail in different ways. Some marriages
may be consistently satisfying or unsatisfying. Others may begin happily but
then deteriorate. Distinguishing among these outcomes requires a more refined
dependent variable than a single assessment can provide. Understanding the
different ways that stress may affect marriage requires that researchers use
longitudinal data to examine the full course of marriages over time.
Recent studies of newlywed marriage have adopted this approach, using
multiple waves of data collected over several years to estimate individual tra-
jectories of marital satisfaction for each spouse (Huston, Caughlin, Houts,
Smith, & George, 2001; Karney & Bradbury, 1997). The trajectory can be esti-
mated as a multifaceted dependent variable, with the number of parameters
depending on the model of change used to describe each individual's data. The
simplest linear model, for example, contains just two parameters: a level of
satisfaction and a rate of change in satisfaction. Through multilevel modeling,
each parameter of the trajectory can be examined simultaneously and inde-
pendently (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). For example, the effects of stress on
overall levels of marital satisfaction may be examined separately from the
effects of stress on change in satisfaction over time. Similar approaches have
been used to examine variability in relationship satisfaction, independent of
levels of satisfaction or overall rates of change. Researchers drawing from
extensive daily diary data have been able to examine how partners' feelings
about their relationships covary with fluctuations in daily mood (Thompson &
Bolger, 1999).
Understanding how marriages respond to different kinds of stressors may
call for a combination of both these approaches. In the previous section, we
raised the possibility that chronic stressors have independent effects on the
overall quality of a relationship as well as spouses' ability to maintain the rela-
tionship. Testing this possibility suggests examining the effects of chronic
stress on different parameters of the trajectory of spouses' satisfaction over
time. Acute stress, in contrast, was described as having potentially time-
varying effects. Testing this possibility suggests analyses that examine how
fluctuations in acute stress and fluctuations in marital satisfaction covary
across time. Such estimates require not only multiple waves of longitudinal
data but also significant lengths of time. The potential benefit of such analyses
is a richer picture of how marital outcomes may fluctuate as the demands of
the context wax and wane.
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 19

Measuring Stress: Objective Versus Subjective Approaches

How do we know if a marriage is exposed to stress? One possibility is to obtain

objective data about the environment of the marriage, such as demographic
data or census data about specific neighborhoods. Relatively few studies have
taken this approach (e.g., South, 2001). Instead, within the vast literature on
stress, almost every answer to the question of measurement has involved some
form of self-report. Given the difficulty of following individuals and observing
the stressors to which they are exposed, the default option has been to rely on
individuals' descriptions and recollections of their own stressful experiences.
The strengths and limitations of this approach have been widely discussed
(e.g., Cohen, Kessler, & Gordon, 1997), and this chapter is not the place to
revisit that discussion. In an excellent summary of approaches to measuring
stressful life events, Turner and Wheaton (1997) summarized much of the
empirical literature and provided a list of recommendations for future
researchers interested in studying stressful events specifically. Focusing on
checklist methods of assessing stressful events, they recommend tailoring the
list of events to the populations being studied and excluding events that are
clearly positive (positive experiences showing few important consequences in
previous literature). The number of negative events experienced during a
given period can be a rough indicator of the amount of acute stress an indi-
vidual has had to cope with during that period.
Yet even these recommendations leave researchers with several options
for determining which events are negative and which are positive. Different
approaches vary in the extent to which they take the subjective experience of
the individual into account. For example, some measures allow respondents to
decide which events are negative by asking them to rate the impact of each
event they endorse from a given list. The sum of all of the events that the indi-
vidual rates as negative represents their experience of acute stress. This
approach has some face validity, but it is limited in that different people given
the same list of events might differ in their evaluation of those events as
positive or negative. The danger is that unmeasured individual differences
(e.g., neuroticism) might lead some individuals to rate as negative some events
that are not negative for most people. For these individuals, the number of
events they endorse would confound their experiences with their stable per-
ceptual biases. A more conservative approach would be to determine the posi-
tivity or negativity of each event on the basis of sample-wide data. The
advantage of this approach is that a sum of negative events represents the
experience of events that most people agree are negative, independent of
the perceptual tendencies of the respondent. On the other hand, such an index
might also lead to confusing results, as the sum of negative events for an indi-
vidual could include events that the individual actually perceived as non-
stressful or positive.
In the absence of a literature that resolves the question, the best approach
might be to evaluate acute stress both ways and determine whether the differ-
ence in measurement strategy affects results. In research on a dependent
variable that is inherently subjective, such as marital satisfaction, we might
20 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

expect that the more conservative approach, removing an element of subjectiv-

ity from the acute stress scores, would reveal fewer significant effects than an
approach that takes the subjective experience of the individual into account.

A Longitudinal Study of Stress and Marital Satisfaction

in Newlyweds

Elaborating on existing models of stress and marriage highlights the potential

value in making distinctions that previous research in this area has over-
looked. Chronic and acute stressors are likely to have unique and even
interactive effects on marital outcomes. Levels of satisfaction in a marriage
may be affected differently than rates of change or variability in marital sat-
isfaction over time. Examining events that the individual perceives to be
stressful may provide a different picture than examining events that are
judged to be stressful by others.
In this section, we summarize our recent research that addresses these
distinctions (Karney, Story, & Bradbury, 2004). In the study described here, a
sample of first-married newlyweds provided data on their marital satisfaction
and their experiences of chronic and acute stress every 6 months for the first
4 years of their marriages. Growth curve modeling allowed us to address three
specific questions. First, do self-reports of chronic stress and self-reports of
acute stress affect different parameters of the trajectory of marital satisfac-
tion? Second, do levels of chronic stress moderate the covariance between fluc-
tuations in acute stress and variability in marital satisfaction? Finally, do the
obtained associations among these variables differ depending on whether
stressful life events are measured subjectively or objectively?

Methods of Studying Stress and Marriage

Our approach to addressing these questions has been to solicit newlywed

couples through their marriage licenses applications. Why newlyweds? Exam-
ining newly married couples provides several advantages in research on stress
and relationship development. First, compared to more established marriages,
newly married couples experience more dramatic changes in relationship
quality and are at elevated risk of marital disruption (Cherlin, 1992). Newly-
weds are thus an appropriate sample in which to examine issues of change and
stability. Second, couples in the early years of marriage are likely to be
exposed to a wide variety of stressful life events, as a number of stressors tend
to accompany the transition to marriage (e.g., relocation and starting a new
job). In the later years of marriage, more stable circumstances and the likeli-
hood of children may reduce the role of external stress in couples' lives as the
strains within the family itself increase.
Couples eligible on the basis of information available on their licenses are
typically sent letters inviting them to participate in a longitudinal study of
marriage. Interested couples are screened further for eligibility with a tele-
phone interview to determine that this is the first marriage for both spouses;
the couple has been married less than 6 months; neither partner has children;
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 21

both partners are over 18 years old and wives are less than 35 years old (so
that couples might become parents over the course of the study); both spouses
speak English and have received at least a lOth-grade education; and the
couple has no immediate plans to move away from the area.
The sample described in this chapter comprised 172 couples who met the
eligibility criteria and kept their first laboratory appointment. Over 60% of
husbands and wives were Caucasian, and at the time of initial data collection,
all couples had been married less than 6 months. (For more details about this
sample, see Karney & Frye, 2002)
Couples were mailed a packet of questionnaires to complete at home and
then were scheduled to attend a 3-hour laboratory session during which
spouses completed additional questionnaires, were interviewed individually,
and participated in dyadic interaction tasks. At approximately 6-month inter-
vals, couples were mailed additional packets of questionnaires to complete at
home. The third follow-up also included an in-person laboratory session, but
for all other follow-ups, spouses returned their questionnaires by mail. By the
end of the study, we had gathered eight waves of data, covering approximately
the first 4 years of marriage.
Although a number of couples divorced over the course of the study, reten-
tion was relatively high. At the eighth wave of data collection, approximately
4 years after the initial assessment, marital status was known for 100% of the
original 172 couples. Of those couples, 13 (8%) had experienced divorce or per-
manent separation. Among intact couples, 62% of husbands and 65% of wives
provided data at Time 8. Independent-sample t tests revealed that spouses
who provided data at Time 8 did not differ from spouses who failed to provide
data on any of the variables examined in this chapter (all ts < 1.6). One of the
advantages of the strategy used to analyze these data is that participants who
did not provide data at every time point could be included in all analyses. In
this study, 157 (91%) of the original 172 couples were retained in the analyses.

MEASURING MARITAL SATISFACTION. To ensure that perceptions of stress

and evaluations of the marriage were not confounded (Fincham & Bradbury,
1987; Huston, McHale, & Crouter, 1986), marital satisfaction was measured
using an instrument that assessed global sentiments toward the marriage
exclusively. At every assessment, spouses completed a version of the Semantic
Differential (SMD; Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957), an instrument that
asks participants to rate their perception of the marriage on 7-point scales
between two opposite adjectives. In the current study, spouses rated how they
felt about their marriage on 15 adjective pairs (e.g., bad-good, dissatisfied-
satisfied, and unpleasant-pleasant). The internal consistency of this measure
was high (across waves of measurement, coefficient alpha averaged above .95
for both spouses).

MEASURING ACUTE STRESS. To assess spouses' experiences of acute stress

during each 6-month interval, couples completed at each assessment a version
of the Life Experiences Survey (LES; Sarason, Johnson, & Siegel, 1978). This
version of the LES presented spouses with a list of 192 events that had been
selected from other standardized life events checklists to emphasize acute
22 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

stressors likely to occur in a young, married population. For each event,

spouses were first asked to indicate whether the event had occurred over the
preceding 6 months (i.e., since the last wave of assessment). If the event had
occurred, spouses were then asked to indicate the impact the event had on
their lives on a 7-point scale ranging from extremely negative (-3) to extremely
positive (+3). Each stressful event then had to meet two criteria to be included
in the final composite score. First, the event could not represent a likely con-
sequence of marital satisfaction, marital distress, or depression. Nineteen
items (e.g., emotional difficulties, major change in sleeping habits, and rela-
tionship with spouse worsened a lot) were excluded from the final score for this
reason. In this way, the measure was designed to tap only those stressors
external to (i.e., unlikely to be a consequence of) the conditions of the
marriage. Second, consistent with the recommendations of Turner and
Wheaton (1997), the event had to represent a negative life stressor.
Two different approaches were used to compute final acute stress scores
at each assessment. First, we computed a sum for each spouse that excluded
all of the events that the spouse indicated were positive. Within this approach,
the acute stress score accounted for the subjective evaluation of the individual
and represented the number of life events that each individual perceived to be
negative during the 6 months. Second, we used the data from the entire
sample to determine which events were considered to be positive or negative
on a sample-wide basis. Events that were on average rated by the sample as
positive during a majority of time points were excluded from the final list of
events. Within this approach, the acute stress score was less subjective and
represented the number of events from the remaining list that each spouse
reported experiencing during the 6 months. In describing the results below, we
begin by reporting results from the first approach and then describe how the
pattern of results changed after we adopted the second, more stringent
approach.

MEASURING CHRONIC STRESS. During their initial laboratory visit at Time

1, each spouse was interviewed individually to assess chronic stress using a
modification of a protocol developed by Hammen et al. (1987). Spouses were
asked to describe in detail the quality of the following nine life domains over
the prior 6 months: the marital relationship, relationships with family, rela-
tionships with in-laws, relationships with friends, experiences at school, expe-
riences at work, finances, own health, and spouse's health. For each domain,
interviewers were instructed to probe for concrete indicators of the ongoing
stressors that the spouse may be experiencing. After describing each domain,
spouses were instructed to rate their experiences within that domain over the
prior 6 months on a 9-point scale, where a 1 indicated exceptionally positive
circumstances and a 9 indicated exceptionally stressful circumstances. At
Time 3, when spouses returned to the laboratory for a second interview, the
same procedure was used to assess chronic stress. At all other follow-up
assessments, spouses read through a series of questions about each domain
(taken from the initial interview) and then were asked to rate their experi-
ences in the same way as during their interviews. Because the current
analyses were not concerned with chronic stress in any specific domain,
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 23

ratings from the eight nonmarital domains of the interview were averaged at
each assessment to form a score indicating the overall level of nonmarital
chronic stress experienced by each spouse during each 6-month interval.
To assess the validity of spouses' self-ratings of chronic stress, the inter-
viewers were also asked to make ratings of the chronic stress experienced by
spouses in each domain using the same scales that the spouses used. Inter-
viewers' mean ratings of chronic stress were significantly correlated with
husbands' and wives' ratings of their own stress at Time 1 (for husbands, r -
.54, p < .01; for wives, r = .65, p < . 01) and Time 3 (for husbands, r = .51, p <
.01; for wives, r = .64, p < .01). Thus, spouses' self-reports of their chronic
stress at each assessment appeared to represent a reasonable assessment of
their actual experiences.

DATA ANALYSIS. As in much of our longitudinal research, the central

analyses of this study were conducted with hierarchical linear modeling
(HLM; Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) and the HLM/2L computer program (Bryk,
Raudenbush, & Congdon, 1994). This approach to the analysis of multiwave
longitudinal data typically proceeds in two stages. First, multiple assessments
of a variable are used to estimate a trajectory, or growth curve, to describe how
that variable changes over time for each individual in a sample. Second, the
parameters summarizing the change of each individual are treated as new
dependent measures, allowing researchers to examine whether individual
deviations from the average trajectory are associated with other within-
subject or between-subjects variables.
The HLM approach has several advantages over other available
approaches to analyzing trajectories (e.g., structural equation modeling).
First, HLM provides reliable estimates of within-subject parameters of change
even when sample sizes are relatively small. Second, HLM uses all available
data from each individual to estimate within-subject parameters. Thus, par-
ticipants who do not have data at every time point could be included in the
analyses. Third, HLM computes effects on each parameter through simulta-
neous equations; thus effects on one parameter of change are estimated con-
trolling for effects on other parameters of change. Finally, HLM allows for
husbands' and wives' trajectories to be estimated simultaneously in a couple-
level model (e.g., Raudenbush, Brennan, & Barnett, 1995), thereby controlling
for dependencies in husbands' and wives' data.

What Do Longitudinal Assessments of Chronic and

Acute Stress Look Like?

Mean chronic stress, acute stress, and marital satisfaction scores at each
assessment are described in Table 1.1. Mean marital satisfaction scores at
each assessment declined over time. Indeed, prior analyses of this sample
(Davila, Karney, Hall, & Bradbury, 2003; Karney & Frye, 2002) have demon-
strated that for both spouses marital satisfaction becomes on average signifi-
cantly less positive and more variable over the first 4 years of marriage. With
respect to acute stress, both spouses' reports declined over the first 2 years of
marriage and then remained relatively stable over the second 2 years.
24 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

Table 1.1. Descriptive Statistics for Husbands and Wives

Assessment time
Partner

Marital satisfaction
Husband
M 94.7 92.1 94.0 92.3 91.9 92.0 89.8 90.8
SD 9.6 12.5 11.0 12.6 14.3 13.5 15.6 15.1
Wife
M 97.2 94.7 96.0 94.5 92.9 91.0 91.2 90.3
SD 8.4 12.2 11.8 12.2 15.5 17.1 16.8 16.6
Acute stress
Husband
M 7.4 6.3 5.7 4.7 5.0 4.8 4.1 4.9
SD 5.1 5.6 5.0 4.2 4.5 4.4 3.8 4.8
Wife
M 9.5 7.3 5.6 5.6 6.2 5.3 4.5 5.3
SD 6.2 5.51 4.6 4.6 5.6 5.3 4.3 4.4
Chronic stress
Husband
M 2.8 3.1 2.9 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.0 3.1
SD .7 .8 .7 .7 .8 .8 .8 .9
Wife
M 2.9 3.0 2.9 3.0 3.1 3.0 3.1 3.2
SD .6 .7 .7 .7 .8 .7 .8 .8
Note. The pattern of means and standard deviations remained the same when only those
couples who presented data at every time point were included (n = 64). Each time point is sep-
arated hy a period of 6 months with Time 1 occurring within in the first 6 months of marriage.

Repeated-measures ANOVAs with linear contrasts confirmed that the overall

decline was significant for husbands, F(l,71) = 26.4, p < .001, effect-size r =
.52, and for wives, F(l,75) = 57.7, p < .001, effect-size r - .66. With respect to
chronic stress, both spouses' reports increased slightly over time. This pattern
was significant for wives, F(l, 75) = 17.2, p < .001, effect-size r = .43, but not
for husbands, F(l, 71) = 2.3, p = .14, effect-size r = .18. Across the eight waves
of assessment, the mean standard deviation of spouses' acute stress scores was
5.7 for husbands and 6.5 for wives. The mean standard deviation for chronic
stress scores was 3.5 for husbands and 3.8 for wives. Although reports of both
kinds of stress demonstrated some mean change over time, reports of chronic
stress were, as expected, more stable (i.e., more chronic) than were reports of
acute stress.
As a preliminary test of the associations among these measures, within-
spouse correlations among the measures were examined at each time point.
Consistent with prior research by Pearlin and colleagues (e.g., Pearlin,
Mullan, Semple, & Skaff, 1990; Pearlin & Turner, 1995), reports of chronic
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 25

and acute stress were significantly associated for both spouses (across assess-
ments, rs ranged from .22 to .48 for husbands and from .29 to .52 for wives),
such that spouses who reported higher levels of chronic stress also reported
higher levels of acute stress. Chronic stress scores were significantly associ-
ated with marital satisfaction at 7 of the 8 assessments for husbands (rs
ranged from -.11 to -.38 across assessments) and at 6 of the 8 assessments for
wives (rs ranged from -.11 to -.39 across assessments), such that higher
chronic stress was associated with lower marital satisfaction. Acute stress was
associated with marital satisfaction to a lesser degree at 4 of the 8 assess-
ments for husbands (rs ranged from -.02 to -.35 across assessments) and 6 of
the 8 assessments for wives (rs ranged from -.50 to .03 across assessments),
such that spouses who were experiencing higher acute stress reported lower
marital satisfaction.
Correlations between husbands' and wives' reports of marital satisfaction
were significant at every assessment (across spouses and assessments, rs
ranged from .36 to .66), offering support for the idea that spouses were
responding to their shared relationship. Spouses' reports of acute stress were
significantly associated in 6 out of the 8 assessments (between- spouse rs
ranged from .09 to .39), and their reports of chronic stress were significantly
associated at 7 out of 8 assessments (rs ranged from .04 to .37).
In sum, preliminary analyses confirmed that mean acute stress and
chronic stress scores change over time. Whereas acute stress decreased,
chronic stress increased over time. However, there was substantial individual
variability in reported stress among these spouses (see Table 1.1). Determin-
ing whether the variability in acute stress generalized to the individual level
required that both measures be submitted to a growth curve analysis.

ANALYZING CHANGE IN ACUTE STRESS. Prior analyses of this data set (e.g.,
Karney & Frye, 2002) found that change in satisfaction over the first 4 years
of marriage could be best described by a linear function, summarizing the
repeated marital satisfaction scores of each spouse in terms of an initial level
(an intercept) and a rate of linear change over time (a slope). To date, we are
aware of no longitudinal research examining the appropriateness of different
models of change in acute stress. To determine the models that best describe
how spouses' self-reports of acute stress change over the first years of
marriage, we compared two different models as descriptions of the repeated
assessments.
The first was a mean and variance model, suggesting that levels of acute
stress do not develop systematically over time but rather vary randomly at
each assessment around an individual's mean level. To evaluate this model,
the following function was specified to describe the data from each individual:

where Y^ is the stress score of individual j at Time i; Bo is the mean level of

stress of individual; across assessments; and r~ is the deviation from the mean
level at each assessment. This model provided reliable estimates of husbands'
and wives' mean levels of acute stress (.84 for husbands and .88 for wives).
26 KAENEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

The alternative model was a linear model, which allows for the possibility
that acute stress does not vary randomly between intervals but rather
develops systematically over the first years of marriage. This model can be
described by the following function:

where the slope term, Bljt represents the rate of change in attribution scores
over time. Estimating this model produced reliable estimates for husbands
and wives of the intercepts (.81 for husbands and .79 for wives) and of slopes
(.66 for husbands and .64 for wives). For both spouses, the mean estimated
slopes differed significantly from 0, for husbands, £(156) = -5.9, p < .001, and
for wives, <(156) = -7.4, p < .001. Because the first model is nested within the
second, the difference between their goodness of fit statistics can be tested as
a chi-square to compare the appropriateness of the two models. For both
spouses, the difference between the models was significant (X 2 = 260.6, df= 2,
p < .05 for husbands and X2 = 301.4, df= 2, p < .05 for wives), suggesting that
the linear change model described the data better than the simpler mean and
variance model. Given that acute stress appears to decline over time in this
sample, acute stress was treated as a time-varying covariate of marital satis-
faction in all subsequent analyses.

How Does Acute Stress Affect the Trajectory of Marital Satisfaction?

To examine the effects of variability in spouses' levels of acute stress on the

development of their marital satisfaction, acute stress scores were centered
around the mean level for each spouse and then entered into the model sum-
marizing the trajectory of marital satisfaction for each spouse. Thus, the
development of each spouse's satisfaction was modeled with the following
equation:
Y0. = Boj + Berime) + B2j(acute stress) + ri} (3)
where Y^. represents the satisfaction of Spouse i at Time j, B0j represents the
intercept, or the initial level of satisfaction for Spouse i, B1; represents the
slope, or the rate of linear change in satisfaction over time for Spouse i, B2
represents the covariance between changes in satisfaction and changes in
acute stress for Spouse i, controlling for the overall trajectory of satisfaction
for that spouse, and rr represents error, assumed to be independent and
normally distributed across spouses. Within this model, a significant estimate
of J52 would indicate that changes in a spouse's reports of acute stress between
intervals tend to be associated with corresponding changes in a spouse's
marital satisfaction, controlling for the overall rate of change in marital satis-
faction for that spouse.
Once the parameters of Equation 3 were estimated for each spouse, the
crucial statistic was the mean of the coefficient for acute stress, the time-
varying covariate B2. This coefficient was significant and negative for
husbands and for wives: for husbands, beta = —.25, t (156) = —4.2, p < .001,
effect-size r = -.30; for wives, beta = -.15, t (156) = -2.0, p < .05, effect-size r -
—.14. The significant coefficients confirm that variability in acute stress
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 27

accounted for significant variability in the trajectory for both spouses. Con-
trolling for their overall rates of change over time, we found that spouses
tended to report lower marital satisfaction when their reports of acute stress
were higher than average and higher marital satisfaction when their reports
of acute stress were lower than average.

How Does Chronic Stress Affect the Trajectory of Marital Satisfaction?

Relative to their reports of acute stress, spouses' reports of chronic stress were
comparatively stable. The repeated assessments of chronic stress were
averaged to form a mean chronic stress score for each spouse, representing the
average level of chronic stress reported by each spouse across the first 4 years
of marriage. These scores were then used to account for between-spouse vari-
ability in the parameters of the within-spouse model described in Equation 3.
Because these analyses estimate associations between chronic stress and each
parameter of the within-spouse model simultaneously, these analyses provide
the unique associations between chronic stress and each parameter of the tra-
jectory of marital satisfaction, controlling for the associations between chronic
stress and each of the other parameters of the within-spouse model. The
results of these analyses are reported in Table 1.2.
As Table 1.2 indicates, chronic stress scores were uniquely associated
with each parameter of the trajectory of marital satisfaction. With respect to
the intercepts, this association was significant and negative for both spouses
regardless of the measure used to assess the trajectory. Consistent with our
expectations, spouses who reported higher levels of chronic stress across the
first 4 years of marriage reported lower levels of marital satisfaction at the
beginning of the marriage and at every assessment thereafter. With respect to
the slopes, the association was again in the expected direction and significant
for both spouses. Controlling for the effects of chronic stress on initial levels of
satisfaction, we found higher levels of chronic stress were associated with
steeper declines in marital satisfaction over time.
Table 1.2. Effects of Chronic Stress on the Trajectory of Satisfaction and Acute Stress
Partner Coefficient SE t Effect-size r
Effects on intercepts
Husband -2.9 1.3 -2.3* -.17
Wife -3.1 1.3 -2.4* -.17
Effects on slopes
Husband -0.6 .2 -2.6* -.20
Wife -0.9 .3 -3.3** -.25
Effects on within -subject covariation with acute stress
Husband -.14 .1 -1.4 -.11
Wife -.20 .1 -2.0* -.15
Note, n = 157 husbands and 157 wives.
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
28 KARNEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

Do CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESSORS INTERACT? Of central interest to the

current analyses was the association between chronic stress and the coeffi-
cient of the time-varying covariate. This is the association that addresses the
moderation hypothesis: Do levels of chronic stress moderate the within-subject
association between marital satisfaction and acute stress? This effect was sig-
nificant for wives only (see Table 1.2). For wives experiencing higher levels of
chronic stress, marital satisfaction was significantly more reactive to changes
in acute stress; whereas for wives experiencing lower levels of chronic stress,
marital satisfaction was less reactive to changes in acute stress.
To what extent did chronic stress account for the association between fluc-
tuations in acute stress and variability in marital satisfaction? To address this
question, we examined the same coefficients described earlier (i.e., the within-
subject association between changes in acute stress and changes in marital
satisfaction) after between-subjects differences in chronic stress were con-
trolled. Once chronic stress was controlled, the negative associations between
acute stress and marital satisfaction were no longer significant. In fact, the
association was positive for both spouses and nearly significantly so for wives:
for husbands, beta = .21, £(156) = .71, ns, effect-size r = .03; for wives, beta =
.48, i(156) = 1.65, p < .10, effect-size r = -.13. In other words, absent chronic
stress, there is a trend toward satisfaction covarying positively with acute
stress. For couples who have the coping resources, marital satisfaction may
grow during periods when acute stress is higher than average.

DOES A MORE STRINGENT MEASURE OF ACUTE STRESS CHANGE THE RESULTS?

Thus far, all of the results involving acute stress have examined an index that
summed the number of events that each spouse rated as negative. Such a
measure introduces an element of subjectivity to the acute stress index, as dif-
ferent spouses may have evaluated the positivity or negativity of each event dif-
ferently. How did these results change when a more stringent measure of acute
stress was used, one that determined the valence of each event using data from
the entire sample rather than the individual? As expected, minimizing the sub-
jective experience of the spouse weakened all of the results involving acute
stress. For husbands, the pattern of significant results did not change. That is,
fluctuations in the more objective acute stress measure continued to covary sig-
nificantly with variability in marital satisfaction, though the effect size was
reduced from -.30 to -.22. Husbands' chronic stress still failed to moderate this
association. For wives, the within-subject association between acute stress and
marital satisfaction was reduced to nonsignificance (the effect size weakened
from -.14 to -.05), leaving no effect for chronic stress to moderate.

Making Sense of the Effects of Stress on Marriage

A marriage exists within a rich context that includes the experiences of each
spouse outside of the relationship and ranges to include the stable quality of their
environment and the historical era in which they live. Yet, to date, the complex-
ity of the potential contextual influences on marriage has not been reflected in
research. Instead, studies of how marriages may be affected by external stress
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 29

have tended to address single elements of the context, focusing on a specific life
event (e.g., a heart attack) or a particular aspect of the social context (e.g., a high
crime rate). A similar lack of differentiation has characterized the assessment of
marital outcomes. Although marriage is an inherently temporal phenomenon,
unfolding and developing through time, researchers have tended to emphasize
static marital outcomes, such as divorce or marital satisfaction, at a single
assessment. The study summarized in this chapter (Karney et al., 2004) sheds
light on the complexity that research in this area has often overlooked in hopes
of contributing to more refined models of stress and coping in marriage.
We suggested that chronic stressors, representing stable aspects of the
environment, should represent a constant drain on the resources of a couple.
Thus, we expected that higher levels of chronic stressors would be associated
with lower levels of satisfaction as well as satisfaction that declined more
steeply over time. Indeed, spouses who reported higher average levels of
chronic stress during the first years of marriage reported lower marital satis-
faction at the outset of the marriage and at every assessment thereafter. Fur-
thermore, controlling for this effect, we found that spouses who reported
higher average levels of chronic stress also experienced satisfaction that dete-
riorated more quickly over time. It seems that it is harder to maintain even
moderate levels of satisfaction when the context of the marriage makes
constant demands on a couple's resources.
Acute stress appeared to have very different effects on the trajectory of
marital satisfaction. By definition, levels of acute stress fluctuate over time.
Thus, we expected that the effects of acute stress on marital satisfaction would
also be time limited. In fact, marital satisfaction did covary with fluctuations
in acute stress over time. Controlling for overall declines in marital satisfac-
tion, we found that satisfaction was especially high when levels of acute stress
were relatively low and especially low during periods when acute stress was
relatively high. Most significantly, the magnitude of this association appeared
to depend on the stable level of chronic stress to which the marriage was
exposed. At least for wives, the negative association between acute stress and
marital satisfaction was strongest when levels of chronic stress were relatively
high. In other words, when the external context contains constant drains on a
couple's coping resources, the experience of acute negative events has an espe-
cially negative effect on wives' marital satisfaction. It is not hard to imagine
examples that illustrate this idea. If one member of a couple is injured in an
automobile accident, clearly the effect that this event has on the rest of their
lives together will depend at least in part on stable qualities of their lives, such
as whether they have a second car or whether they have adequate health
insurance. If a couple lacks resources to cope with the negative events they
encounter, it makes sense that those events will be especially consequential.
When a couple does possess adequate resources, however, the experience
of a negative event external to the relationship may be positive, an opportu-
nity for spouses to support each other and thereby come closer together.
Results from this study provide tentative support for this idea. When levels of
chronic stress were statistically controlled (i.e., extrapolating from these data
to a point at which chronic stress is zero), the association between fluctuations
in acute stress and variability in marital satisfaction was no longer significant
30 KAENEY, STORY, AND BRADBURY

for either spouse. In fact, the association was flipped in the positive direction
for both spouses. In other words, when a couple possesses adequate resources
to cope successfully with the negative events they experience, surmounting
the challenge those events represent may leave couples closer than before.
In addressing these associations, we also compared two approaches to
measuring negative life events. One approach created an index of negative
events from the events that each spouse, perhaps idiosyncratically, rated as
negative. The other created the index from the list of events determined to be
negative for most people through analyses of sample-wide ratings of each
event. As expected, results using the second, more objective method were
weaker. For wives in particular, the interaction between chronic and acute
stress was only obtained using the less objective measure. Why might this be
so? One possibility is that for wives in this study, the subjective experience of
acute stress may affect evaluations of the marriage more than the objective
nature of the stressors.
Different kinds of stress accounted for relatively small amounts of
variance in the trajectory of marital satisfaction, even when the associations
were significant. It is worth noting, however, that the sample represented a
very narrow range of stress. For the most part, this sample consisted of young,
middle-class, well-educated couples. The sample did not include couples at the
ends of the stress continuum, those likely to possess vast resources and those
likely to face the most severe chronic stressors. Thus, the analyses described
here provided a highly conservative test of these ideas. In a general population
encompassing the full range of chronic stress and levels of resources, more
variance in marital outcome might be accounted for. If these data are any indi-
cation, then the overall quality of people's lives should play a substantial role
in the development of their relationships. When life is good, marriages should
be happier, easier to maintain, and less reactive to negative events. When life
is bad, marriages should be less happy, harder to maintain, and more vulner-
able to acute stress. Further support for these ideas would emphasize that
understanding marital processes requires that the context within which those
processes are occurring be taken into account.

Conclusion

So, what can be done about the especially high divorce rates in Alabama,
Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee? The solutions currently being
pursued—skills training and education about relationships—may be a
valuable beginning, but they imply that the only determinants of marital
outcomes are the two members of a couple and the nature of the interaction
between them. The data summarized here, although they did not directly
address state-by-state comparisons, nevertheless offer a different view. One
reason marriages may be failing in the states of the Bible Belt is that life is
hard in those states. Facing high crime, high unemployment, and little access
to health insurance—all chronic stressors—couples may lack resources they
might otherwise devote to maintaining and enhancing their relationships.
Under these conditions, marriages may begin less happy, deteriorate more
 CHRONIC AND ACUTE STRESS AMONG NEWLYWEDS 31

rapidly, and finally dissolve in the face of acute negative life events. If repli-
cated in a broader population, such findings would suggest radically different
strategies for reducing the pain and cost associated with divorce. Rather than
developing programs targeted specifically at relationships, policy makers
might consider supporting programs aimed at raising standards of living.
When provided with an external context that supports the relationship,
couples may be well equipped to maintain their relationships on their own.

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Dyadic Coping and Its Significance for
Marital Functioning
Guy Bodenmann

For a long time, the constructs of stress and coping have been defined on an
individual level. Among different stress theories, Lazarus' transactional
approach (Lazarus, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman; 1984) became one of the most
important, influencing a large body of research and theoretical conceptualiza-
tion. Within this paradigm, stress is viewed as an interaction between
demands on a person and his or her individual and social resources. Although
it is an individually centered approach, this paradigm incorporates aspects of
the person's social environment, although they are not explicitly stated by
Lazarus. An even greater focus on aspects of the social environment is
provided in Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources (CoR) approach (e.g., Hobfoll,
Dunahoo, Ben-Porath, & Monnier, 1994). According to CoR theory, subjective
perceptions of stress are embedded in a social context and individual coping
often has social consequences.
A genuine definition of couples' coping emerged only in the early 1990s,
when researchers began thinking seriously about extending the stress and
coping paradigm to committed couples, families, and communities. Terms
such as dyadic stress and dyadic coping appeared with reference to marital
couples (see Bodenmann, 2000, for an overview). Dyadic stress and coping are
defined as parts of an interpersonal process involving both marital partners.
Dyadic stress is defined as a specific stressful encounter that affects both
partners either directly or indirectly and triggers the coping efforts of both
partners within a defined time frame and a defined geographic location. If
married individuals are embedded within a shared social context, dyadic
coping assumes that three elements—the interdependence of the spouses,
their common concerns, and their mutual goals—stimulate a joint problem-
solving process and common, emotion-focused coping activities. Dyadic coping
occurs in addition to individual coping efforts (Bodenmann, 1995, 1997).
In this chapter, I begin with an examination of the concept of dyadic stress
and how it impacts a couple's relationship. I then present a conceptualization
of dyadic coping that builds on Lazarus' transactional stress theory by empha-
sizing dyadic, interpersonal, and process-oriented aspects of coping. I continue
by describing forms of dyadic coping and presenting empirical evidence sup-
porting the relation between dyadic coping and marital functioning.
This research was supported by two research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

33
34 GUY BODENMANN

Dyadic Stress

Dyadic stress represents a distinct form of social stress. It involves common

concerns, emotional intimacy between two people, and the continuity of a
social system (i.e., the maintenance of the marriage). Bodenmann (1995)
defined dyadic stress as a stressful event or encounter that always concerns
both partners, either directly or indirectly. Thus, dyadic stress can be classi-
fied along three dimensions: (a) the way each partner is affected by the stress-
ful event (i.e., directly or indirectly); (b) the origin of stress (i.e., whether it
originates from inside or outside of the couple); and (c) the time sequence (at
what moment in the coping process each partner becomes involved).

Direct and Indirect Dyadic Stress

The first dimension of dyadic stress involves whether the stressor is experi-
enced directly or indirectly. As most marital partners spend a great deal of
their day apart, each person may encounter stressors that are not directly
related to the partner's daily life or to the marital relationship. In some cases,
such external stressors might not affect the dyadic system when the partner
to whom it occurred has handled it adequately before meeting the other
partner. However, if the stressor is not coped with effectively, the stressed
partner brings his or her stress home, which is likely to have a negative
impact on the other partner and the marriage; for example, stress in the work-
place spills over into the marital dyad (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, & Wething-
ton, 1989; Repetti, 1989; Schulz, Cowan, Cowan, & Brennan, 2004). Indirect
stress means that first one partner experiences stress alone (outside of the
marriage) and only later the other partner, though not directly involved in the
stressful event, is concerned, either by being affected by the distress of the
partner (i.e., stress contagion) or when the stressed partner expresses his or
her stress (verbally or nonverbally) and triggers supportive dyadic coping.
At other times, both partners face a common stressor, called direct dyadic
stress. Although individual appraisals of this stressor occur, both partners may
subsequently share a common view of it, perhaps because of the couple's shared
history (see Reiss, 1981). Direct dyadic stress is defined as a stressor that
affects both partners more or less at the same time (e.g., the birth of a child or
moving to a new home) though sometimes in a different manner. For example,
the lung cancer diagnosis of one partner concerns both partners simultane-
ously, but they may experience it and cope very differently. The cancer patient
faces pain, treatments, limitations, and a high probability of death, whereas the
partner faces caregiving stress and the potential loss of the partner.

Origin of the Stress

A second dimension of dyadic stress involves the origin of the stress, whether
the stressor results from within the couple's relationship or from some event
external to the couple. Stressors that originate from within the couple include
differing goals, attitudes, and desires; shared problems (e.g., health problems
 DYADIC COPING 35

or worries about the partner); or marital conflict. Stressors that originate

outside the couple involve problems that each partner encounters individually
in his or her social environment, such as those involving neighbors, extended
families, or the workplace.

Time Sequence
The third dimension of dyadic stress concerns the timing of the stressors.
Stress can affect both partners simultaneously or sequentially. For example, a
rent increase may affect both partners simultaneously. Stress experienced in
the workplace by one partner that spills over into home life is an example of
sequential stress. Another example of sequential stress occurs when the
coping response of one partner becomes a stressor for the other (e.g., one
partner's excessive alcohol consumption). Knowledge about time sequences
may be important for understanding how and when individual and dyadic
coping come into play.

A Theory of Dyadic Coping

Dyadic coping has been conceptualized in a number of ways in previous research.

1. As individual coping efforts in the context of a marriage. This

approach conceptualizes stress, even marital stress, on an individual
level, something that is mastered independently by each partner
alone (e.g., Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; Wolf, 1987).
2. As an interaction between each partner's individual coping efforts.
This approach analyzes each partner's coping efforts with regard to
the coping efforts of the other person (e.g., Barbarin, 1983; Barbarin,
Hughes, & Chesler, 1985; Pakenham, 1998). The coping of one partner
is not independent of the other partner's coping and neither is the
outcome (Berghuis & Stanton, 2002). Revenson (1994, 2003, chap. 7,
this volume) conceptualizes dyadic coping attempts along the dimen-
sion of congruence or incongruence; more congruent coping efforts
occur when both partners cope in a similar or complementary fashion
and more incongruent coping is characterized by coping strategies
that are different and impede joint coping efforts.
3. As the coping efforts of each partner focused on better functioning of
the other partner and the relationship. Approaches such as relation-
ship-focused coping (Coyne & Smith, 1991, 1994) or empathic coping
(DeLongis & O'Brien, 1990; O'Brien & DeLongis, 1997; chap. 3, this
volume) focus on the well-being of the marital relationship as well as
the well-being of the individual partners. They examine the coping
efforts of one partner that are intended to reinforce or strengthen the
psychological, physical, and social functioning of the other partner or
to increase marital satisfaction. Coyne and his colleagues (Coyne &
Smith, 1991, 1994; Coyne, Rohrbaugh, Shoham, Sonnega, Nicklas, &
36 GUY BODENMANN

Cranford, 2001) describe two types of relationship-focused coping,

"active engagement" (involving the partner in a discussion, exploring
his or her emotions, and initiating constructive attempts of problem
solving), and "protective buffering" (relieving the partner emotionally,
negating and minimizing worries, suppressing anger, and giving in).
These concepts have been used by other researchers as well (Kuijer,
Ybema, Buunk, Thijs-Boer, & Sanderman, 2000; Suls, Green, Rose,
Lounsbury, & Gordon, 1997).
4. As a dyadic coping process in which both partners are involved. My
approach (Bodenmann, 1990, 1995, 1997, 2000) is based on the trans-
actional stress theory of Lazarus and Folkman (1984) but expands
this theory to systemic and process-oriented dimensions. The concept
of dyadic coping was first developed with regard to coping with daily
hassles (minor stressors) and later expanded to critical life events
(major stressors) and chronic stress in everyday life (minor stress of
long duration, e.g., chronic stress at work).

In my theory of dyadic coping, a stress communication process, depicted

in Figure 2.1, triggers both partners' coping responses. One partner's
appraisal of a stress is communicated to the other partner, who perceives,
interprets, and decodes these signals and responds with some form of dyadic
coping (which might involve either acting on or ignoring the stress communi-
cation). Stress appraisals can be communicated verbally or nonverbally.
Problem-focused stress is often expressed verbally, whereas emotion-focused
stress may be communicated verbally or nonverbally, including voice tone,
sighs, or facial expressions.
Several cognitive appraisals comprise the stress communication process:
who has initially perceived the stressor (Partner A, Partner B, or both partners);
what caused the stressor (the partner, others, or external causes); responsibility
(e.g., guilt of the partner); and controllability (by Partner A, Partner B, or both).
Depending on the stressor under consideration and what is at stake for the indi-
vidual and for the marital dyad, both partners will make efforts to maintain or
restore a state of homeostasis as individuals, as a couple, and with regard to
other people in the couple's social world. Good adjustment is defined as either a
return to prestressor functioning or personal and dyadic growth.
Several assumptions underlie this theory of dyadic coping. First, dyadic
stress and coping must be conceptualized from a systems perspective. One
cannot examine one partner's stress appraisals or coping efforts without con-
sidering the effects on the other partner and the marriage (system). One
partner's well-being and satisfaction depends on the other's well-being and
satisfaction (mutual influence). Thus, both partners should be motivated to
help one another deal with stressful encounters and to engage in a joint effort
to deal with any stressors concerning both partners. Second, dyadic coping is
only one way that the stressor is managed; individual coping efforts and sup-
portive transactions (between one partner and his or her social network or
between the couple and their social network) are also modes of stress man-
agement. Third, dyadic coping is used most often after individual coping
 DYADIC COPING 37

Communication of stress by Partner A

(sending verbal, nonverbal, and/or para-verbal

stress signs)

Perception of A's stress by B

Partner A Partner B

Perception and attribution of Interpretation of Partner A's

Partner B's reaction by A stress signs (decoding) by B

Reaction of Partner B. There are different possibilities: (1)

no appraisal of A's stress by B (ignorance of stress by lack

of competencies or motivation), (2) stress contagion

(Partner B reacts also with stress and thus both partners are

stressed in consequence), or (3) positive or negative dyadic

coping of Partner B.

Figure 2.1. Interaction between stress communication of one partner and dyadic
coping of the other one.

efforts have been made and failed. Fourth, dyadic coping involves both positive
and negative modes of coping.

Forms of Dyadic Coping

Three forms of coping with stress in close relationships can be distinguished:
(a) individual coping, (b) dyadic coping, and (c) seeking social support from
others (e.g., friends and relatives). Dyadic coping has both positive and
negative forms (see Figure 2.2). Positive forms of dyadic coping include
38 GUY BODENMANN

Coping in couples

Individual coping Dyadic coping

Social support from others

Positive Negative
dyadic coping dyadic coping

Problem-focused supportive Emotion-focused supportive

Hostile
dyadic coping dyadic coping
dyadic coping

Emotion-focused common Ambivalent

Problem-focused common
dyadic coping dyadic coping
dyadic coping
Superficial
Delegated
dyadic coping
dyadic coping

Figure 2.2. Forms of coping in couples and differentiation of dyadic coping.

positive supportive dyadic coping, common dyadic coping, and delegated

dyadic coping. Positive supportive and common dyadic coping may be either
problem focused or emotion focused. Negative forms of dyadic coping include
hostile, ambivalent, and superficial dyadic coping. Each of the forms of positive
and negative dyadic coping is described in the paragraphs that follow.
Positive supportive dyadic coping occurs when one partner assists the
other in his or her coping efforts. This can be expressed through activities such
as helping with daily tasks or providing practical advice, empathic under-
standing, helping the partner to reframe the situation, communicating a belief
in the partner's capabilities, or expressing solidarity with the partner ("This
reaction would also hurt me if I were in this situation"). Positive supportive
dyadic coping is not simply altruistic behavior but involves efforts to support
the partner that have the secondary goal of reducing one's own stress as well
(Bodenmann, 1995). Because the unresolved or ineffectively handled stress of
one partner affects the other, both partners have a vital interest in supporting
one another in order to guarantee their own well-being as well as the well-
being and stability of their relationship.
In common dyadic coping, both partners participate in the coping process
more or less symmetrically or complementarily in order to handle a problem-
focused or emotion-focused issue relevant to the dyad by using strategies such
as joint problem solving, joint information seeking, sharing of feelings, mutual
commitment, or relaxing together. Whereas supportive dyadic coping means
that one partner helps the other to deal with stress, in common dyadic coping
both partners are experiencing stress (often because of the same stressor, i.e.,
direct dyadic stress) and try to manage the situation by coping jointly. They
 DYADIC COPING 39

apply strategies focusing on resolving the problem together or helping each

other reduce emotional arousal.
Delegated dyadic coping occurs when one partner takes over responsibili-
ties in order to reduce the stress experienced by his or her mate. As opposed
to supportive dyadic coping, during delegated dyadic coping, the partner is
explicitly asked to give support and a new division of contributions to the
coping process is established. This form of dyadic coping is most commonly
used in response to problem-oriented stressors. For example, the partner who
doesn't usually do food shopping does the shopping in order to reduce the
partner's stress.
Negative forms of dyadic coping include hostile dyadic coping, which
involves support that is accompanied by disparagement, distancing, mocking
or sarcasm, open disinterest, or minimizing the seriousness of the partner's
stress. This means that the supporting partner provides help (e.g., gives
advice) but does so in a negative way. These reactions are not to be confounded
with negative communication behavior (see Gottman, 1994), as support is
provided but it is accompanied by hostile elements, often on the paraverbal or
nonverbal level. Ambivalent dyadic coping occurs when one partner supports
the other unwillingly or with the attitude that his or her contribution should
be unnecessary. Superficial dyadic coping consists of support that is insincere,
for example, asking questions about the partner's feelings without listening or
supporting the partner without empathy.
Dyadic coping is shaped and maintained by individual and dyadic
appraisals, common goals, and shared resources (Bodenmann, 1995). Positive
supportive dyadic coping and delegated dyadic coping are triggered by the
appraisal of the supporting partner that the stress was not directly caused by
the partner and the appraisal of one's own resources as sufficient to support
the partner. For example, if the husband sees that his wife has not caused the
stressful event and thinks he is able to help, he is more likely to engage in
positive supportive or delegated dyadic coping. All types of dyadic coping are
influenced by a number of intra- and extrapersonal factors: individual skills,
such as stress communication skills, problem-solving skills, social competence,
and organizational skills; motivational factors, such as relationship satisfac-
tion or interest in the longevity of the relationship; and contextual factors,
such as the current level of stress experienced by both partners or their
current moods.
It is important to distinguish the construct of dyadic coping from that of
social support (Bodenmann, 1995). First, social support received from the
partner has a different meaning than support received from friends and rela-
tives. Many studies reveal that the support from the partner is of primary sig-
nificance and represents the most important source of support (e.g., Revenson,
1994), and motivational factors vary with regard to social support provided to
friends or to partners (Veiel, Crisand, Stroszeck-Somschor, & Herrle, 1991;
Williamson & Clark, 1992). Second, dyadic coping is not an altruistic behavior
but an engagement of both partners in order to assure the partners' satisfac-
tion and well-being, which in turn assures one's own marital satisfaction and
well-being. When a partner is able to reduce stress for the other partner,
negative influences on the relationship are reduced and positive outcomes are
40 GUY BODENMANN

more likely (see also, the negative-state-relief hypothesis; Cialdini, Darby, &
Vincent, 1973). Third, social support is only one form of dyadic coping, addi-
tional ones are common dyadic coping and delegated dyadic coping.

The Stress-Coping Cascade

A stress-coping cascade (see Figure 2.3) is triggered when one or both partners
makes a stress appraisal (Bodenmann, 2000); that is, the process of coping
follows a dynamic temporal order. In the majority of cases, both partners
usually try individual strategies in their first attempts at coping with a stress-
ful encounter. When individual coping efforts are not successful in managing
the stressor, dyadic coping is brought into play. If dyadic coping efforts are not
successful, social support from outside of the couple may be required to handle
the stressful situation. When individual, dyadic, and social coping efforts do
not bring relief, professional help may be sought (see also the different stages
of stress described by Burr & Klein, 1994). However, this temporal progression
is not fixed in stone; if one partner experiences a particular stress related to
work, then he or she might activate social support from coworkers before con-
sulting a spouse.
Partial evidence for the stress-coping cascade is provided in a study of 98
Swiss community-residing couples (Bodenmann, 2000). Most often only indi-

Individual coping

efforts

Dyadic

coping

Social support from friends

and relatives

Social support from more

distant persons

Seeking

professional help

(^ Stress event j^ Outcome

Duration of stressful experience

Figure 2.3. Stress-coping cascade in close relationships: the process of coping in

couples.
 DYADIC COPING 41

vidual coping was displayed at the beginning of a stressful episode, followed

by dyadic coping, and later by social support. Social support was often sought
by women at an earlier stage than by men. New coping resources did not
replace existing ones but added to them. Thus, individuals continued to cope
individually or on the dyadic level (although in a reduced way) when social
support from friends or relatives was received. Moreover, the more severe the
stressor was or the longer it persisted, the more coping resources that were
activated (in the postulated order).

The Significance of Dyadic Coping for Relationship Functioning

Dyadic coping has two primary objectives: the reduction of stress for each
partner and the enhancement of relationship quality. One partner's well-being
depends on the other's well-being, as well as his or her integration within the
social environment. In situations in which one partner's individual coping
resources are insufficient or both partners are confronted with the same
stressful event, dyadic coping should help to manage stress for both partners.
However, positive dyadic coping has a second and equally important effect on
the relationship: It fosters a feeling of we-ness—that is, mutual trust, reliabil-
ity, commitment, and the perception that the relationship is a supportive
resource in difficult circumstances (see also chaps. 4, 6, & 9, this volume;
Cutrona, 1996). In addition to its stress reduction goals, dyadic coping is an
important factor in maintaining or enhancing marital quality and stability
(Bodenmann, 2000).

Empirical Findings on Dyadic Coping and Its Significance for

Marital Functioning

Bodenmann and his colleagues have collected data from over 1,200 couples
with regard to dyadic coping and its role in marital functioning. We have con-
ducted both intervention and observational-correlational studies, using cross-
sectional and longitudinal designs and multiple methods of data collection,
including self-report questionnaires, written diaries, a stress-coping inter-
view, and systematic observation in both laboratory and field settings. In
addition, we carried out three intervention studies in order to evaluate the
effectiveness of a dyadic-coping intervention, the Couples Coping Enhance-
ment Training (Bodenmann & Shantinath, 2004), described in chapter 8 of
this volume.
We conducted a meta-analysis on the relationship between dyadic coping
and marital satisfaction across 13 studies that included a total of 783 couples
who were either legally married or in a long-term intimate relationship.
Eleven studies were of community-residing adults who had answered an
advertisement to participate in marital research, and two studies involved
clinical samples recruited in clinics and private practices, one study in which
one partner had an anxiety disorder (Schiitz, 1999) and one study in which one
partner had a depressive disorder (Schwerzmann, 2000). One of the studies of
community-residing adults was of lesbian couples (Kunz, 1997); the other 12
 Another Random Document on
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followed him as quick as he went, for I had often used the sea, and
the giddiest dance of a deck-plank was all one with the solid earth to
my accustomed feet. We entered the mate’s berth, and Mr. Bonner
lighted the bracket lamp and stood looking at his shipmate, and by
the aid of the flame he had kindled, and the bright light flowing in
through the open door, I beheld a tragic and wonderful change in
Mr. Stroud, though scarce ten minutes had passed since I was with
him. His face was bloated, the features distorted, his eyes rolled
continuously, and frequent heavy twitching shudders convulsed his
body. But the most frightful part was the dusky hue of his skin, that
was of a darker blue than I had observed in the captain.
He still had his senses, and repeated to the second mate what he
had related to me. But he presently grew incoherent, then fell
delirious, in about an hour’s time was speechless and lay racked with
convulsions; of a horrid blue, the features shockingly convulsed, and
the whites of the eyes alone showing as in the captain’s case.
He had called me at about nine o’clock, and he was a dead man at
two in the morning, or four bells in the middle watch. Both the
second mate and I were constantly in and out with the poor fellow;
but we could do no good, only marvel, and murmur our
astonishment and speculations. We put the captain’s steward, a
young fellow, to watch him—this was an hour before his death—and
at four bells the lad came out with a white face, and said to me, who
sat at the table, depressed and awed and overwhelmed by this
second ghastly and indeterminable visitation, that the chief mate
was dead, had ceased to breathe, and was quickly turning black.
Mr. Bonner came into the cabin with the boatswain, and they went
into the dead man’s berth and stayed there about a quarter of an
hour. When they came out the boatswain looked at me hard. I
recollect that that man’s name was Matthews. I asked some
questions, but they had nothing to tell, except that the body had
turned black.
“What manner of disease can it be that kills in this fashion?” said
I. “If it’s the plague, we maybe all dead men in a week.”
 “It’s no plague,” said the boatswain, in a voice that trembled with
its own volume of sound.
“What is it?” I cried.
“Poison!” he shouted, and he dropped his clenched fist with the
weight of a cannon-ball upon the table.
I looked at the second mate, who exclaimed, “The boatswain
swears to the signs. He’s seen the like of that corpse in three English
seamen who were poisoned up at Chusan.”
“Do you want to make out that both men have committed
suicide?” I exclaimed.
“I want to make out that both men have been poisoned!” shouted
the boatswain, in his voice of thunder.
There was a significance in the insolence of the fellow that
confounded and alarmed me, and the meaning was deepened by the
second mate allowing his companion to address me in this roaring,
affronting way without reproof. I hoped that the man had been
drinking, and that the second mate was too stupid with horror to
heed his behaviour to me, and without giving either of them another
word I walked to my cabin and lay down.
I have no space here to describe the wild and terrifying fancies
which ran in my head. For some while I heard the boatswain and the
second mate conversing, but the cabin bulkhead was stout, the
straining and washing noises all about the helm heavy and
continuous, and I caught not a syllable of what they said. At what
hour I fell asleep I cannot tell; when I awoke my cabin was full of
the sunshine that streamed in through the stern window. I dressed,
and took hold of the handle of the door, and found myself a prisoner.
Not doubting I was locked up in error, I shook the door, and beat
upon it, and called out loudly to be released. After a few minutes the
door was opened, and the second mate stood in the threshold. He
exclaimed—
 “Mr. West, it’s the wish of the men that you should be locked up.
I’m no party to the job—but they’re resolved. I’ll tell you plainly what
they think: they believe you’ve had a hand in the death of the
captain and the chief mate—the bo’sun’s put that into their heads;
I’m the only navigator left, and they’re afraid you’ll try your hand on
me if you have your liberty. You’ll be regularly fed and properly seen
to; but it’s the crew’s will that you stop here.”
With that, and without giving me time to utter a word, he closed
and secured the door. I leaned against the bulkhead and sought to
rally my wits, but I own that for a long while I was as one whose
mind comes slowly to him after he has been knocked down
insensible. I never for an instant supposed that the crew really
believed me guilty of poisoning the captain and chief mate: I
concluded that the men had mutinied, and arranged with Mr. Bonner
to run away with the ship, and that I should remain locked up in my
cabin until they had decided what to do with me.
By-and-by the door was opened, and the young steward put a tray
containing some breakfast upon the cabin deck. He was but a mule
of a boy, and I guessed that nothing but what might still further
imperil me could come of my questioning him, so in silence I
watched him put down the tray and depart. The meal thus sent to
me was plentiful, and I drew some small heart out of the attention.
Whilst I ate and drank, I heard sounds in the adjoining berth, and
presently gathered that they were preparing the body of the chief
mate for its last toss over the side. After a bit they went on deck
with the corpse, and then all was still in the cabin. I knew by the
light of the sun that the vessel was still heading on her course for
England. It was a bright morning, with a wild windy sparkle in as
much of the weather as I could see through the cabin window. The
plunge of the ship’s stern brought the water in a roar of milky froth
all about the counter close under me, and the frequent jar of rudder
and jump of wheel assured me that the barque was travelling fast
through the seas.
 What, in God’s name, did the men mean by keeping me a
prisoner? Did they think me a madman? Or that I, whose life
together with theirs depended upon the safe navigation of the
barque, would destroy those who alone could promise me security?
And what had slain the two men? If poison, who had administered
it? One man might have died by his own hand, but not both. And
since both had perished from the same cause, self-murder was not
to be thought of. What was it, then, that had killed them, visiting
them in their sleep, and discolouring, bloating, convulsing, and
destroying them in a few hours? Was it some deadly malady subtly
lurking in the atmosphere of the after part of the vessel? If so, then
I might be the next to be taken. Or was there some devilish
murderer lying secretly hidden? Or was one of the crew the doer of
these things? I seemed to smell disease and death, and yearned for
the freedom of the deck, and for the sweetness of the wide, strong
rush of wind.
The day passed. The second mate never visited me. The lad
arrived with my meals, and when he came with my supper I asked
him some questions, but obtained no more news than that the
second mate had taken up his quarters in the adjoining berth as
acting captain, and that the boatswain was keeping watch and watch
with him.
I got but little rest that night. It blew hard, and the pitching of the
vessel was unusually heavy. Then, again, I was profoundly agitated
and in deep distress of mind; for, supposing the men in earnest, it
was not only horrible to be thought capable of murder, there was the
prospect of my being charged and of having to clear my character.
Or, supposing the men’s suspicion or accusation a villainous pretext,
how would they serve me? Would they send me adrift, or set me
ashore to perish on some barren coast, or destroy me out of hand?
You will remember that I am writing of an age when seafaring was
not as it now is. The pirate and the slaver were still afloat doing a
brisk business. There often went a desperate spirit in ships’
forecastles, and the maritime records of the time abound with tragic
narratives of revolt, seizure, cruelty of a ferocious sort.
 Another day and another night went by, and I was still locked up
in my cabin, and, saving the punctual arrival of the lad with my
meals, no man visited me.
Some time about eight o’clock on the morning of the third day of
my confinement, I was looking through the cabin window at the
space of grey and foaming sea and sallow flying sky which came and
went in the square of the aperture with the lift and fall of the
barque’s stern, when my cabin door was struck upon, and in a
minute afterwards opened, and the boatswain appeared.
“Mr. West,” said he, after looking at me for a moment in silence
with a face whose expression was made up of concern and fear and
embarrassment, “I’ve come on my own part, and on the part of the
men, sir, to ask your pardon for our treatment of you. We was
mistook. And our fears made us too willing to believe that you had a
hand in it. We dunno what it is now, but as Jesus is my God, Mr.
West, the second mate he lies dead of the same thing in the next
cabin!”
I went past him too stupefied to speak, and in a blind way sat
down at the cabin table and leaned my head against my hand.
Presently I looked up, and on lifting my eyes I caught sight of two or
three sailors staring down with white faces through the skylight.
“You tell me that the second mate’s dead?” said I.
“Yes, sir, dead of poison, too, so help me God!” cried the
boatswain.
“Who remains to navigate the ship?” I said.
“That’s it, sir!” he exclaimed, “unless you can do it?”
“Not I. There’s no man amongst you more ignorant. May I look at
the body?”
He opened the door of the cabin in which the others had died, and
there, in the bunk from which the bodies of Captain Joyce and Mr.
Stroud had been removed, lay now the blackened corpse of the
second mate. It was an awful sight and a passage of time horrible
with the mystery which charged it. I felt no rage at the manner in
which I had been used by that dead man there and the hurricane-
lunged seaman alongside of me and the fellows forward; I could
think of nothing but the mystery of the three men’s deaths, the
lamentable plight we were all in through our wanting a navigator,
with the chance, moreover, that it was the plague, and not poison
mysteriously given, that had killed the captain and mates, so that all
the rest of us, as I have said, might be dead men in another week.
I returned to the cabin, and the boatswain joined me, and we
stood beside the table conversing, anxiously watched by several men
who had stationed themselves at the skylight.
“What we’ve got to do,” said I, “is to keep a bright look-out for
ships, and borrow some one to steer us home from the first vessel
that will lend us a navigator. We’re bound to fall in with something
soon. Meanwhile, you’re a smart seaman yourself, Matthews, as well
qualified as any one of them who have died to sail the ship, and
there’s surely some intelligent sailor amongst the crew who would
relieve you in taking charge of the deck. I’ll do all I can.”
“The question is, where’s the vessel now?” said the boatswain.
“Fetch me the log-book,” said I, “and see if you can find the chart
they’ve been using to prick the courses off on. We should be able to
find out where the ship was at noon yesterday. I can’t enter that
cabin. The sight of the poor fellow makes me sick.”
He went to the berth and passed through the door, and might
have left me about five minutes, evidently hunting for the chart,
when he suddenly rushed out, roaring in his thunderous voice, “I’ve
discovered it! I’ve discovered it!” and fled like a madman up the
companion steps. I was startled almost to the very stopping of my
heart by this sudden furious wild behaviour in him: then wondering
what he meant by shouting “he had discovered it!” I walked to the
cabin door, and the very first thing my eye lighted upon was a small
snake, leisurely coiling its way from the head to the feet of the
corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a rifle-barrel, and it
then tapered to something like whipcord to its tail. It was about two
feet long, snow white, and speckled with black and red spots.
This, then, was the phantom death! Yonder venomous reptile it
was, then, that, creeping out of some secret hiding-place, and
visiting the unhappy men one after another, had stung them in their
sleep, in the darkness of the cabin, and vanished before they had
struck a light and realized indeed that something desperate had
come to them!
Whilst I stood looking at the snake, whose horror seemed to gain
fresh accentuation from the very beauty of its snow-white speckled
skin and diamond-bright eyes, the boatswain, armed with a long
handspike, and followed by a number of the crew, came headlong to
the cabin. He thrust the end of the handspike under the belly of the
creature, and hove it into the middle of the berth.
“Stand clear!” he roared, and with a blow or two smashed the
reptile’s head into a pulp. “Open that cabin window,” said he. One of
the men did so, and the boatswain with his boot scraped the mess of
mashed snake on to the handspike and shook it overboard.
“I told you they was poisoned,” he cried, breathing deep; “and, oh
my God, Mr. West—and I humbly ask your pardon again for having
suspected ye—do you know, sir, whilst I was a-talking to you just
now I was actually thinking of taking up my quarters in this here
cabin this very night.”
Thus much: and now to end this singular experience in a sentence
or two. Three days after the discovery of the snake we sighted and
signalled a large English merchantman bound to London from the
Rio de la Plata. Her chief officer came aboard, and we related our
story. He asked to see the snake. We told him we had thrown it
overboard. On my describing it, he informed me that he guessed it
was the little poisonous reptile known in certain districts of South
America as the Ibiboboko. He returned to his ship, and shortly
afterwards the commander sent us his third officer, with instructions
to keep in company as long as possible.
 BROKERS’ BAY.
Brokers’ Bay is situated on the West Coast of England. You may
search the map for it in vain, and the reason why I call it by any
other name than that it bears will, when you have read this story, be
as clear as the mud in the water that brims to the base of Brokers’
cliffs. Brokers’ Bay is a fine, curving sweep of land. For how many
centuries the sea has been sneakingly ebbing from it who can
imagine? The time has been when the galleon and the carack
strained at their hempen ground tackle at anchors six fathoms deep
where the white windmill now stands within musket-shot of the
Crown and Anchor, and where the church spire darts the gleam of its
weathercock above the green thickness of a huddle of dwarf trees
near the little vicarage.
About fifty years ago a company of enterprising souls took it into
their heads to reclaim some of the land which the subtly and
ceaselessly ebbing sea, rising and falling with moon-like regularity,
yet receding ever, though noticeably only in spans of half-centuries,
was leaving behind it. They armed themselves with the necessary
legal powers, they subscribed all the capital they considered needful,
and by processes of embanking, draining, manuring, and the like,
they succeeded in raising wheat and grass, vegetables and flowers,
where, since and long before the days of the painted Briton,
shuddering in the November blast, or perspiring away his small
clothes under the July sun, nothing had flourished but the dab and
the crab.
Yet the speculation on the whole was a failure. It was a patriotic
achievement in its way, and those concerned in it deserved well of
the nation; for if it be a fine thing to bleed for one’s country, how
much finer must it be to add to its dimensions, to enlarge its latitude
and longitude, and extend the home-sovereignty of the monarch?
Yet, though a pretty considerable village stood hard by the reclaimed
land, houses did not increase. The builder, whose Christian name is
Jerry, came down to Brokers’ Bay, and took a look around, and went
home again, and did nothing. He was not to be decoyed, he said.
Brokers’ Bay was not the right sort of place to start a town in, he
thought. There was too much mud, Mr. Jerry considered. He
calculated that when the water was out there was a full mile and
three-quarters of slime. Oh yes, whilst the slime was still slimy it
reflected the sky just the same as if it had been water, and it took a
noble blood-red countenance of a hot sunset evening, when the sea
was a pink gleaming streak just under the horizon, and it was very
pleasing in that sort of way. But what were the doctors going to say
about all that mud, and what opportunities would a waste of slush,
extending one and three-quarter miles at ebb tide, provide the local
historian with when he came to write a guide-book and invent
Roman and Early English names for the immediate district, and deal
with the salubriousness of the climate, and give an analysis of the
drinking water? And what about the bathing? There was none. And
what length of pier would be wanted if the seaward end of it was to
be permanently water-washed?
The reclaimed ground was divided into lots for building; but
nobody built. The soil continued to be cultivated, nevertheless. Two
market-gardeners did very well out of it. A butcher rented thirty
acres of the pasture land; the remainder was variously dealt with in
small ways for growing purposes.
Now, that stretch of land had been reclaimed some fifteen years,
when a certain master mariner, whom I will call Captain Carey,
arrived at the adjacent village with the intention of taking a view of
the Brokers’ Bay foreshore. News that good land was cheap
hereabouts had reached him up at Blyth. He had unexpectedly come
into a little fortune, had Captain Carey. For years he had followed
the coasting trade, working his way out through the forescuttle into
the captain’s cabin, and after thirty years of seafaring, rendered
more and more uncomfortable by gloomy anticipations of the
workhouse in his old age, he had been enriched by the will of an
Australian aunt, the amount being something between £9000 and
£10,000.
Captain Carey had sprung from a West Country stock; his wife was
a West Country woman, and when they came into the Australian
aunt’s legacy they determined to break up their little home at Blyth
and settle somewhere on Western soil. So Captain Carey came to
Brokers’ Bay, and with him travelled his giant son, a youth of
prodigious muscle, but of weak intellect. A second Titan son was at
this time at sea, working his way towards the quarter-deck aboard
an East Indiaman.
Captain Carey’s survey of the Brokers’ foreshore determined him
on purchasing a plot of land right amidships of the fine curve of
reclaimed soil. He bought four acres at a very low figure indeed, and
then ordered a small house to be built in the midst of his little
estate. His wife and her niece joined him and the giant half-witted
son at the adjacent village, and there the family dwelt at the sign of
the Seven Bells whilst the house was building.
It was quickly put together, and was then gay with a green
balcony, and it had motherly lubberly bay windows that made you
think of a whaler’s boats dangling at cranes, and the entrance was
embellished with a singular porch after the design of the retired
master mariner, who had recollected seeing something of the sort at
Lisbon when he had gone as a boy on a voyage to Portugal.
Captain Carey loved seclusion. Like most retired mariners, he
hated to be overlooked. This fondness for privacy, which grows out
of a habit of it, may be owing to there being no streets at sea, and
no over-the-way. The master of a vessel lives in a cabin all alone by
himself—the Crusoe of the after part of the ship. He measures his
quarter-deck in lonely walks; no eyes glittering above the bulwark
rail watch his movements; his behaviour as a man, his judgment as
a seaman, but not his mode of life as a private individual, are
criticized by his crew. Hence, when a man steps ashore after a long
period of command at sea, he carries with him a strong love of
privacy, and much resolution of retirement. A great number of little
cottages by the ocean are occupied by solitary seamen, who pass
their time in looking through a telescope at the horizon, in arguing
with lonesome men of their own cloth, in smoking pipes at the
Lugger Inn or at the sign of the Lord Nelson, and turning in at night
and turning out in the morning.
To provide against being overlooked in case others should build
hard by, Captain Carey walled his little estate of four acres with a
regular bulkhead of a fence, handsomely spiked on top, and too tall
even for his giant son to peer over on tiptoe. In a few months the
house was built, papered, and in all ways completed; it was then
furnished and the ground fenced. Captain Carey and his family now
took possession of their new home. There was, first of all, Captain
Carey, then Mrs. Carey, next the giant young Carey (who had been
known up in Blyth by the name of Mother Carey’s chicken), and last,
Mrs. Carey’s niece, a stout, active girl of twenty, who helped Mrs.
Carey in cooking and looking after the house; for Carey, having been
robbed, whilst absent on a coasting voyage, of a new coat, a soft
hat, a meerschaum pipe, and a few other trifles by a maid-of-all-
work, had sworn in hideous forecastle language never again to keep
another servant.
This happy family of Careys were very well pleased with their new
home. Old Carey was never weary of stepping out of doors to look
at his house. He seemed to find something fresh to admire every
time he cast his eyes over the little building. He and his son planted
potatoes, onions, cabbages, and other homely vegetables, and dug
out and cultivated a very considerable area of kitchen garden. They
had not above three miles to walk to attend divine worship. There
were several convenient shops in the adjacent village, not more than
two miles and a half distant. There was no roadway to speak of to
Carey’s house, but in a very few weeks the feet of the family and the
tread of the tradespeople tramped out a thin path over the reclaimed
land to the village roadway, where it fell with the sweep of the cliff
to the level of the reclaimed soil. And the view, on the whole, from
Carey’s windows was fairly picturesque and pleasing, even when the
water was out and the scene was a sweeping flat of mud. Afar on
the dark blue edge of the sea hovered the feather-white canvas of
ships, easily resolved into denominationable fabrics by Carey’s
powerful telescope. The western sun glowed in the briny ooze till the
whole stretch of the stuff resembled a vast surface of molten gold.
Here and there, confronting Carey’s house, stood some scores of
fangs of rock, and when there was a flood-tide and a fresh in-shore
gale the sea snapped and beat and burst upon the beach with as
much uproar as though it were all fathomless ocean, instead of a
dirty stretch of water with an eighteen-foot rise of tide, and foam so
dark and thick with dirt that, after it had blown upon you and dried,
it was as though you had ridden through some dozen miles of
muddy lanes.
The family had been settled about three months when the eldest
son arrived home from the long voyage he had made to China and
the East Indies. He was a tall, powerfully-built young man; but his
education in his youth had been neglected. Captain Carey, indeed,
had not in those days possessed the means to put him to school.
Now, however, that the skipper had come into a little fortune of, call
it, £10,000, he resolved to qualify his son for a position on the
quarter-deck.
“Navigation I can teach him,” he said to his wife, “and if he was a
master-rigger he couldn’t know more about a ship. What he wants is
the sort of larning which you and me’s deficient in: the being able to
talk and write good English, with some sort of knowledge of history
and the likes of that; so that, should he ever get command of a
passenger ship, why, then, sitting at the head of the cabin table, he
won’t be ashamed of addressing the ladies and joining in the general
conversation.”
So when this son arrived from China and the East Indies, the
father, instead of sending him to sea again, put him to read and
study with a clergyman who lived in the adjacent village, a
gentleman who could not obtain a living and who disdained a curacy.
Thus it came to pass that Captain Carey lived at home with his
two sons and wife and wife’s niece.
 He stood in a bay window one day, and it entered his head to dig
out a pond and place a fountain in the middle of it.
“It’ll improve the property,” said Captain Carey, turning to his wife
and sons, who were lingering at the breakfast-table. “We’ll fix a
pedestal amidships of the pond and put a female statue upon it—
one of them white figures who keep their right hands aloft for the
holding of a whirligig fountain. There’s nothing prettier than a
revolving fountain a-sparkling and a-showering down over a noode
statue.”
“You’ll be striking salt water, father, if you fall a-digging,” said the
sailor son named Tom.
“And what then?” exclaimed Captain Carey. “Ain’t brine as bright
to the eye as fresh water? And it’s not going to choke the fountain
either. Blessed if I don’t think the fountain might be set a-playing by
the rise and fall of the tide.”
When breakfast was ended, the father and the two sons stepped
out of doors to decide upon a spot in which to dig the pond for the
fountain. After much discussion they agreed to dig in front of the
house, about a hundred paces distant, within a stone’s throw of the
wash of the water when the tide was at its height.
The Captain’s grounds lay open to the sea, though they were
jealously fenced, as has been already said, at the back and on either
hand. There could be no intrusion on the sea-fronting portion of the
grounds. The mud came to the embankment, and the embankment
was the ocean-limit of Carey’s little estate. There was no path, and
no right of way if there had been. Selkirk and his goats could
scarcely have enjoyed greater seclusion than did Carey and his
family. The father and sons proposed to dig out the pond to the
shape, depth, and area decided upon, and then bring in a mason to
finish it. They went to work next day; it was something to do—
something to kill the time which, perhaps, now and again lay a little
heavy upon this isolated family. The old skipper dug with vehemence
and enjoyment. He had been bred to a life of hard work, and was
never happier than when toiling. His giant half-witted son laboured
with the energy of steam. The sailor son stepped in when he had
done with his parson and his studies for the day, and drove his
spade into the reclaimed soil with enthusiasm. This went on for
several days, and something that resembled the idea of a pond
without any water in it began to suggest itself to the eye.
It was on a Friday afternoon in the month of April, as the Captain
whom I am calling Carey himself informed me, that this retired
skipper, who had not felt well enough that day to dig, was seated in
his parlour reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe. Suddenly the
door was flung open, and the giant half-witted youth whose name
was Jack walked in.
“Father,” said he, “ain’t gold found in the earth?”
“Nowhere else, sonny,” answered the Captain, looking at the giant
over the top of the newspaper.
“There’s gold in the pond, father,” said Jack.
“Gold in your eye!” exclaimed the Captain, putting down his pipe
and his newspaper. “What sort of gold?” said he, smiling.
“Shiny gold, like the half-sovereign you wance gave me for
behavin’ myself when you was away.”
On this, Captain Carey, without another word, put on his hat and
walked with his son to the diggings, which were by this time a pretty
considerable trench.
“There,” said Jack, pointing, “my spade drove upon him, and I’ve
scraped that much clear.”
The Captain looked, and perceived what resembled a fragment of
a shaft of metal, dull and yellow, with lines of brightness where
Jack’s spade had scraped the surface. He at once jumped into the
trench and bade Jack fetch his spade. They then dug together, and
in about a quarter of an hour succeeded in laying bare a small brass
cannon of very antique pattern and manufacture. It was pivoted.
They dug a little longer and deeper, and exposed a portion of
woodwork. The scantling was extraordinarily thick, and the gun was
pivoted to it. The Captain’s face was red with excitement.
“Run and see if Tom’s in,” he cried, “and if he ain’t leave word that
he’s to join us with his spade as soon as he arrives, and then come
you back, Jack. By the great anchor, if here ain’t a foundered ship
call me a guffy!”
The sailor son, armed with a spade, appeared on the scene within
twenty minutes.
“It’s an old brass swivel, father,” he shouted.
“Jump in,” cried the Skipper, “and len’s a hand to clear away more
of this muck.”
The three plied their spades with might and main, and before
sundown they had laid bare some eight feet of ship’s deck, with
about five feet breadth of bulwark, measuring four feet high from
the plank. Mrs. Carey and the niece came to the edge of the pit to
look. The three diggers, covered with sweat and hot as fire, climbed
out, threw down their spades, and the family stood gazing.
“Whatever is it?” cried Mrs. Carey.
“A foundered ship,” answered her husband.
“A whole ship, uncle?” exclaimed the niece.
“A three-hundred-ton ship,” answered the Skipper. “D’ye want to
know if she’s all here? I can’t tell you that; but if there ain’t solidness
enough for a Ryle Jarge running fore and aft in this unearthed piece,
I’m no sailor man.”
“What sort of ship will she be?” said the half-witted Jack.
“Something two hundred year old, if the whole job hain’t some
antiquarian roose like to the burying of Roman baths for the digging
of ’em up again as an advertisement for the place. Who was a-
reigning two hundred year ago?”
Here every eye was directed at the sailor son, who, after rubbing
his nose and looking hard at the horizon, answered, “Crummell.”
 “Then it’s a ship of Crummell’s time,” cried the Captain, to whom
the name of Crummell did not seem familiar, “and if so be she’s all
here and intact, bloomed if she won’t be a fortune to us as a show.”
That night, both at and after supper, all the talk of the family was
about the foundered ship in the garden. The giant lad’s excitement
was such that even the mother owned to herself he had never been
more fluent and imbecile.
“D’ye think it’s a whole ship, father?” said Tom the sailor.
“More’n likely. That there brass cannon ought to give us her age.
Haven’t I heered tell of a Spanish invasion of this country in bygone
years, when the Dons was blowed to the nor’rad, and a score of
their galleons cast away upon the British coasts? At a time like this a
man feels not being a scholard. Tom, fetch down your history book,
and see if there’s a piece wrote in it about that there Spanish job.”
The sailor brought a history of England to the lamp, and with
fingers square-ended as broken carrots, and with palms dark with
dragging upon tarry ropes, groped patiently through the pages till he
came to a part of the story that told of the Spanish Armada. This
was read aloud, and the family listened with attention.
“Well, she may prove to be one of them Spanish galleons after
all,” said Captain Carey. “She’ll not be the first ship that’s been dug
up out of land which the sea’s flowed over in its day. There was
Jimmy Perkins of Sunderland——” And here he spun them a yarn.
“What’ll be inside the ship, I wonder?” exclaimed the niece.
“Ah!” said the young giant Jack, opening his mouth.
“Them galleons went pretty richly freighted, I’ve heered,” said the
Skipper. “When I was a boy they used to tell of their going afloat
with a store of dollars in their holds, their bottoms flush to the
hatches with the choicest goods, gold and silver candlesticks and
crucifixes in the cabins for the captains and mates to say their
prayers afore.”
 “Jacky thought the cannon gold,” said Mrs. Carey. “He may be
right, Thomas, though a little quick in finding out. There may be
gold deeper down.”
“Well, now,” cried the Skipper. “I’ll tell you what I’ve made up my
mind to do. We’ll keep this here find a secret. Tom, you, me, and
Jack’ll go to work day arter day until we see what lies buried. There’s
no call for any of us to say a word about this discovery. We’re pretty
well out of sight, the fence stands high, and if so be as any visitor or
tradesman should catch a view of the trench they’ll not be able to
see what’s inside without drawing close to the brink, which, of
course, won’t be permitted. If that foundered craft,” he cried, with
great excitement, pointing towards the window, “is intact, as I
before observed, then let her hold contain what it may, all mud or all
dollars, all slush or all silk, as a show she ought to be worth a matter
of a thousand pound to us. But not a word to anybody till we’ve
looked inside of her. If there’s treasure, why, it’s to be ourn. There’s
to be no dividing of it with the authorities, and so I says plainly, let
the law be what it will. Here’s this house and grounds to be paid for,
Tom to be eddicated and sent to sea in a ship he holds a share in,
Jack to be made independent of me, and Eliza to be provided for;
and we’ll see,” he shouted, hitting the table a blow with his clenched
fist, “if that there foundered ship ain’t a-going to work out this
traverse the same as if she was chock-a-block with bullion.”
Thus was the procedure settled, and next morning early the father
and two sons went to work with their spades.
It was to prove a long, laborious job; they knew that, but were
determined all the same to keep the strange business in the family,
and to solve the secret of the buried craft as darkly and mysteriously
as though they were bent upon perpetrating some deed of horror.
The quantity of soil they threw up formed an embankment which
concealed the trench and their own labouring figures as they
progressed. Tom went away to his studies for two or three hours in
the day; saving this and the interruption of meal-times their toil was
unintermittent. In three weeks they had disclosed enough of the
poop-royal, poop, and quarter-deck of the strangely-shaped craft to
satisfy them that, at all events, a very large portion of the after part
of the vessel lay solid in its centuries-old grave of mud.
In this time they had exhumed and scraped the whole breadth or
beam of her upper decks to a distance of about twenty-two feet
forward from the taffrail. Their notion was to clear her from end to
end betwixt the lines of her bulwarks, only to satisfy themselves that
she was a whole ship. Day after day they laboured in their secret
fashion, and the people of the district never for an instant imagined
that they were at work on anything more than an entrenchment of
extraordinary size, depth, and length, for some purpose known only
to themselves.
It took them to the middle of July to expose the upper decks of
the vessel; and then there lay, a truly marvellous and even beautiful
sight, buried some ten feet below the level of the soil, the complete
and quite perfect fabric of a little antique ship of war, about one
hundred feet long and thirty feet broad, with two after decks or
poops descending like steps to the quarter-deck, and the bows
shelving downwards like the slope of a beach into what promised to
prove a complicated curling of headboards and some nightmare
device of figure-head. Four little brass cannons were pivoted on the
poop rails, and on her main deck she mounted eight guns of that
ancient sort called sakers. The wood of her was as hard as iron, and
black as old oak with the saturation of soil and brine and time’s
secret hardening process. The masts were clean gone from the deck,
and there was no sign of a bowsprit. Never was there a more
wonderful picture than that ancient ship as she lay in her grave with
her grin of old-world artillery running the fat squab length of her, the
whole structure, flat still in the soil to the level of the bulwark rails,
affecting the eye as some marvellous illusion of nature; as some
wild, romantic vegetable or mineral caprice of the drained but
sodden soil.
Our little family of diggers, having disentombed the decks and
bulwarks to the whole length of the giant Jack’s extraordinary
discovery, next proceeded, all as secretly as though they were
preparing for some hideous crime, to uproot the covers of the main-
hatch, which were as hard-fixed as though they had been of
Portland stone cemented into a pier. With much hammering,
however—and they were three powerful men—they succeeded in
splitting the cover, and the stubborn, wonderful old piece of timber-
frame was picked out of the yawn of the hatch in splinters. And now
they looked down into a black well, from which Captain Carey
speedily withdrew his head, sniffing and spitting.
“Run for a candle, Jack,” said he.
A candle was lighted and lowered, and when it had sunk half a
dozen feet the flame went out as though the wick had been
suddenly pinched by the fingers of a spirit. So that a current of air
should sweeten the hold, they went aft with their hatchets and
hammers, and, after prodigious labour, splintered and cleared away
the cover of a little booby hatch just under the break of the lower
poop. They next got open the small fore hatch, and at the end of
two days, when they lowered a lighted candle, the flame burnt
freely.
Now, what did they find inside this buried ship? Carey had
counted upon mud to the hatchways, and scores of curios and
amazing relics of Crummell’s or another’s period to be dug out of the
solid mass. Instead, the interior was as dry as a nut whose kernel
has rotted into dust. This was as extraordinary as any other feature
of the discovery. The three men, each bearing a lighted lantern,
descended the ladder they had lowered through the hatch, and
gained the bottom of the ship, where they walked upon what had
undoubtedly been cargo in its time, though it might now have
passed for a sort of dunnage of lava, dry, harsh, and gritty, and
powdering under the tread. A basket was loaded with the stuff, and
hoisted into the daylight and examined, but the family could make
nothing of it. As far as could be gathered, the original freight of the
ship had been bale goods, skins, fine wool, and the like, East India
or Spice Island commodities, which some sort of chemical action had
transformed into a heap of indistinguishable stuff, as slender in
comparison with its radical bulk as the cinders of a rag to the rag
that is burnt.
“Nothing to make our fortunes with here,” said Captain Carey, as
he stood in the bottom of this wonderful old ship’s hold with his two
sons, the three of them holding up their lanterns and glancing with
gleaming eyes and marvelling minds around. “What’s abaft that
bulkhead? We’ll see to it arter dinner.”
They went to dinner, and then returned to the ship, and applied
themselves to hacking at the bulkhead so as to effect an entry. This
bulkhead, which partitioned the after from the main and fore holds,
was of the hardness of steel. They let fly at it in vain. The hollow
hold reverberated the blows of axe and chopper with the clangour of
an iron ship-building yard.
“We must enter by an after-hatch if it’s to be done,” said Captain
Carey.
With infinite labour, which expended the day and ran into the
whole of the following morning, they contrived to break their way
through the front of the lower poop. Here the air was as foul as ever
it had been in the hold. They could do nothing for many hours.
When at last the atmosphere was sweet enough to breathe they
entered, and found themselves in a cabin that was unusually lofty
owing to the superstructure of the poop-royal. The interior was as
dry as the hold had been. So effectually had accident or contrivance,
or the secret processes of the ship’s grave, sealed every aperture
that, standing in this now wind-swept cabin, you might have
supposed the little fabric had never shipped a bucketful of water
from the hour of her launch. Several human skeletons lay upon the
deck. The Captain and his sons held the lanterns to the bones, and
handled the rags which had been their raiment, but the colourless
stuff went to pieces. It mouldered in the grasp as dry sand streams
from the clenched fist.
 Five cabins were bulkheaded off this black, long-buried interior.
The Captain and his sons searched them, but everything that was
not of timber appeared to have undergone the same transformation
that was visible in what had doubtless been the cargo in the hold.
They found chairs of a venerable pattern, cresset-like lamps, such as
Milton describes, bunk bedsteads, upon which were faintly
distinguishable the tracings of what might have been paintings and
gilt-work.
“What d’ye think of this, boys, for a show?” cried Captain Carey,
whose voice was tremulous with excitement and astonishment. “If
there ain’t two thousand pound in the job as a sight-going consarn,
tell me we’re all a-dreaming, and that the whole boiling’s a lie. And
now to see what’s under hatches here.”
A small square of hatchway was visible just abaft the black oblong
table that centred the interior. They opened this hatch without much
labour. The cementing process of the ship’s grave had not apparently
worked very actively in this cabin, yet the foul air of the after-hold
forced them once more upon no less than three days of inactivity;
for to sweeten the place they were obliged to construct a windsail,
whose breezy heel rendered the atmosphere fit for human
respiration in a few hours.
On descending they found just such another accumulation of lava-
like remains of freight as they had met with in the main-hold. But
they also noticed a bulkhead ten feet abaft the sternpost. They
chopped their way through it, and stood for awhile peering around
them under the lanterns which they held above their heads. The
gleams illuminated a quantity of ancient furniture—sofas and chairs
and little tables, and framed squares and ovals of obliterated
paintings. Captain Carey put his hand upon a couch, and drew away
his fist full of pale and rotted upholstery.
“Are those things cases yonder?” said the sailor son, and the three
of them made their way to a corner of the hold and stood looking for
a moment or two at four square chests heavily clamped with iron.
 “What’s here?” said Captain Carey.
The giant Jack stooped and strove to stir one of the boxes.
“Stand aside!” roared the Skipper, and with half a dozen strokes of
his axe, he split open the lid of one of the chests.
The three faces came together in a huddle, and the light shone
upon lines of linked and minted metal.
“Pick out one of ’em, Tom,” said Captain Carey, in a faint voice;
“my hands are a-trembling too much to do it.”
They were Spanish silver coins, subsequently ascertained to have
been minted in times which proved the age of this sunken and
recovered ship contemporaneous with the early years of the reign of
our Second Charles. Captain Carey told me that he realized £6400
on them.
But this lucky family did better yet with their incredible discovery;
for after the Captain had secreted the money in his house, he called
in workmen, who dug away the soil from the buried ship until she
was exposed to the bilge on which she rested. This done, he carried
out his resolution to make a show of her by erecting a shed for the
fabric, stationing a door-keeper at the entrance, and charging
sixpence for admission. Many hundreds, indeed many thousands,
came from all parts to view the wonderful ship, that was
ascertained, by what is called an “expert” in naval affairs, to have
been the Sancte Ineas, captured by the privateer Amazon, and lost
whilst proceeding in charge of a prize crew to an English port. It was
further discovered that her lading had consisted of coffee, cochineal,
indigo, hides in the hair, bales of fine wool and fur. But down to this
hour it was never known that Captain Carey had found hidden, and,
in course of time, cleverly turned into good English money, four
chests of Spanish silver, worth, at all events to this happy family of
Brokers’ Bay, £6400. For my own part, I have honourably kept my
worthy friend’s secret.
 THE LAZARETTE OF THE
“HUNTRESS.”
I stepped into the Brunswick Hotel in the East India Docks for a
glass of ale. It was in the year 1853, and a wet, hot afternoon. I had
been on the tramp all day, making just three weeks of a wretched,
hopeless hunt after a situation on shipboard, and every bone in me
ached with my heart. My precious timbers, how poor I was! Two
shillings and threepence—that was all the money I possessed in the
wide world, and when I had paid for the ale, I was poorer yet by
twopence.
A number of nautical men of various grades were drinking at the
bar. I sat down in a corner to rest, and abandoned myself to the
most dismal reflections. I wanted to get out to Australia, and
nobody, it seems, was willing to ship me in any situation on any
account whatever. Captains and mates howled me off if I attempted
to cross their gangways. Nothing was to be got in the shipping
yards. The very crimps sneered at me when I told them that I
wanted a berth. “Shake your head, my hawbuck,” said one of them,
in the presence of a crowd of grinning seamen, “that the Johns may
see the hayseed fly.”
What was I, do you ask? I’ll tell you. I was one of ten children
whose father had been a clergyman, and the income “from all
sources” of that same clergyman had never exceeded £230 a year. I
was a lumbering, hulking lad, without friends, and, as I am now
perfectly sensible, without brains, without any kind of taste for any
pursuit, execrating the notion of clerkships, and perfectly willing to
make away with myself sooner than be glued to a three-legged
stool. But enough of this. The long and short is, I was thirsting to
get out to Australia, never doubting that I should easily make my
fortune there.
 I sat in my corner in the Brunswick Hotel, scowling at the floor,
with my long legs thrust out, and my hands buried deep in my
breeches pockets. Presently I was sensible that some one stood
beside me, and, looking up, I beheld a young fellow staring with all
his might, with a slow grin of recognition wrinkling his face. I
seemed to remember him.
“Mr. William Peploe, ain’t it?” said he.
“Why yes,” said I; “and you—and you——?”
“You don’t remember Jem Back, then, sir?”
“Yes I do, perfectly well. Sit down, Back. Are you a sailor? I am so
dead beat that I can scarcely talk.”
Jem Back brought a tankard of ale to my table, and sat down
beside me. He was a youth of my own age, and I knew him as the
son of a parishioner of my father. He was attired in nautical clothes,
yet somehow he did not exactly look what is called a sailor man. We
fell into conversation. He informed me that he was an under-steward
on board a large ship called the Huntress, that was bound out of the
Thames in a couple of days for Sydney, New South Wales. He had
sailed two years in her, and hoped to sign as head steward next
voyage in a smaller ship.
“There’ll be a good deal of waiting this bout,” said he; “we’re
taking a cuddy full of swells out. There’s Sir Thomas Mason—he
goes as Governor; there’s his lady and three daughters, and a sort of
suet” (he meant suite) “sails along with the boiling.” So he rattled
on.
“Can’t you help me to find a berth in that ship?” said I.
“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “What could you offer yourself as,
sir? They wouldn’t have you forward, and aft we’re chock-a-block. If
you could manage to stow yourself away—they wouldn’t chuck you
overboard when you turned up at sea; they’d make you useful, and
land you as safe as if you was the Governor himself.”
 I thought this a very fine idea, and asked Back to tell me how I
should go to work to hide myself. He seemed to recoil, I thought,
when I put the matter to him earnestly, but he was an honest,
kindly-hearted fellow, and remembered my father with a certain
degree of respect, and even of affection; he had known me as a
boy; there was the sympathy of association and of memory between
us; he looked at the old suit of clothes I sat in, and at my hollow,
anxious face, and he crooked his eyebrows with an expression of
pain when I told him that all the money I had was two and a penny,
and that I must starve and be found floating a corpse in the
dockyard basin if I did not get out to Australia. We sat for at least an
hour over our ale, talking very earnestly, and when we arose and
bade each other farewell I had settled with him what to do.
The Huntress was a large frigate-built ship of 1400 tons. On the
morning of the day on which she was to haul out of dock I went on
board of her. Nobody took any notice of me. The vessel was full of
business, clamorous with the life and hurry of the start for the other
side of the world. Cargo was still swinging over the main hold, down
whose big, dark square a tall, strong, red-bearded chief mate was
roaring to the stevedore’s men engulfed in the bowels of the ship. A
number of drunken sailors were singing and cutting capers on the
forecastle. The main-deck was full of steerage, or, as they were then
termed, ’tween-deck passengers—grimy men, and seedy women and
wailing babes, and frightened, staring children. I did not pause to
muse upon the scene, nor did I gaze aloft at the towering spars,
where, forward, up in the dingy sky of the Isle of Dogs, floated that
familiar symbol of departure, Blue Peter. I saw several young men in
shining buttons and cloth caps with gold badges, and knew them to
be midshipmen, and envied them. Every instant I expected to be
ordered out of the ship by some one with hurricane lungs and a vast
command of injurious language, and my heart beat fast. I made my
way to the cuddy front, and just as I halted beside a group of
women at the booby hatch, James Back came to the door of the
saloon. He motioned to me with a slight toss of his head.
“Don’t look about you,” he whispered; “just follow me straight.”
 I stepped after him into the saloon. It was like entering a grand
drawing-room. Mirrors and silver lamps sparkled; the panelled
bulkheads were rich with hand paintings; flowers hung in plenty
under the skylight; goldfish gleamed as they circled in globes of
crystal. These things and more I beheld in the space of a few heart-
beats.
I went after James Back down a wide staircase that sank through
a large hatch situated a dozen paces from the cuddy front. When I
reached the bottom I found myself in a long corridor, somewhat
darksome, with cabins on either hand. Back took me into one of
those cabins and closed the door.
“Now listen, Mr. Peploe,” said he. “I’m going to shut you down in
the lazarette.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, on which
was a rude tracing. “This is the inside of the lazarette,” he continued,
pointing to the tracing. “There are some casks of flour up in this
corner. They’ll make you a safe hiding-place. You’ll find a bag of
ship’s biscuit and some bottles of wine and water and a pannikin
stowed behind them casks. There’s cases of bottled ale in the
lazarette, and plenty of tinned stuffs and grub for the cabin table.
But don’t broach anything if you can hold out.”
“When am I to show myself?”
“When we’re out of Soundings.”
“Where’s that?” said I.
“Clear of the Chops,” he answered. “If you come up when the
land’s still in sight, the captain’ll send you ashore by anything that’ll
take you, and you’ll be handed over to the authorities and charged.”
“How shall I know when we’re clear of the Chops?” said I.
“I’ll drop below into the lazarette on some excuse and tell you,” he
answered. “You’ll be very careful when you turn up, Mr. Peploe, not
to let them guess that anybody’s lent you a hand in this here hiding
job. If they find out I’m your friend, then it’s all up with Jem Back.
He’s a stone-broke young man, and his parents’ll be wishing of
themselves dead rather than they should have lived to see this hour.”
“I have sworn, and you may trust me, Back.”
“Right,” said he. “And now, is there e’er a question you’d like to
ask before you drop below?”
“When does the ship haul out?”
“They may be doing of it even whilst we’re talking,” he said.
“Can I make my escape out of the lazarette should I feel very ill,
or as if I was going to suffocate?”
“Yes, the hatch is a little ’un. The cargo sits tall under him, and
you can stand up and shove the hatch clear of its bearings should
anything go seriously wrong with you. But don’t be in a hurry to feel
ill or short o’ breath. There’s no light, but there’s air enough. The
united smells, perhaps, ain’t all violets, but the place is warm.”
He paused, looking at me inquiringly. I could think of nothing
more to ask him. He opened the door, warily peered out, then
whispered to me to follow, and I walked at his heels to the end of
the corridor near the stern. I heard voices in the cabins on either
hand of me; some people came out of one of the after berths, and
passed us, talking noisily, but they took no heed of me or of my
friend. They were passengers, and strangers to the ship, and would
suppose me a passenger also, or an under-steward, like Jem Back,
who, however, now looked his vocation, attired as he was in a
camlet jacket, black cloth breeches, and a white shirt.
We halted at a little hatch-like trap-door a short way forward of
the bulkheads of the stern cabins. Back grasped the ring in the
centre of the hatch, and easily lifted the thing, and laid open the
hold.
“All’s clear,” said he, looking along the corridor. “Down with you,
Mr. Peploe.” I peered into the abyss, as it seemed to me; the light
hereabouts was so dim that but little of it fell through the small
square of hatchway, and I could scarcely discern the outlines of the
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