Coping strategies as moderators of the relationship between attachment and marital adjustment

The present study examined the relationship between spouses' attachment styles, coping strategies, and marital satisfaction. The study included 263 couples who responded to an attachment questionnaire, the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Secure attachment was positively related to task-focused coping whereas anxious/ambivalent attachment was related to emotion-focused coping. Avoidant attachment was related to avoidance coping strategies. Wives' anxious/ambivalent and secure attachments and task-oriented coping accounted for a significant portion of the variance associated with husbands' marital adjustment. Husbands' anxious/ambivalent attachment and emotion-focused coping were significant predictors of their wives' marital adjustment. Finally, task-oriented coping weakened the negative relation between anxious/ambivalent or avoidant attachment and marital satisfaction whereas avoidance strategies strengthened the negative association between anxious/ambivalent attachment and marital adjustment.