In a test of M. Bowen's hypothesis that people marry at the same level
of differentiation of self, both members of 36 heterosexual couples c
ompleted the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire (PA
FS-Q). The similarity of the actual couples' scores was compared with
the similarity of randomly formed couples across 1,000 Monte Carlo rep
lications of the pseudocouple methodology for each of 7 PAFS-Q variabl
es. Several indexes of couple similarity averaged across the replicati
ons revealed that the members of the actual couples were more similar
than the members of the pseudocouples on just 1 of the spousal measure
s and none of the measures of intergenerational relationships. In gene
ral, these findings do not support the Bowen hypothesis.