MARITAL FUNCTIONING IN EARLY VERSUS LATE-ONSET ALCOHOLIC COUPLES

Current knowledge about alcohol and marital functioning is limited by restrictive sample selection, inattention to the literature on individ ual-based alcoholic subtypes, and lack of research linking individual differences among alcoholics to marital functioning. The present study was designed to study marital functioning of alcoholics in light of c urrent alcohol typologies. Subjects were part of a larger study on con joint treatment of alcoholic males and their female partners, Four typ ologies-including Type 1/2, In-Home/Out-of-home, Steady/Episodic, and Early/Late Onset-were tested for replicability and discriminant validi ty before linking them to marital functioning. Discriminant validity w as found only for the Early (59%)-versus Late (41%)-Onset typology; th us, further analyses linked only this typology with marital functionin g. At baseline, Early-Onset couples reported more marital instability, and the females in these couples were more distressed. During treatme nt, Early-Onset couples reported higher daily marital satisfaction tha n Late-Onset couples. Regardless of age of onset, males reported highe r marital satisfaction than their spouses during treatment, but their satisfaction did not increase during treatment. Female partners' marit al satisfaction increased during treatment. Female partners of Late-On set males reported particularly low marital satisfaction during treatm ent. Parsing the sample according to the early-/late-onset typology yi elded different predictors of marital satisfaction for males and femal es within each subtype. For female partners of Early-Onset alcoholics, psychological distress unrelated to her partner's drinking severity w as most associated with her own marital satisfaction, whereas marital adjustment of female partners of Late-Onset alcoholics was most associ ated with the male's level of perceptual accuracy regarding her needs. This pattern was reversed for the males; marital adjustment of Early- Onset alcoholics was most associated with his partner's perceptual acc uracy of his needs, whereas marital functioning of Late-Onset alcoholi cs was best accounted for by his own psychological distress.