Abstract



	Social Support: Distinguishing Clinical and Volunteer Couples - The American Journal of Family Therapy

	*Abstract*
	Social support or husbands' and wives' friendships have theoretical and empirical support, showing benefit on marital satisfaction. The current study was designed to assess the differential role of friends in a clinical and volunteer sample of couples. 136 couples seeking therapy and a convenience sample of 169 volunteer couples participated in the study. Results show that discussions with friends about family problems were positively associated with both marital satisfaction and stability. Logistic regression revealed that husbands from the clinical couples were less likely to talk about marital problems with their friends, in contrast to wives from the clinical couples, who were likely to talk about marital stability with their friends. The wives' marital stability was also a significant predictor for the clinical couples.