Relationship satisfaction of the previously married: The significance of relationship specific costs and rewards in first and repartnering unions

This work examined if the association between relationship specific costs / rewards and relationship satisfaction differed between previously married and never married before individuals. The question addressed was whether going through partnership dissolution could be linked to differences in how people experienced the positive (i.e., support, companionship), as well as, the negative (i.e., conflict, inequity in give and take) aspects of their intimate relationships. Longitudinal Dutch data (the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, NKPS) were utilized to estimate person-level random-effects models. Indeed, at high costs, the previously married reported significantly lower relationship satisfaction than the never-married-before; furthermore, at low reward levels, those in first partnerships reported significantly higher relationship satisfaction than their repartnering counterparts.