Abstract

ALVES-SILVA, Junia Denise; SCORSOLINI-COMIN, Fabio  and  SANTOS, Manoel Antônio dos. Entire life's wedding: reasons to maintain a long-term marriage. Temas psicol. [online]. 2017, vol.25, n.2, pp. 487-501. ISSN 1413-389X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.9788/TP2017.2-05.

The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons why people maintain long-term marriages. We interviewed seven couples with average marriage time of 45.7 years, average age of 68.9 years old and with children. From two semi-structured scripts, the participants were interviewed individually and as a couple, totalizing 21 interviews. Through the thematic analysis of content, 19 categories were made with the most common reasons why the participants maintain the marriage. Responsibility to the family and to the spouse, the need of fulfilling what they consider as duty of a husband/wife and father/mother, in addition to affectional bonds between the relatives were the most important reasons in the interviews. It was possible to notice the interviewed couples' attempt of balance between individualities and conjugality, as well as the maintenance of gender roles throughout the years of relationship. Further researches on this topic should be encouraged, contributing to the study of conjugality.

Keywords : Marriage; marital relations; motivation; old age.

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