Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO.
Fam Process. 2020 Jun;59(2):525-536. doi: 10.1111/famp.12426. Epub 2019 Jan 7.
To shield a romantic partner from potential distress due to stressors occurring during deployment, service members (SMs) may engage in protective buffering, or withholding information or concerns from a romantic partner. This study utilized data from 54 couples collected before, during, and after a military deployment to assess whether SMs engaged in protective buffering while deployed and the possible associations between buffering and psychological, relationship, and contextual factors. Only 2% of SMs indicated never engaging in protective buffering during a deployment. In bivariate analyses, only partners' psychological distress prior to deployment was significantly associated (negatively) with protective buffering. In multilevel models with time nested within individuals, and individuals nested within couples, higher buffering was associated with less partner distress during deployment, but was also associated with higher SM distress both during and after deployment. In these multilevel models, protective buffering was not significantly associated with SM or partner marital satisfaction.
为了保护恋爱伴侣免受部署期间发生的应激源带来的潜在困扰，军人可能会采取保护性缓冲措施，即对恋爱伴侣隐瞒信息或担忧。本研究利用 54 对夫妇在军事部署前后收集的数据，评估军人在部署期间是否会采取保护性缓冲措施，以及缓冲措施与心理、关系和环境因素之间可能存在的关联。只有 2%的军人表示在部署期间从未采取过保护性缓冲措施。在单变量分析中，只有伴侣在部署前的心理困扰与保护性缓冲显著相关（呈负相关）。在个体内嵌套时间的多层次模型和夫妇内嵌套个体的多层次模型中，较高的缓冲与伴侣在部署期间的较少的痛苦相关，但也与军人在部署期间和之后的更高的痛苦相关。在这些多层次模型中，保护性缓冲与军人或伴侣的婚姻满意度没有显著关联。
