Impact of Love

Alcohol misuse and overuse has become a critical issue in the United States; however, the majority of intervention work has focused on the individual struggling with the addiction rather than including loved ones and family members in the recovery process. The environment and relationships of the individual struggling with alcohol use are crucial to ultimately helping that person as these factors have been shown to potentially deter or dissuade alcohol use. Therefore, it is important to understand underlying factors that impact alcohol use as well as the potential role that relationships could play in alcohol use. Associations have been found between trait mindfulness, relationship quality, and alcohol use separately but these variables have not been studied in a single model. Additionally, these variables have mostly been studied in an individual context even though all of these variables have been shown to have a dyadic impact. This study sought to explore the interpersonal and intrapersonal associations between trait mindfulness, relationship quality, and alcohol use. 120 heterosexual couples completed self-report measures that studied levels of trait mindfulness, relationship quality, and alcohol use. This study determined that there were both individual and dyadic impacts of trait mindfulness on relationship quality, as well as relationship quality being associated with alcohol use. Specifically, the results of this study showed positive links from female positive relationship quality to female alcohol use, as well as male trait mindfulness had a negative link to male alcohol use. Additionally, male negative relationship quality was positively linked to male alcohol use, and male trait mindfulness was positively linked to female positive relationship quality, negatively linked to male negative relationship quality, and finally positively related to female negative relationship quality. These findings provide initial support that trait mindfulness may be one way to target alcohol use and relationship quality. This study also provides support for the continued study of the dyadic impacts on alcohol use, and continued study of underlying factors that could influence that relationship. Future research could include a larger and more diverse sample to better understand the generalizability of these interactions.