Individuals’ Prior Relationship Experiences
We examined six types of prior relationship experiences: whether the respondent had sex only with his/her future spouse, the number of sexual partners the respondent had prior to the focal relationship, whether the respondent had ever cohabited with someone else, whether the respondent was entering a first marriage, and whether the respondent or his/her partner had children. Each of these variables predicted marital quality, with more sexual partners, having cohabited with someone else, having been married before, and having children from prior relationships (either one’s own or one’s partner’s) being associated with significantly lower marital quality and having had sex only with one’s future spouse being associated with higher marital quality. The strongest predictors of marital quality in this category were the variables regarding having children from prior relationships.