Romantic Relationships 331withdraw behavior (Vogel et al., 2007). This
hypothesis was refuted, as demand and with-
draw behaviors were unrelated to occupa-
tional status differences between wives and
husbands and influenceability by partner.
However, there may be other ways of assess-
ing power that could be linked to demand
and withdraw behavior.
Cultural differences in demand and
withdraw behavior show the linkage to power.
Although demand behavior has been linked
to being female and withdraw behavior has
been linked to being male in Brazil, Italy, and
Taiwan (Christensen et al., 2006), other cross-
cultural research has shown that demand and
withdraw behavior have different meanings in
some cultures. In a study of American and Pak-
istani couples, female demand/male withdraw
was greater among Americans than Pakistanis,
and male demand/female withdraw was greater
among Pakistanis than Americans (Rehman &
Holtzworth-Munroe, 2006). The nature of
demand and withdraw behavior, however,
differed between the two countries. Whereas
Americans conceptualize withdraw behavior
as reflecting resistance to change, withdraw
behavior in Pakistan may reflect a less power-
ful position—resigned acceptance. Demands
on the part of American women were more
dominant and aggressive, whereas demands
of Pakistani women were more unassertive
and pleading. Thus, withdraw behavior among
Pakistani women reflected a lack of power and
their demand behavior was more passive.
A fourth argument as to why women
demand and men withdraw is that women
have a greater tolerance for the physiologi-
cal arousal that conflict produces (Gottman,
1994; Levenson, Carstensen, & Gottman,
1994). Gottman has suggested that men may
avoid situations that produce physiological
arousal because their bodies recover more
slowly from arousal than women’s bodies.Thus men may find the physiological arousal
that conflict produces more aversive than
women do and withdraw from it. One prob-
lem with this explanation is that numer-
ous studies show that women become more
physiologically aroused than men during dis-
cussion of conflict, as you will see in Chapter- Gottman (1994) argues that men’s lack
of physiological arousal is due to their with-
draw behavior being effective.
Thus, the female demand/male with-
draw pattern observed in the United States
can be explained partly in terms of women’s
and men’s personalities, partly in terms of
the structure of marriage (e.g., women per-
ceive more problems, women have less
power), and partly in terms of culture.
Implications for Relationships. What are
the implications of the demand/withdraw
pattern for relationships? Not surprisingly,
high rates of demand/withdraw behavior
are associated with poor conflict resolu-
tion (McGinn et al., 2009) and low marital
satisfaction across a variety of cultures
(Christensen et al., 2006; Rehman & Holtzworth
Munroe, 2006). However, the negative effect
of demand/withdrawal behavior is buffered
by the expression of affection (Caughlin &
Huston, 2002). In other words, demanding
and withdrawing are less likely to be linked
to low marital satisfaction if couples are
affectionate toward one another.
The effect of the demand/withdraw
pattern on marital satisfaction also appears
to depend on who is demanding and who
is withdrawing. An older study showed that
wife demand/husband withdraw behavior
was associated with declines in wife satis-
faction over time, but husband demand/
wife withdraw behavior was associated with
improvementsin wife satisfaction over time
(Heavey, Christensen, & Malamuth, 1995).M09_HELG0185_04_SE_C09.indd 331 6/21/11 12:40 PM