BACKGROUND

The main health issue during 2020 has been the COVID-19 pandemic. In Mexico, non-essential school and work activities for the population were suspended, implementing a quarantine or voluntary confinement as of March 23 (^{Ministry of the Interior, 2020}). Confinement has been an international strategy to stop the spread of COVID-19, which consists of social isolation and voluntary protection of people in their homes, which has an impact on daily life and restrictions on the practice of activities outside the home (^{Sandín, Valiente, García-Escalera, & Chorot, 2020}).

The change in routine due to confinement has allowed people to choose to do rewarding activities, which help them live their life as well as possible (^{Polizzi et al., 2020}). According to ^{Dekel, Hankin, Pratt, Hackler, and Lanman (2015)}, finding ways to interact and appreciate life during massive traumas, is a robust predictor of increased psychological well-being and reduction of post-traumatic symptoms.

Although it has been indicated that this crisis affects intimate relationships (^{Stanley & Markman, 2020}), the focus of research on the impact of the pandemic on mental health has been mainly at the individual level. Evidence of this is the work of ^{Zambrano, Serrato and Galindo (in press)}, who carried out a bibliometric analysis in the SCOPUS database in the psychology collection, identifying 223 articles published in the first semester of 2020, finding that the majority of the studies were conducted in China and are focused on anxiety and depression, thus suggesting that research be conducted focused on the effects of the pandemic on academic performance, job stress, job performance, marital satisfaction, sexual behavior , among other phenomena. Thus, few investigations have focused on couples in confinement, which have focused on the risk of violence (^{Aponte et al., 2020}), the division of domestic work (^{Carlson, Petts, & Pepin 2020}; ^{Chung et al. , 2020}), in marital conflicts (^{Chung, Chan, Lanier, & Wong, 2020}), or in the effects on sexual behavior (^{Arafat, Mohamed, Kar, Sharma, & Kabir, 2020}); Furthermore, recommendations have been published for therapeutic strategies that contribute to preserving and protecting relationships during contingency (^{Stanley & Markman, 2020}). However, to the best of our knowledge, no research has been published focused on positive well-being variables such as marital satisfaction and its relationship with the impact of confinement due to COVID-19. ^{Boland and Follingstad (1987}) consider marital satisfaction as a general description of attitudes, feelings and evaluations of the relationship, in terms such as happy / unhappy, satisfactory / unsatisfactory. ^{Moral (2015}) suggests that satisfaction with the couple relationship is favored by the support and open communication in the couple, while emotional states such as depression and financial difficulties, impair marital satisfaction. Thus, satisfaction with the partner refers to a multidimensional entity that includes aspects of adjustment, happiness, consensus and cohesion.

^{Prime, Wade and Browne (2020}) indicate that the couple, being the leaders of the family, have the responsibility to generate hope and emotional security; in addition to negotiating family rules, rituals, and routines, while facing extraordinary levels of uncertainty, family disruption, and fear due to the ongoing pademic. The authors add that it is important to note that families will be affected differently by the health, social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering the above, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between marital satisfaction through the Relationship Assessment Scale and the perceived impact of confinement due to COVID-19 in different areas of the lives of couples, in a Mexican sample.

METHOD

RESULTS

Average marital satisfaction was 29.6 (SD = 5.8) with a median of 31 points and equivalence in the scores between men and women (Z = 0.045, p = .964). The participants indicated that during the last week the average number of outings from home was 2.2 (SD = 0.37); the main reason for leaving was to buy food or medicine. The hours invested in viewing news and communications related to COVID-19 was 1.4 (SD = 1.3), varying from less than an hour to 7 hours a day.

Among the activities reported to cope with confinement, those focused on maintaining a routine such as: setting schedules (25.7%), and performing pleasant activities, such as: watching movies or series (21.8%) and exercising (14.9%) had a higher frequency); the rest reported other pleasant activities, such as spending time with their pet, listening to music, and spending time with the family, among others.

The participants indicated that the most difficult thing about being in confinement was not being able to go out to have fun (40.6%), a small percentage indicated that the most difficult thing was having to be at home (8.9%) and the rest was distributed between not being able to have contact physical with other people, not being able to go to work, having to work online and not being able to go on a trip.

In Table 1 it can be seen that health is the area considered least affected by staying at home, followed by happiness. The areas most affected were work, fitness and finances.

Table 2 shows the correlations between the study variables. It can be observed that, the higher marital satisfaction, the lower the impact of confinement in tranquility, happiness, health, physical condition and emotional well-being. Additionally, the higher the satisfaction, the less time spent watching news related to COVID-19.

Table 2 Correlations between the study variables. 

Considering the impact of confinement as a score that adds up the 7 areas evaluated, the average score was 8.2 (SD = 5.3), showing a negative and significant correlation with marital satisfaction (rs = -.365, p = .001). Likewise, dividing the sample according to the quartiles of the impact scores of the confinement, a comparison of the two extreme groups was made (quartile 25, impact between 0 and 4; quartile 75, impact greater than 12), finding a significant difference in marital satisfaction (Z =-3.185, p = .001).

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship be- tween marital satisfaction and the perceived impact of confinement in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The relationship found indicates that those people with greater satisfaction in their relationship perceive less impact from confinement. Considering that satisfaction with the couple relationship is favored by the support and communication in the couple (^{Moral, 2015}), it is deduced that dialogue, conversation and mutual support contribute to reducing the perceived impact of confinement. Likewise, it was identified that people carry out various activities that help to cope with the confinement situation. In relation to this, ^{Polizzi, Polizzi, Lynn, and Perry,(2020}) indicate that engaging in rewarding activities, such as hobbies, solving puzzles, reading, listening to music, singing, playing an instrument, watching television, learning a language, playing games, and even preparing for a better life change after the pandemic, it can help people live their life to the best of their ability; While those focused on negative aspects such as exposing themselves to watching news related to COVID-19 for many hours, present worse satisfaction with their relationship. Confinement has been described as an event that produces discomfort (^{Hawryluck et al., 2004}; ^{Rubin & Wessely, 2020}), however, according to the results of this study, people who value their relationship as satisfactory seem to face better that situation and perceive less impact.

The results of this research are directly applicable in the care of people affected by confinement, ^{Pietromonaco and Overall (2020}) indicate that many couples will be susceptible to stress related to the pandemic and suggest that these couples may benefit from working with professionals to strengthen the adaptive relationship processes, communication strategies and mutual support. These interventions would improve marital satisfaction, which is related to the perceived impact of confinement, according to the present findings.

It is suggested for future research to return to the evaluation of positive variables that allow to identify, within this specific context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the aspects to emphasize in the prevention and psychological treatment interventions during the contingency.

The study has limitations that make it difficult to generalize the results. Among them, the sample size and its own characteristics, among which the high score on the RAS scale and the level of studies of the participants stand out. However, the results of this study represent an important contribution to the line of research on mental health in times of the coronavirus; since, as far as we know, it is the first to consider marital satisfaction in the Spanish-speaking population, in the context of COVID-19 contingency and assess its relationship to the impact on different areas of Mexican couples’ lives in confinement.