Empathy and Romantic Relationship Quality among Cohabitating Couples: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model.

This study employed a dyadic data analysis approach to examine the association between partners' empathy and relationship quality among cohabitating couples. Data were collected from 374 cohabitating but non-married couples, who were participants in the Wave 3 Romantic Pairs Subsample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Men's higher empathy was related to their own perceptions of better relationship quality and women's higher empathy was related to their own as well as their partner's perceptions of better relationship quality.