Spiritual Intimacy, Marital Intimacy, and Physical/Psychological Well-Being: Spiritual Meaning as a Mediator.

Objective: Intimacy is an essential part of marital relationships, spiritual relationships, and is also a factor in well-being, but there is little research simultaneously examining the links among spiritual intimacy, marital intimacy, and well-being.

Methods: Structural equation modeling was used to examine associations among the latent variables-spiritual intimacy, marital intimacy, spiritual meaning, and well-being-in a cross-sectional study of 5,720 married adults aged 29-100 years ( = 58.88, = 12.76, 59% female). All participants were from the Adventist Health Study-2, Biopsychosocial Religion and Health Study.

Results: In the original structural model, all direct associations between the three latent variables of spiritual intimacy, marital intimacy, and well-being were significantly positive indicating that there was a significant relationship among spiritual intimacy, marital intimacy, and well-being. When spiritual meaning was added as a mediating variable, the direct connections of spiritual intimacy to marital intimacy and to well-being became weakly negative. However, the indirect associations of spiritual intimacy with marital intimacy and with well-being were then strongly positive through spiritual meaning. This indicates that the relationship among spiritual intimacy, marital intimacy, and well-being was primarily a result of the meaning that spiritual intimacy brought to one's marriage and well-being, and that without spiritual meaning greater spirituality could negatively influence one's marriage and well-being.

Conclusions: These findings suggest the central place of spiritual meaning in understanding the relationship of spiritual intimacy to marital intimacy and to well-being.