Research also has demonstrated a reciprocal relationship between drinking, AUD, and the quality of intimate relationships. For example, longitudinal studies of engaged different-sex couples have found that the husband’s drinking prior to marriage is a strong predictor of the wife’s drinking a year into marriage,7 that the female partner’s drinking influences the male partner’s drinking in the next year,8 and that relationship distress and AUD are strongly related.9 A recent meta-analysis of 17 studies (N = 10,553 couples) focused on different-sex couples found that partners influence one another’s drinking, although the magnitude of effects was modest. The extent to which women influenced men’s drinking (β = .19) was slightly greater than the extent to which men influenced women’s drinking (β = .12).8 Results from clinical and nonclinical samples also reveal a close association between heavy drinking and the perpetration of intimate partner violence.10 Couples with at least one partner with AUD have high rates of intimate partner violence, regardless of the sex of the partner with AUD,11 and drinking is common during episodes of interpersonal violence.12 Most typically, interpersonal violence is bidirectional in these couples.
