A sample of young adults enriched for risk, such as ours, may differ in important ways from previously studied samples for two reasons. First, the protective effect of marriage is typically explained by role incompatibility (Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1985; Horn et al., 2013; Kendler et al., 2016), which may not be relevant for young adults. Young adults may not perceive a conflict between high levels of alcohol use and the socially normative expectations of the spousal role; therefore, there may be less impetus to reduce alcohol use upon the transition to marriage. Second, the null effect of marriage may be attributable to selection effects of a sample enriched for risk. Previous research demonstrates that individuals with a predisposition for alcohol problems are more likely to have a spouse with an alcohol use disorder (Salvatore et al., 2018), which may actually put individuals at greater risk for problematic alcohol use (Kendler et al., 2016; Leonard & Eiden, 2007). This suggests that individuals who are at higher risk for problematic alcohol use, like many of those in the present sample, are at
