The Impact of Family of Origin Communication Patterns on Stress Coping Style in Stigmatized Relationships

The stigmatization of marginalized romantic relationships such as same-sex, interracial, age-gap, and non-monogamous relationships still widely persists. Scholars have directed their focus on the well-being and functioning of stigmatized relationships in interpersonal communication research (i.e., Eaton, Veldhuis, & Hughes, 2017; Rosenthal, Deosaran, Young, & Starks, 2019). By applying Family Communication Pattern Theory (FCPT) and assessing coping styles in stressful situations, this study examines how family-of-origin communication patterns are associated with individuals’ stress coping style in stigmatized relationships; and how, in turn, are linked with relationship maintenance behaviors. Results indicate that with conversation orientation, task coping was shown to mediate the relationship between conversation orientation and positivity, openness, assurance and sharing tasks. Moreover, emotion coping was shown to mediate the relationship between conversation orientation and openness. For conformity orientation, avoidance coping was shown to mediate the relationship between conformity orientation and positivity, openness and social networks. Emotion coping was only found to mediate the relationship between conformity orientation and openness.