ABSTRACT
People in a collectivistic culture establish their identities through group membership, emphasizing group goals, group conformity, and relationships-even at a high personal cost. The Systemic Transactional Model (STM) suggests that stress occurring outside of the relationship can spill over into the relationship and affect the relationship negatively, but it is an open question how the 'African culture' affects the stress-coping process in couples. Now, in individualistic cultures, where people live only with their nuclear families, their most important and frequent support provider is the partner. Couple interactions are influenced by many cultural aspects such as the dowry system, religion gender role, and patriarchy. In summary, there are many possible explanations for the lower association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction, such as African marital culture, polygamy, traditional gender roles, the dowry system, poverty, and religion. The practice of dowry needs to be evaluated as well, as dowry often commercializes women, hindering more egalitarian-based relationships.
