THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CRISIS ON STABILITY AND QUALITY OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP

In this article, the researchers developed a model based on the insight into different theories and empirical studies about impact of economic crisis on intimate relationship. With the economic crisis, the behaviour of individual in a relationship also changed. Increased stress is one of the reactions of individual to the crisis, and this directly or indirectly influences his or her intimate relationship. That impact is manifested as a factor of the decrease of stability and quality of such relationship. As a starting point, they took the fact that the individual in developed western societies is adapted to the mainstream of so-called consumer society, which discourages him or her to strive for the intimate relationship, and the purpose of such relationship is the preservation of family. On the contrary, this encourages individual's selfish principle to satisfy his or her comfort and convenience. Based on these findings, they developed the intimate relationship stress model, which could be used in further empirical studies and psychotherapy practices.