Internalized shame and marital equity, intimacy, and competency

Shame is a basic emotion, essential to human development and a necessary component of humility. Life experiences can push shame to high levels. Shame then becomes a crippling part of one's being. Shame is a relational experience. Shame emerges as one becomes aware of oneself in the relationship to others. Shame grows out of relationships and is an element in all relationships. Results of this study relating to the Internalized Shame Scale, its subscales, and self-esteem supported some findings from earlier studies with homogeneous samples. This study involved a heterogeneous sample and some findings were significantly different. There were no significant gender based differences in shame intensity. Intensity of shame was positively correlated with perceptions of complementary and symmetrical marital equity styles and negatively correlated with perceptions of parallel marital equity styles. 'Shame was negatively correlated with perceptions of marital intimacy and competency. In perceptions of marital relationships, alienation was a more robust predictor and accounted for more variance than inferiority, self-esteem, or gender.