In this study, we interviewed couples separately which can be
seen as an advantage or a disadvantage. On the one hand,
individual interviews can enable participants to talk freely
without being overheard by the spouse. On the other hand, a
silent person could be encouraged by the spouse to speak in a
joint interview (Illingworth et al. 2010) and they can help
each other to remember. However, separate interviews
illuminated individual experiences and revealed both satisfaction
and discontent with their lives together. The use of
two interviewers further guaranteed confidentiality but limited
the possibility to ask complementary questions that arose
from the spouses’ interview. Furthermore, separate interviews
made it possible to see how different or similar the spouses
from the same couple responded to the same questions. The
scope of this study is to include all three perspectives, to see
the ‘Rashomon effect’, whereby the same event is described
from diverse perspective (Sandelowski 2000). It illuminates
that individuals can comprehend the same event very
different.