Intersection of Youth Marriage Perspectives and Reciprocal Emotional Sustainability in Turkey: Implications for the 2025 Year of the Family Campaign

This study develops a mid-range grounded theory exploring the dynamics of meaningful marriage among young Turkish adults, positioning “reciprocal emotional sustainability (RES)” as a central mechanism for marital resilience and growth. Drawing on 482 open-ended narratives, the analysis identifies foundational values (trust, mutual respect, enduring love) that energize a self-reinforcing cycle of empathic support and equitable exchange. The effectiveness of this dynamic is moderated by partners’ emotion-regulation skills and their joint communication ecology, with failures leading to emotional attenuation and relational disengagement. Integrating attachment, self-determination, and social exchange theories, the emergent model elucidates how autonomy support, equitable reciprocity, and secure relatedness foster individual and relational flourishing within a culturally specific context that emphasizes ancestral succession and family continuity. Practical implications include the prioritization of conflict-cooling strategies, autonomy-supportive behaviors, and rapid dynamic restoration in marital education and therapy. These findings hold significant relevance for national initiatives such as Turkey's “2025 Year of the Family Campaign”, offering empirical insights to inform and optimize governmental efforts aimed at strengthening family well-being through comprehensive facilities and support mechanisms. Limitations, including a female-skewed online sample, suggest directions for future dyadic and longitudinal research across more diverse populations.