Abstract: Marital Expectation is a serial of standards that individuals realistically expect from their marriage, which people believe are capable to be met. Many factors including gender, age, attachment, parents’ marital expectations and cultural background exert influence on the development of marital expectation. Marital expectation violation is found to be significantly related to people’s marital satisfaction. People cope with marital expectation violation in ways such as partner regulation and ideal distortion. Further researches including the development of innovative measure instrument in Chinese background, investigations in family factors and other coping ways in which people deal with marital expectation violation, as well as couple matching of marital expectations are still needed.

Key words: marital expectation, expectation violation, mate preference, marital quality, marital satisfaction