Can Stress Be Good for a Relationship?

It’s that time of the year again; the holiday season.  Although it’s commonly known as “the most wonderful time of the year,” this season can also bring a lot of stress along with it: making plans for the holidays, braving the crowds and doing some holiday shopping, numerous holiday parties, and spending a lot of time with your in-laws.   Although there have been numerous studies in the past examining the effects stress can have on our lives, including how it affects us physically and psychologically, it made me wonder how can stress affect our romantic relationships?  Does it have a negative impact on our relationships as it does in other aspects of our lives, or can it actually have a positive impact in some way?

Numerous studies have shown that stress will cause marital satisfaction to decline.  For example, Schulz et al. (2004) found that on days where a spouse experienced more work stress, their partner would rate them as more angry and irritable at home.  Studies have also shown stress causes diminished communications between couples, as well as a lower likelihood of forgiveness between spouses.  But why does stress hurt our relationships like this?  Finkel and Campbell (2001) discuss that pro-relationship behaviors require much more effort than destructive behaviors, requiring more self-control and attention to create those behaviors.  When someone is stressed, these self-regulation abilities are consumed by this external stress, and it doesn’t leave enough resources for self-control to create these pro-relationship behaviors, thus leading to lower feelings of marital satisfaction.

But is stress always bad for relationships?  Recent research by Neff and Broady (2011) examined if moderate stress early in a marriage can better prepare couples for very stressful times ahead.  In one of the studies, the researchers examined marital satisfaction at the beginning of the marriage and after the birth of their first child.  Although having a child can be a very joyous occasion, it can be an extremely stressful time in the lives of the couple and can strain the relationship.  They found that couples with high social support for one another who had experienced moderate stress early in their marriage had higher marital satisfaction after the birth of their first child than couples with high social support who hadn’t experienced much stress.  So in a sense, practice makes perfect in this case.  Even though a couple may be very supportive of one another, their marital satisfaction can suffer drastically if they don’t have experience managing stress in their lives.

But how can this work?  From dealing with early low to moderate levels of stress in your marriage, you and your partner build better strategies for dealing with this stress, discovering what works and what doesn’t for you.  You and your partner also get a boost in your confidence in being able to diffuse stressful situations from your successes in the past.  So when a bigger and more stressful event happens later on, you and your partner are much more prepared to deal with it than a similar couple who hasn’t had this practice in dealing with stress.

So if you find yourself stressed or see your partner stressed this holiday season, first and foremost, be supportive.  Listen to them vent about what’s irking them, offer words of advice on how to get around it, and show that you understand where they are coming from and that you care.  From these experiences, you will build up an arsenal to be able to tackle any event that comes your way in the future.

Further Reading:

Neff LA, & Broady EF (2011). Stress resilience in early marriage: Can practice make perfect? Journal of personality and social psychology, 101 (5), 1050-67 PMID: 21688919

Finkel EJ, & Campbell WK (2001). Self-control and accommodation in close relationships: an interdependence analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81 (2), 263-77 PMID: 11519931

Schulz MS, Cowan PA, Cowan CP, & Brennan RT (2004). Coming home upset: Gender, marital satisfaction, and the daily spillover of workday experience into couple interactions. Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 18 (1), 250-63 PMID: 14992625

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