Verified by 
Key points
- When couples experience outside stress, this stress can spill over into their relationship.
- A new study found stressed people were more likely to notice their partners' day-to-day negative behaviors.
- But the stress effect did not influence whether partners noticed positive behaviors.
People who are satisfied with their romantic relationships tend to put on rose-colored glasses when it comes to looking at their partners. They typically downplay their partners' faults, perceive their partners more positively than the partners perceive themselves, and attribute their partners' bad behavior to fleeting circumstances rather than permanent character flaws. We know that unhappy couples focus more on their partners' faults—but are there circumstances that make people less likely to notice the annoying or hurtful things their partner does? New research by Lisa Neff and April Buck, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explores the role of stress in how we react to our partner's day-to-day bad behavior.
The Effects of Stress on Relationships
Not surprisingly, outside stressors take a toll on our relationships. Coping with stressors drains partners of energy that they could devote to nurturing their relationship or dealing with relationship problems. This can result in a cascade where these stressors spill over and lead to or worsen relationship problems. For example, one study surveyed a group of married couples every six months over a four-year period and found that stressful events, in areas like work, finance, or health, led to long-term declines in satisfaction.
They found that the more stressful events the subjects experienced, the more problems they noticed in their relationships (such as lack of trust, difficulty making decisions, and conflicts regarding showing affection). This spillover was largely explained by the wives’ tendency to blame relationship problems on their partner. This stress spillover, however, only occurred for the women in the study, as wives were more likely to blame relationship problems on their partner, rather than the other way around. Perhaps women are more likely than men, in general, to notice relationship problems in the first place. These results suggest that the reason stress spillover occurs is that it might make us more attuned to how our partners contribute to problems in our relationships.
The Study: How They Did It
This study by Neff and Buck focused on the effects of stressors on couples' day-to-day lives. The researchers recruited 79 newlywed couples who completed questionnaires about their relationship and life stressors. As in the study described above, partners indicated how many stressful experiences they had faced in the last six months in a wide variety of life domains, such as work, health, personal events, finances, and difficulties with friends or family.
Following this initial session, each partner separately completed a brief daily survey for 10 days. Each day, partners were asked to indicate if they engaged in any negative behaviors (criticized or blamed their spouse) or positive behaviors (showed interest in the spouse’s day) that day. They also indicated whether their spouses had engaged in those same positive or negative behaviors that day. This allowed the researchers to test how accurately people perceived their partners' behaviors.
The Study: What They Found
The researchers found, as they expected, that spillover from stressful life events affected how people perceived their partners. Spouses who had experienced stressful life events were more likely to notice daily changes in their partner's negative behavior. Over the course of the study, they were more likely to take note of these negative behaviors. Happy couples have a tendency to overlook their partners' occasional bad behavior, but these stressed spouses were less likely to do so.
The study found that if one partner admitted to bad behavior when filling out their daily survey, their partner often did not report that negative behavior in their own survey. The partners either don't notice it, or it doesn't linger enough for them to remember it by the end of the day. But if one partner was stressed, the stressed partner was more likely to notice their spouse's negative behavior and report it on their daily survey. The researchers found no differences in high- and low-stress couples in how accurately they perceived each others' positive behaviors—this effect only occurred for negative behaviors.
Conclusions
This research shows that the effects of outside stress on our relationships are far-reaching. Stress doesn't just affect how partners feel on a day-to-day to basis, it also changes what they notice about their partners. Experiencing outside stressors can cause people to remove those rose-colored glasses and make them more focused on the negative things their partner does.
Facebook image: metamorworks/Shutterstock
