The Relationship Roots of Sadness

That feeling of being on top of the world is a sense that often follows pleasant and rewarding interactions with your relationship partner. Sometimes even a small favor or act of affection from your partner can lead those good sensations to flow over you. By the same token, when you’re having a tough time with your partner, it can be hard to see anything from a positive light.

These ideas, as stated, may seem completely self-evident. Why wouldn’t you be happy if your relationship was going well, and unhappy if it wasn’t?

However, showing that these connections have an empirical basis can be considerably more difficult. Maybe happy people have better relationships in general. Nothing very magical about that. But if it’s true that good relationships promote well-being, then this can be an important finding that could help people navigate their lives more successfully.

The Relationship Distress Model of Depression

According to University of Colorado Boulder’s Mark Whisman and colleagues (2026), the “marital discord” model of depression receives support from studies showing that people whose relationships are suffering also suffer poorer mental health. However, these prior studies often fail to control for various possible confounding factors that can cloud the progression from poor relationship quality to depression.

For example, a person who is high in the personality trait of neuroticism is likely to find much to fuss and fume about even with the best possible partner and the best circumstances in which the couple finds themselves. Sally is constantly finding fault with not only her partner but with herself. She’s constantly worried and anxious, and often becomes sad for no reason. When she and her partner first started dating over two years ago, they seemed happy enough, but over time, those good feelings of love and companionship began to erode. Now she has definite cause to feel depressed.

Untangling Cause from Effect in Marital Distress

Even with the best longitudinal methods in which researchers test the marital distress model by controlling for factors such as personality, there’s likely to be a problem. Overadjusting statistically for personality traits in the distress-depression relationship could make things worse rather than better. A more effective approach, the U. Colorado researchers recommend, is propensity score matching (PSM).

In this particular study, the authors used PSM by creating two groups of married couples- one in distressed and one in nondistressed relationships who are matched on their risk for having problems. These risk factors included personality, optimism, and a history of depression. Now, if members of the distressed couples show higher rates of depression, this would suggest that it was distress, not these other factors, that were responsible.

With a large and representative sample of over 4,600 adults from the Health and Retirement Study (averaging in late 60s), the Whisman et al. authors were able to trace the impact over a two-year period of relationship distress on the development of a major depressive episode (a clinical indication of depression).

Six items assessed relationship quality, with three measuring positive and three negative interactions with the spouse or partner. An example of a positive item is “How much do they really understand the way you feel about things?” and negative “How much do they criticize you?” The group considered to be experiencing marital distress scored in the top 20 percent on the total scale. Personality items included ratings on neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness.

Other ratings were obtained on chronic health conditions and a history of depression. A standard diagnostic interview was used to assess whether the respondent met criteria for major depressive episode, which included two consecutive weeks of sadness along with experiences of depressive symptoms.

The findings supported the marital distress model, showing that the evolution of depression over time occurred even when relevant factors were controlled. As the authors concluded, “it is something about the relationship itself for a person in a distressed relationship that increases risk for depression, rather than characteristics of the person” (p. 7).

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Turning Distress into Growth

These findings have important implications for someone such as Sally, who is starting to watch her relationship fall apart. It’s no wonder that she is experiencing feelings of depression. Although her personality may have played a role in contributing to some of these problems, by now the issue is more one of addressing the relationship factors that are making her so sad.

Whisman and his colleagues believe that their findings have important implications for long-term relationships. The ideal approach to helping people like Sally would be a couple-based intervention in which both partners receive treatment together. But if her partner wasn’t willing to go along with her to therapy, Sally could be helped in other ways. A method known as interpersonal psychotherapy targets relationship distress as a contributor to depression.

Indeed, the U. Colorado findings also suggest that looking at depression from the standpoint of the individual instead of the individual in the context of relationships could fail to address an important contributor to mental health issues later in life. It would be easy to regard Sally’s depression as a function of her personality alone, but by seeing her as part of a couple in trouble, she would be more likely to receive the help she needs. More to the point, so would her partner.

To sum up, when problems occur in a long-term relationship, these can have significant consequences for the mental health of both partners. Seeing depression as a function of relationship quality can help people find a pathway toward greater fulfillment and happiness.