Before you decide something is wrong at home

Photo: Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Have you ever come home after a hard day, felt a little less close to the person you love, and wondered if something was wrong between you?

A new study, published last month in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, looked at that question. Ece Yilmaz and Sarah Stanton followed 100 couples in the UK for 14 evenings. Each night, people reported the stresses of the day that had nothing to do with their relationship, like a heavy workload, money worries, or a conflict at work, and how much love, passion, and closeness they felt.

On days when a person's stress was higher than usual, they reported a little less of all three. That held even after the researchers accounted for mood, how long the couple had been together, and how the person had felt the day before. A partner's stress did not show the same direct link. The dip was small, and this is one study, so it cannot tell us that stress caused the change. Many of the couples were younger and in newer relationships, which is worth keeping in mind.

Even so, I find the idea useful. Before you decide something is wrong at home, check what you carried in from the day.

Something to try: the next time you drive into the driveway, sit in the car for a moment and feel what your body is holding. If you can, say it out loud to yourself: "Mark, you had a hard day." That one sentence can keep a hard day from being mistaken for a problem in your relationships.

If you'd like to read the paper, it's here: https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075261500167

If you'd like to go deeper into how stress and attention shape what happens between us, that's part of what my book Built This Way: Why Painful Patterns Repeat and How to Change Them is about: https://drmarkpirtle.com/power-tools/book

Thank you for being part of this community.

Wishing you abundant health, happiness, and prosperity,
Mark