Pandemic-challenged relationship now much happier, study reveals
Stress can corrode relationships, so one might expect a mammoth stressor like a global pandemic could seriously unhinge romantic couples.
Instead, the unique circumstances created by COVID may have provided an “opportune scapegoat” for their problems, a new study suggests. People were more likely during waves one and two to blame the pandemic than they were to blame themselves or their partners for problems in their relationships, the study finds. And they were happier for it.
The study highlights the beneficial effects of “blaming the stressor” — in this case, a global health crisis. “Stressful circumstances have the power to destabilize couples’ interactions and erode relationship quality,” University of Texas at Austin researchers report in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
“Yet not all stressors are alike,” they said. Unlike everyday stressors, major ones can promote “proactive coping” and couples can emerge more resilient.
The tendency to blame the stressor — COVID — “appeared to enhance stress resilience,” they wrote, and the benefits of “it’s COVID, not us” didn’t weaken as the pandemic persisted.
At the crux of the research is the stress spillover phenomenon: when people are feeling anxious, stressed, burned out and irritable from stress originating outside the relationship, like work stress, it tends to carry over into the home, “affecting the way they think about their relationship and the way they interact with their partner,” said Lisa Neff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the U of
Texas and one of the study’s co-authors.
COVID is a staggering, abrupt and unique stressor. Stay-at-home, shelter-in-place orders upended millions of lives. Remote work, home schooling, the threat of an infectious disease, financial strain — “almost overnight, couples were unexpectedly facing a multitude of new stressful life circumstances,” Neff and her coauthors wrote.
“COVID is not your typical, ‘I got stuck in traffic, I’m grouchy, I’m going to take it out on my partner,’” said Neff, a stress researcher. “It is largescale and highly salient — we are all aware we’re stressed; it’s happening to a lot of people and it is pretty uncontrollable.”
When the pandemic began, many scholars assumed the stress created by COVID would create more tension between partners and reduce their “relationship happiness,” Neff said.
Instead, the new study explored the buffering effects of blaming the pandemic.
Researchers analyzed data collected from 191 people (81 couples and 29 people participating without their live-in partners) recruited during the early weeks of wave one in the U.S. (April/may) and again seven months later in wave two.
At each wave, researchers first measured the extent to which people blamed themselves, their partner or the pandemic for their problems.
Then, each evening for 14 days, volunteers filled out a short daily diary before bed. What kind of exchanges did they have with their partner that day? Were they critical or impatient, even if they didn’t mean to be? Did they have more negative interactions? Were they feeling less happy in the relationship?
People were generally more blaming of the pandemic for their problems during both waves. And while it didn’t completely immunize them against relational strain, the negative effect of the stress was weaker if people blamed COVID, Neff said.
“It’s probably the case that people should attribute their problems to their stress, and not to their partner. But, most of the time people don’t,” she said.
Instead, we tend to become much more critical, and much less forgiving of our partners, compared to times of no stress, Neff said.
“Again, in many of those cases, people should be blaming the stressor, as well. But too often stress affects our thinking without our awareness.”
What makes COVID different is that the stress is so salient, so obvious. “COVID was the headline of every news story — it was all we discussed. So, it made it easier to blame the stressor rather than blaming each other,” though not everyone did.
Their sample didn’t necessarily involve the most stressed people. Volunteers tended to be fairly well educated with fairly stable employment. The median age was 31. About 20 per cent had children.
As COVID dragged on, “we thought that maybe people’s tendency to blame the pandemic would weaken, and you wouldn’t see these beneficial effects,” Neff said. But it was just as strong in November as in April.
As more people become vaccinated and more things open up, Neff said it would be curious to see whether people stop blaming the pandemic as much, “and you see more stress spillover happening in couple’s relationships.”
Among the takeaways, when feeling stressed, people should take time to decompress and regroup before interacting with their partner, Neff said. “We should also cut our partners some slack when they are undergoing really stressful periods.”
“COVID is not your typical, ‘I got stuck in traffic, I’m grouchy, I’m going to take it out on my partner.’” Lisa Neff Associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas