Rescuing Your Relationship From Stress

This article discusses how stress affects our personal or social lives and how to recover stressful relationships with our partners and families. It includes how to identify stressors, manage them, and what we learn from the process. It can be done!

Love drives people crazy; everybody knows a stressful relationship story like this. It isn't strange, that's pretty much what should be expected. Studies show that love is stressful on the brain; the stress hormone cortisol is responsible for the reactions we experience when we are in love. Stressful romantic relationships have been proven to reduce the levels of your dominant sex hormone. If you are a man, testosterone levels plummet, and this explains why men become soft and vulnerable to their women. For ladies, however, the increasing testosterone makes them aggressive and protective of their lovers. Many times, the power dynamic in relationships are tested during stressful situations and experiences. How couples cope with stressful relationships often makes or breaks them. 

They can, reinstate emotional synchronicity, revive intimacy, and ignite the romance all over again. It demands both parties to figure out how to deal with stressful relationships. Before taking the stressful relationships and stress away, Let’s see what makes relationships stressful?

Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels

Stressful relationships can be externally or internally influenced, each of which requires different tactics to solve. Stressful relationships symptoms can be spotted with deliberate introspection. When couples take the time to point out what is getting in the way of healthy relationships, they can stop the problem before it snowballs out of control. 

Stressful Relationships Symptoms 

How stressful are relationships? Stress builds up in our lives out of circumstance or the consequence of our actions. When a couple is in a stressful relationship, you can notice how distracted they are from themselves, each other, or everything else. 

Stressful relationships have less leisure time. Couples that don't spend enough quality time together tend to drift apart, and the longer they stay together without resolving it, the worse It becomes. Withdrawn individuals don't seem to realize the problem until it becomes too big to ignore, then its "How did we get here?"

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Stressful relationships sap people's energy as well as their emotional and intellectual capacity. It is a noticeable contributor to memory loss. Couples in stressful relationships forget schedules, dates, appointments, anniversaries, and other important events. This raises conflict often as their cognitive capacities are overwhelmed. People in stressful relationships also become more vigilant, quickly noticing the negative quirks of their partners and overreacting to them. Stressful relationships blow minor issues out of proportion if not relieved. Stressful relationships affect physical and mental health too. This places additional strain on the stressful relationship as the distressed individual could feel like they are not good enough for their partner anymore, and this makes them see problems in their team that aren't there.  

Any couple in a stressful relationship could see their communication hit a brick wall even if they are usually in touch with each other. Couples in stressful relationships become less affectionate, where they often would be rooted in each other. The skewed perception of stressful relationships can lead beautiful unions to ruin without really solving the problem. 

Managing Stressful Relationships

Stressful relationships can be repaired by first identifying the root cause of the stressors. Sometimes it can be long, busy work schedules that leave no room for leisure. Other times it can be complicated family feuds or just depression from losing a child, job, or business. 

However, identifying the stressors in order of magnitude can help to deal with each of them proportionately. Firstly, you and your partner may differ on how significant the stressors you pointed out are to yourselves, but being on the same page is vital before you start looking for the best dating sites review.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Secondly, speak honestly about how the stressors have affected you and how well you’re coping mechanism or lack thereof has worked for you. Make sure to address how positively or negatively your coping mechanisms are affecting your stressful relationships. Point out what you would like to do to cope better with stress in the future. Listen to your partner and try to rephrase what you understood about what they've gone through in stressful relationships, make sure your perspective has been well communicated and understood as well.

Thirdly, bolster your psychological resilience to cope better with stressful relationships. Studies have shown that resilience can be built through behavior, but strengthening it is a solo mission. Here are some ways to improve it.

Self-Care: Engaging in activities with your partner can revive your physical and mental health previously stripped away by stressful relationships. Exercise, proper nutrition, and rediscovering the joys of your passions provides a sense of purpose closely tied to resilience and mental health. Set goals and chase them: Identity steps you can take with your partner to relieve stressful relationships in the future. Set individual targets and work together to make the changes you want to come true.  

Remember what you love about your partner: going down memory lane reminds you of the things you liked the most about each other. Research suggests that couples in stressful relationships who keep track of the things their partners dislike, enjoy doing, are fearful of, and their hopes and dreams keep their unions together for longer. So, take notice of your partner's interests, quirks, and habits- they feel more appreciated when the small things matter too. 

CONCLUSION

Stressful relationships can crop out of even pleasant experiences. Working together to get up and over your stressors is the best shot you have at recovering your partnership. While it is destructive chaos, stressful relationships can be a fountain for growth. Couples that navigate it properly come out on top, even stronger than before. How have stressful relationships affected your love life before? How did you work through it? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

Up Next, Work on Your Breathing, Change Your Life