How to Manage your Relationship Stress
Welcome! I am glad you are here.
This blog focuses on how to manage your stress in relationships. Let’s begin by breaking down the phrase “stress management”. Stress is your physical and emotional reaction to events that are happening around you all day, every day. Management is the way you control your reactions to those numerous events happening all around you.
Stressful events can come from anywhere; your boss, your co-workers, other students, other drivers, medical diagnoses, financial hardships, housing concerns, pandemics, elections or grief over a loss. Stress can come at you from every direction! Also see my book Crush Your Stress: 302 Coping Skills for Managing Your Stress
Stress management is a pretty broad subject. There are some techniques that might be helpful across all of those stressful events listed above. However, there is one category of stress that overshadows all other forms of stress. It is stress within an intimate relationship.
What causes stress in relationships?
While there may be as many reasons for conflict within a relationship as there are relationships, there are four reasons that kept popping up with the clients I worked with in my private practice.
At some point in your life time you probably have been in an intimate relationship. Perhaps you are in one right now.
- Money
Money frequently adds stress to a relationship. Both people brought ideas and practices about spending/saving/investing money into the relationship. Do those ideas complement each other? Does the dynamic change if one person makes more money than the other? Is there an agreed upon budget? If it isn’t followed, what happens?
When was your first discussion about money? Was it when you were exploring being in a committed relationship? Or was it at the point of a stressful disagreement concerning money?
- Children
If you have a child or children, how was that decision made? Was it a decision made together? How did the two of you decide on which parent stays home from work with a sick child? Who handles discipline in your home? Are you a step-parent? How is that parenting handled? Maybe your children are similar in age to your new partner?
When was your first discussion about having a child? Was it when you were exploring being in a committed relationship? Or was it at 2 a.m. and the baby was crying?
- Sexuality
Sexuality is usually an important part of intimate relationships. In other relationships, by agreement, sex is nonexistent. Both partners bring their sexual experience, or lack thereof, into the relationship. How are decisions made about when or how often? Are there expectations about fidelity? What about sharing previous sexual experiences?
When was your first discussion about sex? Was it while you were exploring a new relationship? Or was it at the point of a stressful disagreement about someone watching pornography to excess?
- Cell phones
Ah, the new battleground in relationships! A recent study found most people do not like being more than 5’ from their cell phone. If you have a password on your cell phone, do you share it with your partner? Do you have an agreement that phones are put on silent at meal time? Do you find it difficult to pry your partner away from their cell phone?
When was your first discussion about cell phone etiquette? Was it when you were exploring a new relationship? Or was it when you found your partner scrolling through your cell phone without permission?
Stress during expansion and contraction of a dyad
A monad is one person.
Dyads are when two people form a relationship. Frequently there are others peripherally involved with the dyad, for example, friends of the singles and then friends of the couple, siblings, parents, in-laws, etc. While the dyad should be making decisions for them, frequently others interfere. This is where boundaries become important.
The dyad becomes a triad when children enter the relationship. In terms of a stress level, while it seems like it would matter how many children the couple have, it really doesn’t. In a parenting couple the stress has to do with the division of duties, for example, who takes Jr. to the dentist? Who does household chores? Who gets up with the kids when they are sick and vomiting in the middle of the night?
A modified monad is when a parent is raising a child or children without the other parent in the home. This separation can be due to never having the other parent present, separation from the other parent, military duty, jail or prison, divorce or death of the other parent. The term dyad is reserved for two adults in an intimate relationship.
A quad is formed when there are blended families. There could be one parent’s children, the other parent’s children and any children they have together. You may remember the 1970s TV sitcom, The Brady Bunch? Very few blended families are able to manage such an arrangement without significant stress and strain on the intimate relationship.
If the relationship survives raising children, when the children go off to form their own families, the parents become “empty nesters”. There is a contraction to a dyad. If the couple has been “too” child focused, frequently the “empty nesters” will end up looking at each other and saying, “Who are you?” Obviously this can cause stress in the dyad.
There is always the possibility of the dyad expanding to a triad one more time. For a variety of reasons, sometimes adult children return home to live with their parents, or sometimes grandparents are left to raise their grandchildren. If only one partner is welcoming of this expansion, the relationship could be destroyed.
Then there is something I call the inverted triad. This is when adults become the caregivers of their aging parents. This arrangement can occur due to finances, health conditions, or convenience. Whatever the reason for the inverted triad, it changes the dynamics of the relationship and can put great stress on the dyad.
The four stressful cycles in relationships
From my experience as a clinician, I have observed there are four cycles that seem to be the “bumpiest” in a relationship:
The first year of a committed relationship in which a couple is exclusive can be very stressful. Each person comes into the relationship with their own personal values and beliefs. The first year is all about navigating their new relationship status. Conflict arises as they negotiate a compromise, or when they both hold firm to their boundaries.
During the 7th year of a relationship, problems tend to arise. It is usually when the excitement phase of the relationship has worn away, the dyad has probably become a triad and there are very demanding small children around. Any problems involving money, sex, and cell phone that have not been resolved by now have hit a crescendo.
A dyad experiences the empty nest cycle sometime between the years of 18-22 of marriage or commitment. Logically you would think a couple would have worked out their problems by now. However, if the focus of the relationship has been on children instead of the dyad, the children leaving the home leaves the dyad with a void.
Retirement is the fourth cycle that tends to result in separation or divorce. There is a pretty sudden awakening when couples who have spent 40-50 hours per week living separate lives end up spending all of their time together. It is a fourth “make or break” time in a relationship. Either you will find enjoyment in your time together, or the relationship will be destroyed.
Knowledge is power
Management of your stress in a relationship is based on your recognition of stress points in a relationship (money, children, sex, cell phones), the stage of a relationship you are in (monad, dyad, triad, etc.), and the cycle of your relationship (first year, 7 years, etc.).
If you can anticipate problems at critical points in your relationship, you are better able to manage the resulting stress.
A word of caution: Before having a discussion with your partner about money, children, sex or cell phones, it might be helpful for you to process those topics alone. You have a responsibility to yourself of first prioritizing what is important to you. Only then can you have a discussion with your partner that will lead to successful thriving relationship.
Only when you are clear with your ideas can you start a thoughtful conversation with your partner.
I hope this blog has provided you with new information that will be helpful to you in all your relationships. If you have any comments or questions about the content of this blog, please contact me: Kathryn@relationshipsrelearned.com
With warmest regards,
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Are current life situations causing you stress? Do you need a plan or new ideas on how to decrease your stress and anxiety? My book may help: Crush Your Stress: 302 Coping Skills for Managing Your Stress.
