What to do if your partner is in a bad mood

Angry Penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From the 6 July 2013 KevinMD.com post

ALEX LICKERMAN, MD | CONDITIONS | JULY 6, 2013

As with most things in life, romantic relationships are, for many of us, a double-edged sword: while most find it wonderful to love and be loved, developing intimate emotional ties to someone makes us emotionally vulnerable—vulnerable not only to being hurt by our partner’s opinions of and feelings toward us, but also vulnerable to being affected by our partner’s bad moods. If a colleague or a friend gets depressed, we’re often able to offer a comforting word or two without ourselves being drawn into his or her emotional maelstrom. When our partner becomes depressed or sad or angry or jealous or anxious, however, our own emotions are often triggered in unpleasant ways. Just what can we do to manage our own bad moods that arise as a result of our partner’s?

1. Identify and understand your typical reactions to your partner’s bad moods. In medical school, students are taught that if they find themselves feeling depressed when interviewing a patient it’s often because the patient is depressed. Moods are contagious. Often—but certainly not always—your reaction to your partner’s mood will be to mimic it (i.e., he’s down so you become down; she’s angry so you become angry, and so on). For example, when my wife gets irritated at someone, I often become irritated at her. Why? Because I don’t like having to deal with angry people (it’s not rational, I know, but emotional reactions often aren’t).

2. Take responsibility for your own mood, not your partner’s.

Read the entire article here

Related articles

• How To Manage Your Partner’s Bad Moods (psychologytoday.com)
• Depressed Men and the Impact of Emotional Abuse (roasademure.wordpress.com)
• 10 Things To Never Say During A Fight (q104.cbslocal.com)

[Infographic] Love Helps: How Relationships and Marriage Affect Health, Happiness and Finance

I usually don’t post items that from sites with advertising.
[Disclaimer: reposting this infographic is not meant as an endorsement of any advertising at FrugalDad]

However, this infographic seems have information from good resources.
Two of the links, however were broken.The other two had good references to trusted sources but only seemed to include heterosexual relations.

Correction: All the links work and have good references from trusted sources.

Enjoy!

From the 31 May 2012 posting at FrugalDad

Afraid Of Marriage Or The Ravages Of Divorce?

From the 19th December 2011 Medical News Today article

With the share of married adults at an all-time low in the United States, new research by demographers at Cornell University and the University of Central Oklahoma unveils clues why couples don’t get married – they fear divorce.
Among cohabitating couples, more than two-thirds of the study’s respondents admitted to concerns about dealing with the social, legal, emotional and economic consequences of a possible divorce.

The study, “The Specter of Divorce: Views from Working and Middle-Class Cohabitors,” is published in the journalFamily Relations (December 2011) and is co-authored by Sharon Sassler, Cornell professor of policy analysis and management, and Dela Kusi-Appouh, a Cornell doctoral student in the field of development sociology. (http://bit.ly/sJqeFa).

Roughly 67 percent of the study’s respondents shared their worries about divorce. Despite the concerns, middle-class subjects spoke more favorably about tying the knot and viewed cohabitation as a natural stepping stone to marriage compared to their working-class counterparts. Lower-income women, in particular, disproportionately expressed doubts about the “trap” of marriage, fearing that it could be hard to exit if things go wrong or it would lead to additional domestic responsibilities but few benefits. …

Read the entire article

Delaying Sex Might Strengthen Marriage

Delaying Sex Might Strengthen Marriage
Study finds waiting on intimacy linked to better communication, stability

From the December 29, 2010 Health Day news release

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) — Having sex early in a relationship may lead to less satisfying marriages because couples can fail to develop important skills to communicate well and resolve conflicts, new research suggests.

The study, done at Brigham Young University in Utah, found that married couples who had delayed sex while they were dating were more likely to communicate, enjoy sex and see their marriage as stable than those who had sex early on. They also were generally more satisfied with their marriage….

…

“The take-home message is that sex is a powerful experience,” said Busby. “It really bonds us to one another and so it may be important before we go down that road to take the time to see if you can talk to this other person — see if you have similar personalities and similar directions in life — to see whether or not this is a relationship that can last.”

About 85 percent of Americans report having had premarital sex, according to research cited in the study. Also according to the research, there is a widespread belief that it is important for dating couples to see if they have “sexual chemistry,” because it is key to a good marriage….

…

he longer sex was delayed, the more participants in the study reported better quality of sex, communication, relationship satisfaction and perceived relationship stability. Waiting until marriage to have sex had the strongest correlations with positive outcomes.

The study was controlled to eliminate the influence of factors that could impact the timing of sexual intimacy, such as religion, education, relationship length and the number of previous sexual partners.

The study authors cited “relationship inertia,” a theory from earlier research, as a reason poorly matched couples stay together. As time goes on, partners feel “constrained” by the complexities of the situation when they may have more wisely parted company, the research noted.

“You get on this escalator and begin sliding into a relationship, rather than deciding in a thoughtful way to become more involved,” said Busby. “People say, ‘I’ve invested four or five years in this relationship’ or ‘We bought a house together,'” he added, noting that “the relationship becomes too complicated to leave.”

Busby cautioned against concluding that premarital sex necessarily leads to a bad marriage, however.

“Just because someone has sex early in a relationship doesn’t mean the marriage is doomed,” he said. “We’re not saying that.”

Busby also said the study group was more white and educated than a random sample of Americans would be, so more research is needed to draw stronger conclusions.

But the study, published in the December issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, suggests that an early focus on sex may lead to “more brittle marriages.”

“You can have great sex with someone you have an incompatible personality with,” Busby pointed out. “Sex is important, but it is not the only important thing in marriage.”

The study drew praise from another expert on interpersonal relationships.

“The impulse to assess sexual chemistry early in a romantic relationship, if not before, is a popular one,” said Mark Regnerus, author of the bookPremarital Sex in America, due out in 2011. “It just doesn’t work as well as advertised.”

A sexual relationship between two people “is best learned, rather than simply graded,” said Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin.

“A good marriage — including the sex — is something that’s built. It doesn’t come prefabricated,” he said.

And spouses with lots of sexual memories of other partners may find the bar for satisfaction high, said Regnerus. In contrast, people with fewer sexual memories may not expect as much.

“They are as good at sex as they believe themselves to be,” he said.