Your unsupportive partner is physically stressing you out

Couples feel more understood and cared for when their partners show positive support skills – and it’s evidenced by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body – according to new research.

A team of researchers conducted a study of 191 heterosexual married couples to find out if better communication skills while giving and receiving social support led to lower cortisol levels—a hormone associated with stress reactions.

Over two 10-minute sessions, the couples discussed personal issues unrelated to their marriage. The researchers analyzed their communication for instances of both positive and negative social support given and received, evaluated how the participants perceived the support they received and gathered samples of saliva to assess cortisol levels.

What the researchers say: “We found that wives who received support more negatively (e.g., rejecting help) felt less understood, validated and cared for by a partner, which had a ‘stress-amplifying’ effect, meaning cortisol increased across the interaction,” the lead author told us. “Couples felt more understood, validated and cared for when their partners showed positive support skills, and less so when they employed negative communication skills.”

Unexpectedly, the researchers found that biological stress levels prior to the interaction appeared to accurately predict how couples would act and perceive the interactions. Another predictor of couples’ behavior and perception was their overall perceived partner responsiveness, which is an assessment of feeling understood, valued and cared for.

“Our research more strongly showed how perceptions of support interactions shape our experience,” she said. “How each partner perceived the interaction was highly associated with how supportive and responsive they believed the partner to be more generally. One possibility is that perceptions of how supportive a partner is can build over time and across several interactions; and the more general picture shapes how particular behaviors—good or bad—might be viewed in the moment.”

“Alternatively, it is possible that different types of support behaviors are needed for different people experiencing different kinds of problems, and so looking at specific behaviors across couples becomes less relevant. In either case, those who perceived themselves as having a supportive partner in general tended to have the lowest levels of cortisol at baseline and following the interaction.”

The authors believe understanding how couples navigate and support each other in stressful situations can offer valuable insights into strengthening relationships and overall well-being.

Future studies will employ different strategies to assess support behavior and how it is communicated. The authors have a reason to believe that the tone of what was said was more relevant than the content matter. Essentially, it might matter how you say it, more than what you say.

“We are also considering looking at alternative ways of measuring stress at the biological level to understand what effective partner support looks like, as cortisol is one of many indicators of our body’s stress response system,” the researchers said.

So, what? There is very little that’s new in this study, though it does confirm a lot of earlier work.

One of the four main needs of human beings is relational support (along with food, shelter and reproductive success—or at least sex). Many scientists, including myself, say that the search for support from those that we have, or desire, a close relationship with is our prime driver. It’s hardly surprising therefore that the perceived lack of support should drive up our stress/cortisol levels.

The less support we perceive we have from those that are, or potentially are, important to us the safer we feel and the less stressed and fearful we are. That stress, and that fear are the cortisol determinants.

My guess is that the same sort of stress reaction would happen whenever we feel insufficiently supported by any person—or group—that was important to us. This would include work colleagues, politicians we back or extended family members. In fact, anyone we rely on.