Relationship stress
Stress is something we feel when the demands on us exceed our ability to cope with them and anxiety develops when those demands feel threatening to our wellbeing. Unfortunately many relationships are a major source of stress and anxiety.
The causes of stress
Confusion causes stress; frustration causes stress. We feel stressed when our boundaries are constantly invaded, when we feel helpless, uncertain and when we feel we have no control over our lives and what is happening to us. Anything that hampers freedom and choice, growth and maturity is stressful. Repressing emotions is stressful, especially anger and especially anger toward someone we love because it gives rise to guilt and anxiety and the prospect of damaging the relationship.
People are also stressed by having a role forced on them, by trying to be someone that someone else wants them to be, by denying their own needs in favour of another’s, by feelings of failure and inadequacy and by being in a relationship that does not satisfy their basic emotional needs. It is stressful and exhausting trying to get your true self, as opposed to the self a damaging partner wants you to be, seen, heard and acknowledged and the longer the struggle, the more debilitating it is.
Stress not only comes from negative things but also when positive things that we need, such as affection and respect are missing, or even from the lack of information about a situation, our partner or the relationship. Being lied to for example, makes us feel rejected, shut out and anxious.
So living daily with someone who is irresponsible, fails to do their fair share, has a tendency to ‘play’ whenever possible, who mistreats you or who behaves in destructive ways, can put enormous physical and emotional pressure on a partner.
The partner also has to cope with their disappointment in the relationship as well as managing the other’s unfair demands and expectations and the chaos they cause. One works, the other relaxes, one worries, the other plays, one cares, the other doesn’t.
The stress producer and his or her behaviour become the centre of their partner’s attention so that other areas of their lives get less time and energy. They come to lose effectiveness in the rest of their lives and they exhaust themselves trying to get the wayward one to change or get them to see that what they are doing is wrong. There is so much to think about and worry about that the partner becomes overwhelmed.
People with disordered behaviours are a hindering force in their partner’s life, making them expend a disproportionate amount of effort and energy trying to keep things in balance. He or she (for simplicity I will use ‘he’ although both male and females can be destructive forces in relationships) obstructs and impedes a partner’s happiness, development and advancement. His constant mischief and misbehaviour ruins, wrecks and spoils things. Her life is more stressful and harder than it need be because she has to constantly struggle to assert herself and her rights and to keep from being swamped by his selfish demands. Living with some people is very hard work.
In an effort to control or limit his destructive behaviour some partners tie themselves in knots trying to keep him happy and satisfied by anticipating his needs or whims. This makes her hyper-watchful, hyper-tuned into his body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, trying to read his mind and his moods. So she is constantly on guard, watchful and wary, like a soldier perpetually stationed on the front lines. But such vigilance takes a heavy toll.
Results of stress
The partner with the least power in a relationship, the one who meets the needs of the other most, that is, the non-narcissistic or less narcissistic partner, always carries the most stress and anxiety. The least powerful person, usually the female, must suppress much of her own feelings of stress and absorb her partner’s because she is the one required to offer him support and assistance, not the other way around. And people who suppress emotions are more likely to become ill.
Stress and anxiety do not have to come from some major trauma. Chronic, small stresses can be just as, or even more damaging, than stress from a major event. Chronic stress, because it becomes part of everyday life, can come to feel normal, as though it is part of the self and so it goes unrecognized as a warning sign that something is wrong.
Or we can even become addicted to stress hormones so that when we are not stressed, it doesn’t feel right. It is quiet possible for our body to be responding physically to stress without us being consciously aware of it. Or we may feel stress but see no obvious cause of it because our brain’s response to stress is emotional shutdown in order to protect us from painful reality, so that the real reason we are stressed remains hidden from us.
Constant stress undermines confidence, distorts our image of ourselves and makes us feel overwhelmed and helpless. Chronic stress produces a host of unpleasant feelings such as sadness, fear, resentment, self-pity and the stress hormone cortisol can even make us crave carbohydrates, which causes a nutritional imbalance not to mention weight gain.
Stress might shut down our emotions so that we feel numb or it may intensify them so that we feel irrational, so that we overreact to things that normally wouldn’t bother us. We can become so sensitized to stress that even the smallest problems overwhelm us. Losing something, breaking something or a thoughtless criticism from a friend, can take on the proportions of a major calamity. The stress of constant uncertainty and unpredictability makes life seem like a series of unmanageable crises. When we never know what to expect, when there is always some problem, surprise, loss, change, we can never feel comfortable or at ease.
The partner of a troublesome personality exhausts herself looking for solutions to the problems in the relationship and the problem that is her partner himself. She uses up time and energy trying to find strategies that will improve things, ‘if I do this or that, perhaps he will change, maybe this will work, maybe not.’ She reads books and asks other people’s advice but she just goes around in circles because nothing she does helps and the frustration just adds to out-of-control and helpless feelings which in turn increase stress.
Stress can make the partner lose her sense of humour, fun and spontaneity. Her morale can plummet and she can have trouble concentrating, her memory might be impaired and she might develop phobias or irrational fears. She may have frighteningly eerie symptoms such as not feeling ‘real’, feeling like a fragile shell about to shatter, feeling empty and hollowed out and experience constant, low-level anxiety. She may also suffer from a range of the physical symptoms of stress: alarming heart palpitations, hyperventilation, tight, knotted muscles, sweating, feeling dizzy, feint, or light-headed, a dry mouth or lump in the throat, a tightness around the chest as though being crushed which makes breathing difficult, or full-blown panic attacks.
There is evidence that a prolonged unhappy and stressful relationship may even cause permanent chemical changes in the brain and that years of negative interaction might change neurotransmitters and the way they work. If we experience a type of response often enough it becomes chemically imprinted, changing neural pathways. It is quite possible then for the partner to become, although she wasn’t to begin with, oversensitive, overemotional or neurotic.
Long-term relationship stress can lead to burnout, depression, learned helplessness, all sorts of health problems, a complete nervous breakdown, alcohol or drug abuse, suicide, or in the case of abuse, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Relationships are the most important things in most people’s lives but a damaging relationship can ruin or even destroy our lives.
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