At one time or another we all experience stress. What you may not realize is how much stress negatively affects your love relationship. Stress can come from outside influences such as a demanding job, living in a high crime neighborhood or coping with societal problems and injustice. Stress can also come from factors directly related to home life such as being a parent, managing finances or dealing with in-laws.

How Stress Negatively Affects You

You may be aware of some of the physical symptoms of stress, these include tense muscles and headaches. Stress can also can also contribute to the development or worsening of potentially serious health conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, excessive weight gain and diabetes to name a few. Individuals who are stressed may also experience emotional symptoms such as depression, irritability, anxiety and a general feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed. In addition, feeling stressed can affect your ability to think clearly, make decisions and concentrate.

How Stress Negatively Affects Your Relationship

It is normal for couples to experience differences of opinion and to argue at times. However, the likelihood of disagreements and arguments increases significantly when either you or your partner is feeling stressed. Feeling overwhelmed and stressed may cause your mind to be preoccupied. This makes it easy for you and your mate to experience miscommunication and misunderstandings, not to mention the hurt feelings that also follow.

Major life changes such as a new baby or the loss of a job can create significant pressures in a marriage. At times like this, you may begin to wonder whether you mate is really the person you thought they were in the beginning of the relationship. You may find yourself feeling more anger than usual and even having feelings of mistrust. When it comes to sex, stress definitely causes major problems. Physical exhaustion, loss of libido, sleep difficulties, depression are all symptoms of feeling stressed. All of these factors can seriously interfere with your sex life.

Learn to Manage Stress

So what can you do? How can you gain control so that you are not helpless as you try to manage stress and take care of your relationship?

Take an honest look at yourself

Have you been feeling overwhelmed? Are you experiencing difficulty sleeping? Are you and your partner experiencing more disagreements? Is there something that is causing you stress? Becoming aware and acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step towards positive change. Some amount of stress is unavoidable so the solution is not to escape it, but to try to manage it.

Practice healthy self-care

Oftentimes feeling stressed comes when you think that, there’s too much to do, and not enough time to do it. With that thinking, you may put self-care on the back burner and this causes even more problems. Before you can take on life’s stressors, you need to be functioning well.

• Take care of your nutrition by eating healthy, well-balanced meals.
• Get adequate sleep. To help improve your quality of sleep, power down your electronic devices an hour before you go to bed.
• Exercise, this is so important! Whether it is going for a walk, run or workout at home or at the gym, exercise is incredibly effective for helping you to manage stress.

Communicate with your partner

Miscommunication and misunderstandings tend to be frequent when partners are stressed. It’s a good idea to use a personal timeout as a strategy for taking time to calm yourself and regain your composure in moments when you are feeling very frustrated. After you are calm, you will be in a better frame of mind to listen and communicate with your partner. Take turns sharing your concerns, listen with an open mind and make an effort to try to understand your partner’s perspective.

Work Together As A Team

You and your partner will encounter stressors individually and as a couple. Those challenges present you with the opportunity to learn and grow. It helps when you work together as a team. You each have individual strengths and when you combine those strengths, it benefits your relationship. Take time to share your hopes and dreams with each other. Talk with each other and work together to create joint goals including the legacy you wish to leave for your family.

The presence of stress in your life and relationships has the potential to create negative consequences. However it also presents you with an opportunity to learn, and to work positively to manage your life and improve your love relationship. If you would like more information about stress and how you can effectively manage it, click the link below to purchase my eBook.

Stressed: How to Survive and Thrive.