(3-4 minute read)
Stress is normal. Every one feels stress at some point in their life. There are different kinds of stress. The type of stress you are feeling, and how much you feel it is what can cause marriage problems.
Eustress is a positive stress. An example of it is a challenge that is neither too easy nor too difficult, like your child’s school project, new workout, or having to talk in front of a crowd. The body goes through eustress as a short-term way of focusing energy and improving performance. Eustress is usually feels exciting and brings about work, accomplishing things that need to get done in the short-term.
Distress, on the other hand, is the negative stress. It ranges in feelings. Distress can come about when you are overwhelmed, nervous, anxious, hurt, confused, afraid. It can be short-term or long-term. Distress is typically caused when you need to do something that you feel is out of your coping abilities.
Stress can come through life events like, having a project that is too much to do, when your kids have been fighting for days and you can’t get it to stop, financial problems, an ongoing, unsettled argument with your spouse, or dealing with the death of a loved one.
The effects of stress:
1. Stress is an inhibitor.
“Stress can inhibit the way we form and retrieve memories and can affect how our memory works,” explains VeryWellMind. Feeling stress during a situation can also taint how one sees things. Like in a car crash, what one remembers happening in the moment may be very different from what a camera would show.
No wonder it can be so easy to forget about the dinner date after a stressful week at work, what your spouse said, and the good communication skills you’ve learned you should use when you and your spouse are having a difficult conversation.
2. Too much stress makes it harder to concentrate.
Your brain, focus, and emotions seem like they’re being pulled in a million different directions. Because you’re stressed about your work, you may worry about your income. Will that income be enough to pay the mortgage? What will your kids do when they realize the family can’t go to Disneyland this year?
Stress often happens because there is a lot going on. Your attention is focused on whatever you are stressed about rather than what you need to do. This also leads to neglecting responsibilities you need to do and procrastination.
Another this that negatively affects is the common attempts at multitasking. Because it seems so easy to do so much, many try to do some of everything at once. Maybe you feel like you can be watching your kids and texting, all while you’re draining the spaghetti noodles, and listening for the spaghetti sauce to be done in the microwave. Whew! That’s a lot! This multitasking causes stress and the stress makes it harder to focus on the task that is most important.
3. Stress decreases one’s rationality and increases poor judgement.
People tend to be more reactive when they are stressed. That is, reactive especially without weighing the possible outcomes as much as they normally would. Maybe you’ve experienced this – replying with an abnormally snappy comment when your spouse is mad at you, yelling at the cars in front of you because you’re late to work, or even bursting out at your children to stop screaming because you don’t know what else to do.
Everyone has situations that they look back on and wish they could have done things differently. Many of those situations would have gone differently without the stress felt during them. Learning how to manage thoughts and actions during stress or learning to decrease stress can help with those situations.
4. Stress can significantly decrease one’s sex drive.
One thing that can be extremely difficult on a marriage is when a couple has an incompatible sex drive and they don’t know how to appropriately work through that difference in a healthy way. The stress factors mentioned above can also weigh into this one. If a spouse can’t concentrate on what they need to get done or is irrational with their decisions, if gives that couple less time and energy to focus on expressing their love to each other.
The decrease of one’s sex drive and love expressed doesn’t only affect in the bedroom. It can affect doing the little things for your spouse. The verbal expressions of love, the service you are able to render, the kindness or gratitude you express, and the little touches like a kiss or holding hands may decrease as well.
5. Stress can lead to general unhappiness and loneliness.
When one is stressed, they are typically moody, irritable, quicker to get angry, and in general unhappy. Because so much of their focus (consciously or subconsciously) is on the things they are stressed about, it is hard to give adequate attention to other important aspects of their life like their personal wellbeing and marriage. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that people who are stressed begin to withdraw from others and isolate themselves because of the overwhelming feelings they experience.
The Effects of Stress Cause (and worsen) Marriage Problems
A little eustress in one’s life here and there is good and can be useful. But, when there is distress that is ongoing or past one’s level of coping, the effects of stress are exhibited in one’s life. Along with marriage, these effects of stress can affect parenting, work, school, self-confidence and increase anxiety and depression.
Each of these effects: inhibited memory, difficulty concentrating, poor judgement than usual, decreased sex drive, unhappiness, and loneliness can all lead to marriage problems. Especially when bundled together. It makes the hard parts of marriage all the more difficult than they already are.
Learning how to manage that stress is an important way of taking care of yourself.
For help understanding how to manage the stress in your life, read:
“5 Useful Ways to Deal with Everyday Stress”