Scientists linked the weakening of romantic feelings to external stress rather than to overall stress levels

What the study showed

Psychologists from the University of Ottawa and the University of Edinburgh published a paper in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships on how everyday stress affects romantic feelings. The study involved 100 couples from the UK: after an initial assessment, both partners filled out evening questionnaires independently of each other for 14 days, noting hassles, mood, and feelings in the relationship. Gazeta.Ru reports on this.

What matters is not the load itself, but the deviation from the usual

The scientists focused on stress arising outside the couple: problems at work, financial difficulties, conflicts with friends, and transportation troubles. They compared not only different people but also calmer and more stressful days of the same person. The key factor turned out to be the deviation from one's own usual load: each additional hassle corresponded to a small decrease in ratings of love, passion, and closeness — by about 0.04–0.13 points on a seven-point scale. The association persisted even after accounting for the previous day's mood and feelings.

What the researchers did not find

People with a higher average level of stress did not report less love overall. No direct link between one partner's stress and the other partner's feelings was found in the main models either. In other words, according to the study, what matters is not how stressful a person's life is in general, but how much harder a given day turned out to be for them personally. The article ends with a reference to an earlier publication about how mathematicians derived a formula for the breakdown of marriage and tried to find out who is at risk of burning out first.