By Dr. Dawn Kingston
Relationship conflicts. Left unchecked, they can be a festering source of angst and pain. Dealt with appropriately and head on, they can be a source of growth and liberation.
There is one thing we would all agree with. Relationship conflict is NEVER pleasant when we’re in its midst.
Conflict: More Common than You Think
A recent study (2015) of almost 3,000 Australian women followed women for 21 years, starting with their pregnancy. It measured women’s depression symptoms when they were pregnant, 6 months after they had their babies, and then again when their child was 5, 14, and 21 years of age.
The scientists designed this study to understand what placed women at higher risk for long-term emotional health problems after childbirth.
It looked at many, many possible aspects of a woman’s life that might affect her risk, including age, education and financial status, factors related to her pregnancy, and also psychological factors, including partner conflict and how supported she felt.
Among the women who had symptoms of depression at some point during those 21 years (21%), 56.7% indicated at the first pregnancy visit that they had conflict in their partner relationship. That is, they felt that they and their partners frequently:
- quarrelled
- got on each other’s nerves
- rarely confided in each other
- rarely laughed together
- frequently disagreed on a range of matters: finances, religion, recreation, friends, sex, philosophy of life, ways of dealing with parents or in-laws, aims/goals/things believed important, major decisions, household tasks, career, and how and when to spend time together.
In other words, it wasn’t just major, blow-out arguments that affected women. It was the daily tensions. It was the lack of closeness and confiding in one another.
Partner Conflict Matters to Women’s Emotional Health
We know that having an unresolved argument with our partner can absolutely wreck our day. It affects everything. After a recent conflict with my spouse, I remember thinking that I can handle just about any form of stress but relationship conflict. It has a particularly distressing quality about it.
In the Australian study, women who reported the most conflict in their relationship with their partner during pregnancy were over 4 times more likely to experience depression in the 21 years following their child’s birth than women who had no relational conflict.
It didn’t just affect their day. It affected their lives.
