MENTAL WELLNESS
STRESS IN MARRIAGE
Depression & Stress in Marriage
It is no news to married couples, that building a life
with another brings a whole new perspective. Getting
together with someone up to about age 30 is far easier
to meld together life plans. By the time one hits 40,
you are very clear about what you want and don’t
want in your life, and finding a life partner can be
a lot more difficult. By this age, our “perfect
partner” list has also been pretty well refined,
so expectations placed on each other may be a little
unrealistic, leading to added stress, disappointment
and a sense of failure.
We need to understand that any major change in life
is accompanied by a loss of the previous status quo.
This can be quite stressful for many, whether they recognise
this as the cause or not. We often expect too much from
ourselves, and don’t give ourselves sufficient
time to adapt to our new life situation. We also often
expect too much from of our spouse. Although any relationship
aims to meet the needs of the other party, they are
not responsible for our happiness, and we are not responsible
for theirs. In an effort to make them happy, we can
ignore our own right to happiness, and feel like we
have failed to fulfil our spouse’s needs and unfulfilled
in our own. This too can lead to feelings of self doubt
and depression.
Depression in Marriage
Depression can be the cause or result of any disruption
in marriage, whether this stems from parenting issues,
financial stress, unresolved anger, and lack of forgiveness.
Close relationships that are not respectful of individual
rights can lead to a sense of loss of ones identity
and loss of control over ones life. This leads to lack
of self worth, hopelessness and eventually depression.
It is easy to become disassociated with common goals
of a marriage, made in earlier days. When one spouse
changes in any way, the other either needs to adapt
to find a new cohesion or a gap exists between the life
paths of the two individuals. When this path becomes
sufficiently wide, if no action is taken to realign,
one partner will generally become disassociated from
the relationship. This loss of sense of connection can
result in “living together loneliness” and
depression.
Stress in Marriage
Unhappiness occurs when our expectations of ourselves
or others are not met
Stress occurs when we feel out of control in meeting
our own expectations.
Stress in Marriage has been proven to affect health.
The stress of disharmony in any relationship slows the
production of a blood protein key to healing wounds.
In a study by Ohio State University, “couples
who demonstrated consistently higher levels of hostile
behaviours…healed at 60 per cent the rate of low-hostile
couples”.
Conflict in any relationship is inevitable and healthy.
Stress occurs when the conflict is not well managed.
This takes a certain amount of skill, and there are
many resources on the Internet that provide guidance
in this area. A few examples are:
About.com
Relationships
This site includes very useful articles such as:
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