Ch. 11: Stress and External Influences

Question 1

Why examine intimacy in context?

Answer 1

relationships matter more under stress, but function more poorly because of it
-they can smooth out the rough spots in our lives - they help us deal with daily stress better - they understand you and you understand them and you rise to the occasion of the difficult circumstances that are presented to you
we don’t just get along when things are good, we also get along when the going gets tough
we want our relationships to be a place we can go for comfort when we have to face the daily challenges of life

Question 2

Physical Symptoms of Stress

Answer 2

high proportions of people when asked “which of the following, if any, have you experienced in the last month as a result of stress?” say they HAVE experienced at least one of the following :
Irritability or anger
Fatigue
Lack of interest, motivation or energy
Feeling nervous or anxious
Headache
Feeling depressed or sad
-People are stressed, live lives that are challenging and we try to make the best of it
-people have these experiences as a result of their daily stress

Question 3

What do we do to manage stress?

Answer 3

Listen to music
exercise or walk
spend time with friends or family
read
watch television or movies for more than 2 hours per day
pray

Question 4

What are the causes of the stress we experience daily?

Answer 4

Money
Work
The Economy
Family Responsibilities
RELATIONSHIPS (spouse, kids, girl/boyfriend)
Personal Health

-one of things we want to be able to turn to for support through our stress is our relationship, but the person who can help us the most is also the person who can also annoy us the most (cause us stress)

Question 5

Stress divides us

Answer 5

Stress tells us that we need to take care of ourselves (organizes us to focus on ourselves - it divides us and in relationships that can be very costly)
-“here’s how much stress I have. I have a monkey on my back” “Oh yeah?! well I have 3 monkeys on my back!”

The way to take care of yourself is to take care of your partner
-the solution is: “We have 4 monkeys on our backs” rather than “I have 3 monkeys on my back and you have 1”

Question 6

Otherwise identical relationships will function differently depending on…

Answer 6

the niches or contexts in which they unfold
if you put one in a great setting and take an identical relationship and put them in a difficult relationship - you have 2 VERY different relationships
-when the hill starts to get steep in our relationship thats when we start to sort ourselves out
-when everyone is in a low stress environment the pace is pretty much the same for everyone
-truly fantastic people start to get away from the pack
-even though there’s a hill on this path, we’re going to accelerate (we’re going to make it through, together)

-this is why we study relationships in context!!

Question 7

Contexts and niches

Answer 7

refer to the developmental transitions, situations, incidents, and chronic and acute circumstances that spouses and couples encounter

• moving to a new job
• moving to retirement
• arrival of a child
• different situations you encounter (burglary in the neighborhood)
• all the stuff outside the immediate domain of the couple

younger couples might be dealing with new stresses for the first time

Question 8

Stresses that create big problems for couples

Answer 8

we come into a relationship

debt brought into marriage
Balancing job and marriage
in laws
financial decisions

children are also a source of stress - mostly because when a child has an issue it is an issue that needs to be solved RIGHT THEN

Question 9

debt brought into marriage

Answer 9

you have to figure out how to get rid of the debt together

Question 10

Balancing job and marriage

Answer 10

making time for communication in the midst of job demands

Question 11

in laws

Answer 11

New relationships are created
staying connected to your parents and a new negotiation of your relationship with your partners parents as well as your partner and your parents
also transitioning into parenthood yourself

Question 12

financial decisions

Answer 12

having to make these decisions with a partner

Question 13

mastering stress

Answer 13

we can’t live stress free lives - we can gain mastery over our stress - when stress comes up, we are able to manage it

“over the long haul, it’s been a long haul”

Question 14

proximal and distal factors of stress (framework for thinking about stress and relationships)

Answer 14

in the middle of the circle is the relationship - surrounded by a lot of forces that can make our relationships better or worse
-when we’re in a relationship, that relationship is embedded in a lot of different sources of influence

what our home, workplace, church, neighborhood, school is like:
-we can’t believe that our relationship is cut off from these microsystems
these elements are connected amongst themselves (mesosystem):
-people in your church may also be in your workplace
-people from your school also live in your neighborhood
how good is the environment around us:
-the school system (how bad are the teachers teaching your child)
-the media (what is the media telling you about the world)
-the economy (if the it is doing well, you have a better chance of having and keeping a job)

Every layer contains stressors AND resources (in each layer we get support and stress)
proximal forces (directly around you : eg time together - if your commuting a lot you don’t have as much time together) are shaped by distal factors (outer sources : work demands, economies)
-distal influences (eg legalization of gay marriage) operate through proximal factors (eg better health insurance for gay couples)

Going to a school in your neighborhood - your friends are probably in your neighborhood as well
Going to a school outside of your neighborhood - your parents have to drive you to your friend’s house, miles away - your neighborhood is a separate system than your school

Question 15

Urie Bronfenbrenner

Answer 15

If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us – through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment

• How do we create a society where two people are able to take care of one another
• how do you create conditions in which a parent can take care of their child

when we think about us as developing individuals or as partners in relationships, society around us creates an enabling function and we really want to be in societies where that happens a lot

Question 16

30 Days Video Clip

Answer 16

Morgan Spurlock and his girlfriend live on minimum wage for 30 days - especially hard for single working mothers

good example of how those external forces come right into the middle of our relationships

when resources are limited, your choices change and your feelings toward the person draining those resources changes
-they each have legitimate points of view about what they’re doing (buying expensive buns for his niece and nephews)

LA has a high proportion (about 45%) of renters compared to the rest of the world and the majority of their income goes to rent

• we live in a world that takes a lot of money to live
• we can really see how money can be a big source of stress and come right into the middle of the relationship

it’s cheaper for two people to live together than for one person

Question 17

How do stresses and contexts get inside our relationships?

Answer 17

by affecting:
what we talk about with our partner
when we talk to our partner
where we talk to our partner
how we talk to our partner
the resources we have for resolving our problems

we have to think about the things that are draining the resources from our relationship

Question 18

what we talk about with our partner

Answer 18

talking about the 60 cent bun - stress focuses our talk about the stress

Question 19

when we talk to our partner

Answer 19

our work strains can influence when we get to talk to our partner

Question 20

where we talk to our partner

Answer 20

from “30 Day” - they had the conversation about the expensive buns at the grocery store

Question 21

how we talk to our partner

Answer 21

it affects the emotional tone

• someone who has a great job is going to come home feeling different than someone who’s job is exhausting
• they need something different from their partner at the end of the day because these are very different experiences

Question 22

the resources we have for resolving our problems

Answer 22

under a lot of stress and connected to other people who are dealing with a lot of stress
when a transportation strike comes up one couple might say “oh that’s ok we’ll just use our second car that’s in the garage”
another couple might say “I’ll try to get a ride with my brother but it means I have to leave at 5 AM to get to work on time - that means you have to bring the kids to school at 7 but that will make you late for work and your boss may fire you”
-the stresses pile up

Question 23

acute stress from work to home (Repetti 1989)

Answer 23

acute stress can ‘spill over’ from work to home.
a diary study by Repetti (1989) showed that objectively stressful work conditions increase self and partner reports of ATC withdrawal at home

they were reporting how disengaged the husband was after these stressful days
when the weather was bad and more planes needed to be landing, the husbands were coming home with more stress
this is consistent with the idea that stress is invisible
-the women aren’t attributing their husbands’ mood to work stress they are just wondering why they are moody

Question 24

stresss Spill over

Answer 24

stuff that you’re dealing with comes with you into a new situation

Question 25

stress Cross over

Answer 25

stress and mood can be contagious!

-I would now be responding to your mood - your partner comes home in a bad mood so you are now in a bad mood

Question 26

Karney and Colleagues - Acute Stress Matters!

Answer 26

find that acute stress leads people to ‘see’ more problems in their relationship and to process them in less adaptive ways. Satisfaction fluctuates accordingly

• we’re much more critical of our partner when we’re under acute stress - we are less likely to attribute their behavior to something they may be going through
• the amount of stress we’re under determines how we aren’t as capable of generating these explanations for their behavior (how you interpret your partner’s stress)
• our cognitive options change and become less effective when we’re under more and more stress
• as your acute stress goes up, your satisfaction goes down
• your relationships fluctuate because you’re dealing with more things

Question 27

Chronic stress and acute stress

Answer 27

Acute stress is especially likely to harm relationships when Chronic stress is high

Cutrona (2003) used census data to show that neighborhood disadvantage decreased warmth in couples’ conversations (less effective in their conversations)
-couples who are embedded in relationships that have more resources have better conversations than people who have more difficulty (this may be selection effect)

Question 28

how can we be smart about stress in our relationships?

Answer 28

get stress on your radar - respect it!
value your ability to soothe your partner
teach your partner what it means to soothe you
understand that ‘stress is a test’ in relationships: learn about your relationship from seeing how you and your partner manage stress

Question 29

Tesser and Beach Study

Answer 29

proposed that stress outside of a relationship might
have complex and indirect effects on judgments of the relationship.
Low levels of external stress can easily escape our awareness, but they make us irritated and put us in a bad mood, affecting the way we evaluate anything, including our relationship
At higher levels of external stress, however, the cause of the stress becomes more obvious, and we are able to compensate for the effects of the stressor

• people do correct for the effects of their mood on their judgments, if they are reminded that their mood can have this effect
• this sort of correcting takes effort, and when people are extremely stressed or distracted, they might be unable to correct their judgments even if they want to.

Their Study:
estimated stress spillover in three samples of people experiencing varying levels of stressful life events: mothers with adolescent children, eighth-grade students, and newlywed couples
In all three samples, they found evidence of the changes in
judgment they expected
At the lowest and highest levels of stress, there was a clear correlation between external stress and evaluations of the
relationship (parent–child relationships for the mothers and eighth-graders, marital relationship for the newlyweds)
The more stress experienced, the more negative the evaluations of the relationship.
Somewhere in the middle, however, there was a point in each sample when the relationship between stress and evaluations o the relationship dropped sharply.
This is the point, the researchers argued, that the stressors in people’s lives are obvious enough to be within awareness but not so overwhelming that spouses lose their ability to correct for their stress

Question 30

Chronic Stress

Answer 30

always there, day in and day out (long term)
those aspects of the environment that are relatively stable and enduring.
-job with wage below what you need to live on
-taking care of child or parent with an illness

Question 31

Acute Stress

Answer 31

have a very clear onset and offset (short term)

• taking an exam
• taking a stressful trip

Question 32

social ecological model of development

Answer 32

Urie Bronfenbrenner
depicts the context of a relationship as a series of concentric rings radiating outward

Important to this model is the idea that elements of the context can be organized according to how directly they affect the couple
-Contextual elements that are parts of the couple’s immediate environment, and therefore affect them most
directly, comprise the proximal context
-forces in the environment with which the couple has no direct contact, the elements that are more removed from them, are known as the distal context

the amount of time partners have to spend together (an element of the proximal context) is directly affected by the demands of working outside the home (an element of the distal context).
Those demands will be constrained by the employment opportunities and childcare resources available in the neighborhood (even more distal), which will in turn be shaped by the economic conditions of the state and the country (still more distal)

Question 33

social networks

Answer 33

the families, friendships, neighborhoods, clubs, and institutions to which those two individuals are connected

Question 34

Alexis and Steve

Answer 34

married 28 years
2 times in marriage where had financial problems (1981, 1991)
-lost 1/3 of tenants overnight
-everything they spent 10 years to build was gone
-this isn’t getting better this is getting worse
-if you have someone there (a partner) helping and supporting you it makes getting through the hard times much easier
-she could’ve blamed him for their troubles but she knew he was working hard - that they were doing everything they possibly could to help their situation
-because she knew God had done it she was able to love Steve more
-regularity to meet for dinner - the little things that get you through the day
-it could even be difficult to have sex and they made themselves have an intimacy level that helped to heal
-they worked at it
-they spend 24/7 together but none of it was quality time and they needed to take the time to do that
-he had a stroke and she helped him to understand that he did his best and that the only thing that matters to her is HIM
-when you don’t have your health, nothing else matters

Question 35

Low income couples vs more affluent couples

Answer 35

Women who have less than a high school education or who live in low-income neighborhoods are as likely as, or slightly more likely than, more affluent women to marry by the time they are 30
-Yet rates of divorce for low-income women are nearly twice as high for women who live in low-income neighborhoods compared to those in high-income neighborhoods
-marriages end earlier in low-income neighborhoods than in more affluent neighborhoods
-Even among marriages that remain intact, low-income spouses report significantly higher levels of marital distress than do middle- or high-income spouses
-low-income couples are four times more likely to have their first child before getting married, and they
have additional children more rapidly after marriage as well

yet:
poorer men and women report more positive attitudes toward the institution of marriage, and less approval for di-
vorce than wealthier men and women

Question 36

Obstacles for low-income mothers

Answer 36

despite their strong desire to get married eventually, low-income mothers see several reasons why marriage might involve more costs than benefits, especially relative to the available alternatives:

• affordability
• fear of divorce
• fear of losing independence and autonomy
• fear of domestic violence

even though these women believed that marriage before
children was ideal, it was not perceived as practical given their situations

Question 37

affordability

Answer 37

most important obstacle
an absolute requirement for marriage is that the man
contributes economically to the household
The men available to them may not be employed in jobs that pay enough to support children, or might not be able to nd employment at all

Question 38

fear of divorce

Answer 38

want marriage to mean marriage for life
given the economic burdens they currently faced, they felt any marriage would probably collapse under the strain, and this was a risk they were unwilling to take

Question 39

fear of losing independence and autonomy

Answer 39

within the context of their considerable financial constraints, a great deal of autonomy and control over their own lives
they expressed the belief that they would lose that control if they got married
For mothers who are already supporting themselves, the expectation that they should defer to a husband who may not be contributing to the family financially is simply unacceptable

Question 40

fear of domestic violence

Answer 40

far more often with white women than African American women, marriage meant the threat of physical abuse, and that is something they were unwilling to accept

Question 41

relationship Challenges in low-income Communities

Answer 41

personal challenges quite apart from maintaining a relationship with another person:
-more likely than those in more affluent communities to experience significant health problems
-partners in poor couples generally have less formal education than more affluent partners
-more likely to have been raised in a single-parent
home and to have been exposed to physical and sexual abuse during childhood
-rates of psychopathology, criminal behavior, and substance abuse are all higher in low-income communities than in more affluent communities

relationship challenges:
-low-income couples may benefit from extended families and well-developed social and religious networks but these networks can be a further drain on couples as well
-As a result of demands outside the home, poor couples usually have less time to spend together (married women with children who work nights chances of divorce three times higher than women who work the same
amount of time during the day; married men with children who work nights chances of divorce are six times higher) - When they do have time to talk, they are likely to have diffcult things to discuss
-low-income families are unable to devote time to taking care of their children, attending school meetings, or catching up with each other’s lives because they are unable to choose when their free time will be