Is Love Gone or Are You Stressed? Examining Daily Associations Between Non-relationship Stress and Love, Passion, and Intimacy in Couple Relationships

Non-relationship stress refers to external stressors that originate outside of the romantic relationship and can include heavy workload, financial problems, conflict with colleagues, and more. Non-relationship stress is related to lower relationship satisfaction; however, other important variables, such as love, passion and intimacy, have not been thoroughly examined in this context. The objective of this preregistered study was to examine the links between daily non-relationship stress and feelings of love, passion, and intimacy. Using a 14-day daily experience dataset of 100 couples, we hypothesized that on days when a person’s (actor effect) and their partner’s (partner effect) non-relational stress is higher (vs. lower), their own love, passion, and intimacy would be lower that day compared to other individuals (between-person effects) and their typical levels (within-person effects). We expected these patterns to hold controlling for daily mood, relationship duration, and prior-day levels of the outcome. However, our confirmatory models revealed that only one’s greater non-relationship stress predicted one’s lower feelings of love, passion, and intimacy. Implications of these results for researchers and professionals working with couples are discussed.