Why you shouldn’t hide bad feelings from your spouse
While the reasons for withholding one’s bad feelings may be good, emotional suppression interferes with the growth of intimacy. It also affects how people feel about themselves, because they feel less authentic. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- They found that people in relationships hide emotions from their partners for a wide range of reasons, from not wanting to upset them to fear of conflict. Other times, people hide the emotions they fear their partner will dislike.
- While the reasons for withholding one’s bad feelings may be good, emotional suppression interferes with the growth of intimacy. It also affects how people feel about themselves, because they feel less authentic.
- A husband’s suppression of emotions, especially, was found to be a direct indicator of marital satisfaction levels both for him and for his partner.
A lot of people imagine that keeping emotions – more so the negative ones – from their significant other will help keep the relationship together.
On the surface, this argument seems to hold water because the less negative feelings there are in a relationship, the less friction there will be. Turns out that in reality, this is not what happens.
Findings of a new study suggest that the opposite is true; withholding emotions from your partner hurts the relationship. An ideal relationship, according to these findings, is where partners can express not only happiness but hurt, sadness and disappointment freely.
The study, by researchers from the University of Genoa in Italy, looked into the lives of 229 recently married heterosexual couples. Their levels of emotional suppression and subsequent marital satisfaction were looked into, first at five months of marriage and then after two years of marriage.
The study subjects were asked to say how strongly they agree with the statements, “I keep my emotions to myself” and “When I am feeling negative emotions, I am careful not to express them.”
They found that people in relationships hide emotions from their partners for a wide range of reasons, from not wanting to upset them to fear of conflict. Other times, people hide the emotions they fear their partner will dislike. For instance, one may hide their happiness at a time when their partner is feeling sad.
While the reasons for withholding one’s bad feelings may be good, emotional suppression interferes with the growth of intimacy. It also affects how people feel about themselves, because they feel less authentic. “Because suppression reduces the outer expression, but not the inner experience of emotions, individuals who continually suppress their emotions tend to feel less authentic or true to themselves,” the study author says.
A husband’s suppression of emotions, especially, was found to be a direct indicator of marital satisfaction levels both for him and for his partner. Wives, on the other hand, were found to be more sensitive to their husbands’ withholding. These findings have been published in the journal Social and Personal Relationships.
