pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5467745/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">invaluable resource for people dealing with chronic pain, but a new study from researchers in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies demonstrated that relationship closeness for couples in which one partner is dealing with chronic back pain may have both positive and negative effects. This understanding could lead to interventions to help improve communication between partners for couples coping with chronic pain, the researchers said.
"Relationship satisfaction doesn't correlate highly with relationship closeness - satisfying relationships might not be very close, and vice versa," said lead researcher Lynn Martire, professor of human development and family studies and faculty affiliate with the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State. "This idea of emotional closeness could be especially important in understanding how couples deal with chronic pain."
Findings from the study, published in the journal Health Psychology, suggest that emotional closeness between couples dealing with chronic pain led to more marital satisfaction on days when the couple felt closer. However, on emotionally close days, the partner of the pain-affected person also experienced more distress.
The researchers collected twice-daily surveys over 30 days from 147 couples who were at least 50 years of age and had one partner who suffered from chronic back pain. Using the couples' answers to questions about distress and relationship closeness, as well as reports of pain severity from the pain-affected partner, the researchers examined how emotional, behavioral and cognitive closeness affected the quality of couples' daily interactions in the context of chronic back pain.
Emotional closeness is how much partners share their thoughts and feelings with each other, including feelings of pain or discomfort. Behavioral closeness is the extent to which couples do things together. And cognitive closeness is the overlap between partners who see themselves as sharing a lot of behaviors and perspectives.
Overall, prior research shows that these measures of closeness are associated with many positive and beneficial relationship outcomes, including higher levels of commitment and satisfaction and a lower risk for ending the relationship. However, the findings from this study suggest that closeness may also more easily transfer negative emotions and physical symptoms between partners.
Martire and her collaborators found that emotional closeness had both the positive impact of greater satisfaction in marital interactions on emotionally close days, but also the negative impact of greater distress for the non-pain-affected person on emotionally close days.
In other words, the pain-affected partners' experiences of pain - including the severity of the pain, catastrophizing or anticipating greater pain, or the amount that pain interferes with daily activities - correlated with the non-pain-affected partner's levels of distress.
"Couples have to find a balance that is ideal for them in in managing closeness versus independence - this is true for all couples, not just those dealing with the impacts of chronic pain," Martire said. "But for those dealing with chronic pain, we can help them learn how to balance the benefits of closeness with minimizing shared distress stemming from a chronic condition."
This is the first finding from the study, and the team is continuing to investigate the roles of behavioral and cognitive closeness.
According to Martire, the findings suggest that interventions could be developed to help couples find a balance between closeness and protect couples from causing greater pain and distress to each other.
"I'm excited to dive deeper into the other research questions we can examine from this data set," Martire said. "We gathered data using different measures of relationship closeness, how they differ between patients and partners and how relationship closeness changes over time. We are poised to learn a great deal about the impact of pain on couples."
Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester; John Felt, assistant research professor with the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State; and Yan Huang, graduate student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and trainee affiliate with the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State, also contributed to this research.
The National Institutes of Health funded this research.
