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Relationship Stress Shuts Down Women’s Connection to Others

When things are bad in personal relationships, research has shown that its effects cause women to withdraw from social interaction in its many forms. Women become more closed off, shortchanging your friends, co-workers and loved ones. And others can feel it. It is important to point out that this pattern did not result -- at all -- from work-related stress, just relationship stress.

These facts are gathered from medical studies, which examined hundreds of women who had suffered acute coronary heart events (heart attacks, severe arrhythmias, strokes, etc.). While the researchers were originally looking for physical damage from relationship stress, they found this behavioral factor (of women withdrawing from social interaction) to be strongly active.

Relationship Stress Equals Marital Stress

By the way, what we are terming relationship stress is always termed, in research, martial stress. Whether the couple are married or not has been proven to be irrelevant – the issues are the same. So if you’re cohabitating with someone, this data applies to you!

Marital stress has been linked with: less social integration, a lower sense of belonging and less tangible support. Since we are all beings with a strong need of social connection, (an instinctual need proven to be a prime requirement for our mental and physical health), a lowered sense of belonging is a destructive state of emotional stress proven to create widespread damage to many internal organs. (Consult these articles: Harmful Effects of Emotional Stress, More Negative Effects of Stress, New Negative Findings About Stress, Toxic Emotions Can Kill You for specific details.)

In addition, the research showed that these negative effects from relationship stress affected women across the board, regardless of age and socioeconomic status (education and occupational status).

Positive Romantic Love Brings Benefits

Through ongoing medical research, we now know that feeling romantic love with a partner deactivates a related set of regions in the brain that are associated with negative emotions and critical social judgment and reinforces positive brain functions of the reward circuitry process.

It is important to note here that although the study did not show shutdown of social integration among men, there are more devastating health effects among men than women.

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Sources: Social Relations in Women with Coronary Heart Disease: the Effects of Work and Marital Stress Journal of Cardiovascular Risk 2003 Jun;10(3):201-6 The Neurobiology of Love FEBS letters 2007 Jun 12;581(14) Negative Aspects of Close Relationships and Heart Disease Archives of Internal Medicine 2007 Oct;8:167 (18) 1951-7