Emotion regulation in couples: what helps when feelings run high

By EQTiger Editorial. Review status: needs-expert-review. Qualified review is pending; the review date records an editorial check. This is general education for adults, not therapy or couples counseling, and EQTiger does not diagnose anyone, including your partner.

Two ways to handle a feeling in the moment

Emotion researchers often compare two strategies. Suppression means keeping a feeling from showing: holding your face still, keeping your voice flat, swallowing the reaction. Reappraisal means changing how you interpret the situation so the feeling itself shifts: "He's not dismissing me, he's exhausted and bad at this when tired."

Both can look calm from outside. They are not equivalent between partners.

What the experiments found

Memory during conflict. Jane Richards, Emily Butler and James Gross asked dating couples to discuss a relationship conflict while one partner was instructed to reappraise or to suppress (Richards, Butler, and Gross, 2003). Reappraising improved memory for what was actually said. Suppressing reduced memory for the conversation and increased memory for the person's own emotional reactions. In plain terms: if you spend a fight holding your face still, you may walk away remembering how angry you were rather than what your partner said.

Effects on the other person. Emily Butler and colleagues paired women who did not know each other to discuss an upsetting topic, with one randomly assigned to suppress, reappraise or respond naturally (Butler and colleagues, 2003). Suppressing disrupted communication, reduced rapport, made it harder for the pair to connect, and raised the blood pressure of the conversation partner. The partners were strangers and all women, so the effect in long-term couples may differ, but it suggests that hiding a feeling is not a private act.

Hiding feelings while giving things up. Emily Impett and colleagues studied dating couples in a lab discussion, a 14-day diary and a three-month follow-up (Impett and colleagues, 2012). When people suppressed their emotions while making sacrifices for a partner, both partners reported lower well-being and relationship quality, and the suppressors reported lower satisfaction and more thoughts of breaking up three months later. The daily part measured suppression rather than assigning it, so it shows a link rather than proof.

The 21-minute study

The most practical finding comes from Eli Finkel and colleagues, who followed 120 married couples for two years (Finkel and colleagues, 2013). In the second year, half were randomly assigned to a 21-minute intervention to help them reappraise conflict. A summary of the study describes it as three 7-minute online writing exercises about the couple's most recent disagreement, written from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for everyone involved (Association for Psychological Science, 2013). Comparison couples showed the typical decline in marital quality over the year. Couples who did the reappraisal writing did not, partly because they felt less distressed about conflict.

The study is encouraging precisely because it is small and cheap. Its limits are that it is one sample of 120 couples followed for a year after the intervention, so long-term effects are unknown (Finkel and colleagues, 2013).

Regulating with each other

Couples do not only regulate themselves; they regulate each other. Jamil Zaki and W. Craig Williams describe interpersonal emotion regulation as the ways people use others to manage feelings, their own or someone else's (Zaki and Williams, 2013). Calming down with a partner's help can be one of the benefits of a close relationship, and it is also why a partner who escalates can make your own regulation much harder.

Attachment patterns appear to shape this. A review by Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver summarizes evidence that attachment anxiety and avoidance relate to different ways of handling distress (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2019), roughly, turning up the search for closeness versus turning down feelings and keeping distance. The review is written by two of the field's main proponents, so read it as a summary of their framework.

A reappraisal you can actually use

Reappraisal is easier with a script. Three questions work for most everyday fights:

• "What else could explain what they did, besides the worst version?"
• "Will this matter in a month? In a year?"
• "What would I tell a friend who described this exact argument to me?"

Say Tomás comes home to find his partner has not called the landlord about the leak, again. The suppression version is silence and a tight jaw. The reappraisal version sounds like: "He had a brutal week and he hates phone calls. That doesn't make the leak okay, but it's not about me." Then he can still say, "Can you call tomorrow by noon, or should I?" Reappraisal changes the heat, not the request.

When the body takes over

Sometimes neither strategy is available because you are too physiologically aroused. In a four-year study of 73 married couples, Gottman and Levenson linked poorly regulated interactions with more stubbornness, withdrawal and defensiveness, lower satisfaction and greater risk of separation (Gottman and Levenson, 1992). The Gottman Institute describes "flooding", the state in which high arousal makes it hard to hear your partner, and recommends around twenty minutes of something calming before trying again (The Gottman Institute, 2013). That figure is practitioner guidance rather than a result from a cited trial, but taking a real break is a reasonable regulation strategy when reappraisal is out of reach.

What the research cannot tell you

• That suppression is always harmful. Briefly holding back a reaction can be the right choice, for example in front of children or a boss. The studies concern habitual or instructed suppression during emotional conversations.
• That reappraisal means excusing. Rethinking "he did this to hurt me" as "he was careless" is useful only if it is true. Reappraisal is not talking yourself out of a real problem.
• Anything about unsafe relationships. Managing your own feelings is not a strategy for living with threats or control. If you are afraid, the issue is safety.

How to use this

1. During a fight, notice when you are holding your face still. That is a cue to name the feeling briefly instead: "I'm getting frustrated, give me a second."
2. Try the neutral-observer question. "How would someone who cares about both of us describe this argument?" It is the core of the 21-minute exercise.
3. Do the writing exercise after your next disagreement. Seven minutes, three questions: what a neutral observer would see, what gets in the way of taking that view, and how you could take it next time.
4. Take a real break when flooded. Name it and give a return time. See calling a time-out mid-argument.
5. Do not pressure a partner to stop showing feelings. Their suppression may cost you both. See when your partner won't talk about feelings.

Key studies

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