Working Through Stressful Times With Your Partner

Everyone experiences periods of stress. Those periods are made better when you have someone in your life to vent to and work through stress with. However, it’s also true that your partner might not always understand where you’re coming from. When it becomes hard for you to communicate your feelings and for your partner to understand them, you need to begin the real work. Below are some examples of the many stressful times you will face throughout life, along with the conversations on how to work through stress with your partner.

Living Through Historical Events

While living through a historical moment or event is nothing we ever plan on experiencing, it is something that we find happening to us more and more frequently. Whether it’s record-producing weather events, a global pandemic or Wall Street turmoil, we have seen it all recently and each of these events can separately take their toll. When they’re all happening at the same time, the stress can be even more taxing. 

Especially now that we’re officially a year into dealing with COVID-19, many of us are experiencing and working on combating pandemic fatigue. It’s extremely important to remember that we aren’t alone or experiencing these events alone. While you and your partner might be craving interaction with other people, you should also be leaning on each other for support. This is a great time to sit down once a week, or more if needed, put all distractions away and have an honest conversation with each other about how you’re coping and how to better support one another. When you work through stressful times together it can improve your relationship.

Coming Up With a Financial Plan

Dealing with your finances can be one of the largest stressors in your life. It can also be one of the biggest pain points in a relationship. Especially when so many people are facing financial insecurity due to changes brought on by the pandemic, financial stress can be unavoidable even if you were comfortable a short time ago. 

This is when developing a financial plan comes in handy, especially when doing it as a couple. A big part of this is setting a financial or life milestone goal for yourselves, and setting a realistic path to getting there. For example, buying a home is one of the largest and most stressful financial decisions you’ll make. If your goal is to buy a home, you need to first understand the buying process, then take a look at your own finances to understand how much house you can afford based on your collective income, and then work toward saving enough to make it a reality. This can be accomplished by talking about what you both want financially and then coming up with an easy-to-follow budget that you both agree on.

Expanding Your Family

Making the decision to expand your family isn’t an easy one. Societal norms tell us that we should want kids right away; the reality is that isn’t always what’s best for us or even possible. The stress that accompanies the decision that you’re ready to expand your family is one that you should definitely be tackling with your partner, since this is a joint decision. 

It is also especially true when one or both of you faces fertility issues or are having issues adjusting to being parents. When it comes to fertility issues, there are often feelings of lack of control and unworthiness. This is when you can and should lean on your partner for reassurance as you both look for viable solutions. For issues adjusting to your new status as parents, it’s important to remember that baby blues and postpartum depression in women are very real and those dealing with them should be given both the attention and care they deserve. 

Making a Career Change

Deciding that your career is no longer working for you can be a very hard and stressful realization to have. However, once you work through stress brought about during this time, it can also be very enlightening and gratifying. Still, there are steps you should take to work through your thoughts and feelings when it comes to switching careers. 

Talking to your partner when this is something you want to do is crucial. Your decision will impact both of your lives, and thus you want your career change to be successful especially if you need to go back to school or could be facing a significant change in compensation. You need to have an honest conversation about the sacrifices and changes you’ll need to make during this transition period. 

Facing Loss

Losing someone you love is shocking, stressful, frustrating, terrifying and sorrowful all at the same time. It’s a lot of emotion hitting you all at once, while also coming to terms with having to say goodbye to your loved one. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid going through this and it is something we will all have to experience multiple times in our lives. 

Having someone there who knows you better than anyone else and knows your needs is a blessing when facing loss. You can rely on them to take on the things you cannot handle as you cope with your loss and work through the multitude of feelings you have. They can also be there when your grief is too much for you and you need someone to let it out to, or can help you realize you need a qualified opinion to help you cope. When it’s a loss that you’re both experiencing together, you can lean on one another then too and know that you share the feelings you’re experiencing.

Focusing On Mental Health

Working through any feelings you have can be stressful. Especially when you cannot always accurately describe how or why you feel a certain way. This is when practicing mindfulness becomes important. By having mindfulness be something that you and your partner both practice, you can be more in tune with one another and more easily understand how to help when life’s stressors impact your partner. We all want our loved ones to be ok, and we all want to be understood and supported by our partners in turn. Understanding and compassion can help you work through stress related to mental health. By making each other’s mental health a priority and something that you regularly talk about even when things are good, you’re putting each other in a better position for help and understanding, especially during the hard times.