Complaining to partner about your bad day can bring you both closer, study says

Complaining to your partner about your bad day can bring you closer in the long term, a study suggests.

Researchers wanted to find out whether sharing everyday hassles and disappointments has any long-term positive or negative effects on cohabiting couples’ relationships.

The researchers, at the University of Jena in Germany, recruited 100 heterosexual couples living in Berlin. Half were aged 20-30 and the other half were aged 70-80. About half (51 per cent) of them were married.

At the beginning of the study, both people in each cohabiting couple were asked to rate how close they felt their relationship was, and then took part in a diary study over the course of three weeks.

They completed a survey on their phone six times a day and were asked to note whether they had recently experienced something that they “personally judged” as “very unpleasant” – such as oversleeping or a “recent fight” – and if they had told their partner about it.

They also rated the extent to which they felt negative emotions – such as anger, disappointment and anxiety – and how close they felt to their partner at the time.

Then, 2.5 years later, the couples were again asked to rate the closeness of their relationship.

In conclusion, they said that sharing bad experiences with a partner appears to bring couples of all ages closer in the short and long-term, even if it had conflicting effects on the men’s and women’s moods.

The researchers found that only the men felt less negative after complaining to their partners compared with not sharing their feelings at all – a finding that the researchers said was “contrary to expectations” as it was “at odds with previous evidence”.

Women did not have the same positive reaction when expressing their own frustrations to their partners.

But researchers found that the women reported more negative moods when their vexed partners recounted their bad experiences to them, and that hearing about their partner’s bad day made them feel sad.

This increased negativity felt by the female partners is what the researchers suggested was akin to shouldering an “emotional burden”, and is something shown by previous studies.

They wrote in their report: “Disclosing daily hassles is effective in creating closeness among the relationship partners – both in the moment and over time.

“These effects of sustained interpersonal enhancement may explain why people so frequently share bad news with others, despite the mixed bag of affective costs and benefits that this implies.”

The study has been published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.