A demanding day at work may reduce feelings of love, passion, and intimacy

New research suggests that the specific pressures of daily life, rather than long-term relationship issues, play a crucial role in the fleeting nature of romantic emotions. A recent study published in the *Journal of Social and Personal Relationships*, led by Ece Yilmaz of the University of Ottawa and co-authored by Sarah C. E. Stanton of the University of Edinburgh, examines how non-relationship stress—stressors originating outside the partnership—affects the fundamental components of love, passion, and intimacy within romantic couples.

The study distinguishes between tensions that arise directly between partners and what researchers term 'non-relationship stress.' This category includes external pressures such as heavy workloads, traffic jams, family disagreements, unexpected bills, and conflicts with coworkers or friends. While these events do not stem from the relationship itself, the emotional strain they generate can seep into private life, impacting how individuals feel toward their partners on a day-to-day basis.

Scientific literature has long acknowledged that external pressures like workplace demands and financial difficulties are consistently linked to lower overall relationship satisfaction. A 2009 review highlighted these correlations, while earlier studies suggested that individuals exposed to more stressful life events become more attuned to negative behavioral changes in their partners, though this sensitivity did not extend to positive behaviors. Despite this broad understanding, previous research has paid less attention to the distinct emotional components of love, passion, and intimacy, and how they fluctuate in response to daily external stressors.

Love in this context is defined as deep emotional bonding and a desire for the other person's well-being; passion centers on physical attraction and physiological excitement; and intimacy describes the subjective sense of closeness, emotional safety, and shared vulnerability. Research from 2012 has shown that these core feelings are not static but naturally rise and fall from day to day. The current study aimed to determine whether day-to-day spikes in external hassles specifically diminish these daily feelings of love, passion, and intimacy, and whether a partner's stress crosses over to affect the other person.

The researchers recruited 100 romantic couples living in a large UK city. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 64, with an average age of about 24. The relationships lasted anywhere from three months to over 35 years. The sample comprised 87 mixed-gender couples and 13 same-gender or gender-diverse couples, with roughly 70 percent of participants being students. The study was preregistered on the Open Science Framework, ensuring transparency in materials and analysis plans.

After an initial laboratory session where participants provided background information, both partners in each couple completed brief online surveys each evening for 14 consecutive days. Before midnight, participants answered questions independently, without discussing their responses with their partners. The surveys tracked non-relationship stress using a checklist of ten common daily hassles, such as household chores, transit problems, illness, and interpersonal conflicts. Participants also rated their daily positive and negative moods using standard emotion checklists.

Crucially, participants rated how much love, passion, and closeness they felt in their relationship that day using a seven-point scale, where higher numbers indicated stronger feelings. The researchers used specialized statistical models designed for couples to analyze the data. These models allowed them to separate two distinct patterns: whether people with generally higher stress across the two weeks reported lower romantic feelings overall, and whether individuals felt less love or passion specifically on days when their stress spiked above their personal baseline.

The analyses revealed that daily fluctuations play a central role in relationship feelings. On days when an individual experienced more non-relationship stress than they typically did, their feelings of love, passion, and intimacy toward their partner were lower that evening. This association held true even when the researchers accounted for the participant's daily mood, the length of the relationship, and how connected they had felt the previous day. The statistical associations were small, with each additional hassle beyond a person's usual load linked to ratings roughly 0.04 to 0.13 points lower on the seven-point scale, though the authors note that such small daily effects could accumulate over time.

In contrast, the study found that individuals who generally carried more daily stress across the two-week period did not report significantly lower average levels of love, passion, or intimacy compared to those with less stressful lives. The authors suggest, drawing on stress-and-coping theory, that people who are routinely stressed may have developed effective coping mechanisms over time. This explains why chronic stress does not necessarily degrade the baseline quality of affection in a relationship.

“It was surprising to see that people who experience more stress than others did not report lower levels of love, passion, and intimacy,” Yilmaz explained. “This indicates that the negative effects of external stress are related to one experiencing more stress than usual and not related to their general stress level. In other words, if you are usually stressed you know how to cope with it and it does not impact your relationship as much. But if you are experiencing more stress than usual, you also feel lower love, passion, and intimacy in your relationship.”

The study also investigated 'partner effects,' or whether one person's stress negatively impacts their partner's feelings. In the primary models, a partner’s daily or average stress levels were not statistically significant direct predictors of how the other person felt. “Additionally, there were no significant partner effects,” Yilmaz noted. “This means that the external stress your partner is going through does not impact your feelings of love, passion, and intimacy in your relationship.” However, exploratory analyses found an indirect pathway: a partner’s stress was linked to the other person’s mood, which in turn was linked to romantic feelings.

Daily mood showed strong connections to relationship feelings. Worse moods were tied to lower daily passion and intimacy, while better moods were associated with higher levels of these feelings. The data supported a sequence where higher outside stress led to lower positive mood and higher negative mood, which then resulted in weaker romantic feelings. These observations align with prior investigations into momentary desire, which similarly found that higher stress in the moment is linked to lower sexual desire and arousal.

Yilmaz emphasized that the main takeaway is that stress unrelated to one’s relationship is still deeply connected to it. “If you are feeling lower love, passion, and intimacy towards your partner, this may be due to the external stress you are experiencing. And this is especially true if you are experiencing higher levels of stress than usual. These findings could be helpful for people going through stressful times to understand that the reduced feelings in their relationship might not be about their relationship as much as they think.”

The study has several limitations that contextualize its findings. The sample consisted mostly of young individuals in early-stage relationships, with an average duration of 2.8 years. Eighty-five point five percent of participants were dating rather than married or in a civil partnership, and only 38 percent lived together. The average daily love rating on the seven-point scale was roughly 6.6, indicating high overall satisfaction among participants.

Demographic diversity was also limited. Because 85.5 percent of participants were White and 80 percent identified as heterosexual, the patterns observed might differ in more diverse samples. Furthermore, since most couples reported high levels of love, the results may not extend to couples experiencing chronic relationship distress. The method of measuring stress also presents a caveat: the checklist recorded the occurrence of stressful events but did not measure the subjective intensity or overwhelming nature of those events for the individual.

Finally, because the study relied on daily diary ratings rather than experimental manipulation, the design cannot confirm direct cause and effect. It remains possible that underlying exhaustion or subtle changes in partner interactions influenced both how people perceived stress and how they rated their relationship. Alternatively, a bad day in the relationship could lead individuals to report more outside hassles, such as arguments with family. Future investigations could follow couples over longer periods to examine whether psychological resources, such as emotion regulation skills, help buffer romantic bonds against external pressures.