Imported from msn.com:
In times of stress, we look to our relationships to help us through. This may be why traffic to online dating sites spikes when the Dow falls, says Gian Gonzaga, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at eHarmony Labs and an affiliate faculty member at UCLA.
But while singles start new relationships in times of stress, people who are already coupled up may find that stress damages their couplehood. "Stress has a tendency to get under the skin of a relationship," Gonzaga says. It does this, in part, by eating away at your self-control and weakening the resources that usually stop you from, say, dropping sarcastic wisecracks on your spouse.
"Self-control functions like a muscle," says Eli Finkel, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Northwestern University. "If you've been implementing a lot of self-control in other domains, you'll have less left over for your relationship." So after you spend a day at the office trying not to say or do anything that will cost you your job, you may not have the resources left to handle even the smallest argument with your wife.
