By Kaitlin Myers & Grace Wang
This blog is a summary of our published article:
Wang, G. A., Belu, C. F., Allsop, D. B., & Rosen, N. O. (2025). Interpersonal emotion regulation during relationship conflict: Daily and longitudinal associations with couples’ sexual well-being. Emotion, 25(2), 397–409. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001400
How couples manage each other’s emotions (in conflict)
Every relationship will experience conflict [1]. How couples cope with conflict can make a positive or negative impacts on their relationship and their sexual well-being. Sexual well-being includes someone’s sexual satisfaction, their sexual desire, and how much sexual distress someone experiences.
Couples can use extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies that aim to influence the emotions of another person to manage the conflict in their relationship [2]. Responses can include:
- Responsiveness, such as giving caring validation to their partner
- Cognitive support, such as helping their partner plan to solve a problem
- Physical presence, such as using nonverbal communication
- Hostility, such as being invalidating or dismissive [3].
But does the strategies a partner chooses impact their relationship’s sexual well-being?
What did we want to know?
We wanted to know if the extent to which someone perceived specific IER strategies (i.e., responsiveness, cognitive support, physical presence, and hostility) from their partner in relation to a relationship conflict they had experienced that day was associated with their own and their partner’s sexual satisfaction, desire, and distress.
Additionally, does the effect hold up in the long-term? In other words, does IER have implications for couples’ sexual well-being over time?
What did we do?
We had 122 couples that were in committed relationships for 6 months or longer fill out diaries every night before bed for 28 days. Couples individually would report their sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, and their sexual distress. On days when conflict happened, couples would individually report what IER strategy they perceived their partner to use. Four months later, we had the couple report their sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, and sexual distress to assess how the effects hold over time. We also made sure that the participant’s age, their relationship duration, and how often they had sex didn’t factor into the results.
What did we find?
Responsiveness
On days when conflict happened and someone thought their partner was being responsive by using caring validation or trying to listen to them more than on average, they reported feeling more sexually satisfied, and their partner reported feeling higher sexual desire. When women thought of their partner to be using more responsiveness, their partners reported feeling more sexually distressed. But this link did not show up for men when they thought their partner was using a responsiveness IER strategy.
Cognitive support
When someone thought their partner used more cognitive support more than normal on conflict days, they reported feeling more sexual desire and their partner reported higher sexual satisfaction. When women perceived their partner to be using cognitive support strategies more than usual on conflict days their partner reported more sexual distress, but this was not found to be the case with men.
Physical presence
When someone thought of their partner as using physical presence by providing physical comfort or nonverbal communication on conflict days both partners reported enhanced sexual desire, one’s own enhanced sexual satisfaction, and enhanced sexual desire four months later.
Hostility
When someone thought of their partner as using hostile means to influence their emotions such as being invalidating or holding resentment on conflict days, they reported lower sexual satisfaction and desire. However, hostile IER responses had no effect on the partners sexually satisfaction or desire.
What does this mean?
When someone perceives their partner to be using responsiveness, cognitive support, or physical presence IER strategies to impact their emotional experience, it can lead to enhanced sexual satisfaction and desire rather than if they were to use hostile ways to influence their emotions. Only perceived physical presence was linked to increased sexual desire 4 months later, which presents a hopeful message for couples.
Both cognitive support and responsiveness perceive responses affected the partner using IER by enhancing their sexual distress. These findings could help couples know which interpersonal emotion regulation strategies to use when experiencing conflict to enhance their sex lives, thus helping build and maintain a healthy relationship.
References
[1] Fincham, F. D., & Beach, S. R. H. (1999). Conflict in marriage: Implications for working with couples. Annual Review of Psychology, 50(1), 47–77.
[2] Niven, K. (2017). The four key characteristics of interpersonal emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 89–93. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.015
[3] Swerdlow, B. A., & Johnson, S. L. (2022). The Interpersonal Regulation Interaction Scale (IRIS): A multistudy investigation of receivers’ retrospective evaluations of interpersonal emotion regulation interactions. Emotion, 22(6), 1119–1136. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000927
