By Audrey Chu
This blog is a summary of our published article:
Hill, T. G., Allsop, D. B., Bagnell, K.B., & Rosen, N. O. (2025). Love in the face of loss: Associations between self-compassion, compassionate love, and sexual and relationship satisfaction in couples experiencing a recent pregnancy loss. Journal of Happiness Studies, 26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-025-00880-w
How pregnancy loss can affect couples
The experience of a pregnancy loss is a very distressing event and may lead to an adjustment period for couples. During this experience, couples often report strain on their sexual and relationship satisfaction.
Self-compassion refers to a personal trait which promotes facing your suffering with kindness, mindfulness, and a sense of shared humanity. It helps you respond better to both your own and your partner’s needs during tough times. Compassionate love focuses on caring for a partner, especially in times of need, and involves tenderness and concern. Unlike self-compassion, it’s outwardly directed and linked to greater relationship and sexual satisfaction due to increased responsiveness to a partner’s needs. Self-compassion and compassionate love can both support couples during difficult times.
What did we want to know?
We wanted to know how compassion, a mental health promotion tool, may help couples going through this adjustment period. We examined how self-compassion and compassionate love impact sexual and relationship issues in couples who are experiencing pregnancy loss.
What did we do?
We collected data from 138 couples living in either Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia who had experienced a pregnancy loss in the previous 4 months.
The couples were tasked with completing various surveys about their self-compassion, compassion for their partner, and their sexual and relationship satisfaction.
Photo by Maria Orlova on Pexels
What did we find?
Self-compassion was not significantly linked to sexual or relationship satisfaction for either partner after controlling for other factors. However, compassionate love—especially when expressed by the person who had been pregnant—was linked to higher sexual and relationship satisfaction for both partners. For non-pregnant partners, compassionate love was only associated with their own relationship satisfaction.
What does this mean & what should we take away from this?
Compassionate love, more than self-compassion, seems to be more helpful for staying close and connected after pregnancy loss. The results suggest that showing care and kindness toward a partner could be a good way to help couples heal emotionally and strengthen their relationship, especially during this difficult time.
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels
References
[1] American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Association.
[2] Parish, S. J., & Hahn, S. R. (2016). Hypoactive sexual desire disorder: A review of epidemiology, biopsychology, diagnosis, and treatment. Sexual Medicine Reviews, 4(2), 103–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sxmr.2015.11.009
[3] Rosen, N. O., Dubé, J. P., Corsini-Munt, S., & Muise, A. (2019). Partners experience consequences, too: A comparison of the sexual, relational, and psychological adjustment of women with sexual interest/arousal disorder and their partners to control couples. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 16(1), 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.10.018
