According to a new study featured on ScienceDaily.com, making small sacrifices for your partner may be a positive thing, but doing so on days when you feel stressed may be more harmful to the relationship.

A team led by University of Arizona research scientist Casey Totenhagen surveyed a selection of 164 married and unmarried couples who have been together for anywhere from six months to 44 years about the sacrifices they made in their respective relationships as well as how they felt about them

The couples were then asked to rate how committed they felt they were to their partners, how content they were in the relationship, and how close they felt to their loved ones.

Results showed that participants who made sacrifices reported feeling a deeper sense of commitment to their partners. However, the study also revealed that small sacrifices done on stressful days did not make the participants fulfilled and happy.

"It's really important that couples work on coping with those daily stressors as they occur, before they have a chance to build up," Totenhagen says. "Even if I had stressful experiences that didn't involve my partner, it can still impact my partner, so it might be beneficial for us to work on those together."


(Photo by epSos.de via Flickr Creative Commons)