Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Last Show with David Cooper, where we apply quantum mechanical psychoanalytical astrotherapy to your problems.
Chapter 2: What are on-again, off-again relationships and their emotional toll?
On-again, off-again romantic relationships. They're dramatic, they're exciting, but do they take a toll on your mental health? Well, a new study shows that all that breaking up and making up may cause you a lot of stress, and that stress can even show up in your body. I am here with someone who has worked on that research.
She is a communication studies professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her name is Renee Daly. Renee, thanks for coming on to the show. Thanks for your interest in this research. So on again, off again relationships. Are we talking about romantic drama or are we talking about something that kind of functions more like a chronic stress condition? Well, there can be drama, definitely.
But we characterize these as kind of a chronic stressor in the study that we were looking at. Now, they get a lot of good press for being exciting.
Chapter 3: How do on-again, off-again relationships function as chronic stressors?
People talk about what it's like to break up and get back together. They're explosive. There's lots of emotion. They kind of get told as like romantic tales in common media portrayals. Is that how they end up functioning when you actually look at them? We do find pretty much consistently across the research that they have lower relational quality and perhaps more volatile dynamics.
So if you look at satisfaction, they have less satisfaction. They have more uncertainty about the relationship. They have more conflict and they have more aggression. So their fluctuations are probably a lot more extreme than perhaps what we would consider a traditional relationship. Now, how often do they actually happen? I have been in one.
What number or what percentage of adults are actually in a kind of cyclical relationship like this? At any current time, if you ask people, does your current relationship have this on-again, off-again history, about 20% to 25% will say yes. If you ask about past relationships, a little bit more, maybe a third will say that they've had this cycling history to their relationship.
But we found across lots of different samples that maybe up to two-thirds of us have experienced at least one of these relationships in our relational history. So they are extremely common. Now you mentioned the phrase chronic stressor. What makes this kind of relationship a chronic stressor? Is it the instability? Is it the potential conflict?
Is it the emotional difficulties that occur within them? Yeah, it's probably all of the above. I think we call it a chronic stressor because of the problematic interaction patterns that they have and they do report more relational stress. So we feel like it's kind of just a constant chronic stressor for them throughout their relational trajectory.
So in this particular study, we were interested in kind of linking the number of cycles that they've had, how much relational stress they have, and then how that was related to their mental health outcomes, as well as some physical outcomes. So we're kind of just looking at, do you have sleeping problems or do you have more headaches? So we looked at how that was all linked together.
Well, I've been told and I've looked into it and I've spoken to researchers about stress and long-term stress not being good for you, but I've never looked at it from this lens of on-again, off-again relationship. So what can happen to you? What can the stress of these things do to you physically, mentally? Really great question. And we've only tapped into a little bit of it.
So we are initially just looking at self-reports of these symptoms, mental and physical health symptoms. And we did find that cyclical partners reported these more often than non-cyclical partners. We do know from previous research, there's a lot of great research going on with like physiological systems and knowing what those chronic stressors that relational stress has on the body.
So those researchers would probably be better at answering that question. But we were interested in kind of looking how these more problematic interaction patterns that conflict and aggression were related to the relational stress that they're feeling. Just kind of like I feel tension in the relationship. It feels like it's an up and down roller coaster.
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Chapter 4: What percentage of adults experience cyclical relationships?
And we do find with these partners that they tend to slide into decisions more rather than really taking time to say, OK, what didn't work before? Why were we having so much conflict or why weren't we on the same page? So I think for anybody who's thinking about maybe, well, should I get back together or should I not?
Are checking in with a partner, having a conversation and saying, are we on the same page? Do we have the same goals? And are we getting back because we really want to be in the relationship and we really feel positively towards each other? Or is it because we feel obligated? Are we doing it because we have constraints? So we know with more cycles, you kind of accumulate more constraints.
So like maybe you're more financially tied or maybe you have children together. So you really have to ask yourselves, like, why is it that we're getting back together and making sure you're on the same page? I know I sort of just said, let's put the aggression factor to the side for a second, but I don't want to shy away from that. How can that play into these on-again, off-again cycles?
That sounds kind of ugly to me. Can you speak more to it? Yeah. And when we were looking at types of on-again, off-again relationships, we did find one type that was more coercive in nature. And we're kind of feeling like these are the ones that have more of the aggression in the relationships. We're also finding there's different types of aggression.
And we kind of thought initially, at least I thought initially, that it was the more minor forms of aggression that were happening in these relationships. But actually, our research is suggesting it's maybe more of the severe forms of the aggression going on. And so we do find this inherent tie between cycling and aggression. And the abuse literature also shows this as well.
We haven't really unpacked that, but we really do want to get funding to track these partners over time using this model that we used in this particular paper to really understand what's happening across the trajectory of the relationship. Well, thanks for breaking down something that I think a lot of people have experienced, I guess, two thirds. I appreciate you coming on the show, Renee.
Thanks so much. And I really want to acknowledge my co-authors, Amber Venom at Kansas State University and Cale Monk at the University of Missouri. Renee Daly is a communication studies professor at the University of Texas at Austin. This woman's a shark. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem.
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Chapter 5: What makes on-again, off-again relationships a chronic stressor?
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