Fedakarî çawa zirarê dide têkiliyan

You asked your husband to buy milk, but he forgot. Your couple was invited to dinner by his friends who you don’t like. In the evening after work, you are both tired, but someone has to put the child to bed. Conflicts of desire are inevitable, but it is not always clear how to respond to them.

The first option is to focus on your own desires and complain about the lack of milk, refuse dinner and persuade your husband to put the child to bed. The second option is to suppress your desires and put your partner’s needs first: don’t fight over milk, agree to dinner and let your husband rest while you read bedtime stories.

However, suppressing emotions and desires is dangerous. This conclusion was reached by a group of psychologists from the University of Toronto Mississauga led by Emily Impett. In 2012, they conducted an experiment: partners who suppressed their needs showed a decrease in emotional well-being and relationship satisfaction. Moreover, they often thought that they needed to part with their partner.

If you push your needs to the background for the sake of a partner, it does not benefit him — he feels your true emotions, even if you try to hide them. All these petty sacrifices and repressed emotions add up. And the more people sacrifice interests for the sake of a partner, the deeper they sink into depression — this was proved by a study by a group of psychologists from the University of Denver led by Sarah Witton.

But sometimes sacrifices are necessary to save a family and relationships. Someone has to put the baby to bed. How to make concessions without the risk of falling into depression, scientists from the Catholic University of Furen in Taiwan found out. They interviewed 141 married couples and found that frequent sacrifice jeopardizes personal and social well-being: partners who often suppressed their desires were less satisfied with their marriage and were more likely to suffer from depression than people who were less likely to make concessions.

However, after observing the couples for some time, the scientists noticed a pattern. The suppression of desires led to depression and decreased satisfaction from marriage only in those couples in which the partners did not support each other.

If one of the spouses provided social support to the second half, the rejection of their own desires did not affect relationship satisfaction and did not cause depression a year later. Under social support, scientists understand the following actions: listen to a partner and support him, understand his thoughts and feelings, take care of him.

When you give up your desires, you lose personal resources. Therefore, sacrificing one’s interests is stressful. The support of a partner helps to overcome the feeling of vulnerability associated with the sacrifice.

Moreover, if a partner supports, understands and cares about you, it changes the very nature of the victim. It is unlikely that you will quarrel over milk if you are sure that your husband did not specifically ignore your request and actually cares about you. In this case, holding back complaints or taking on the responsibility of putting the baby to bed is not a sacrifice, but a gift to a caring partner.

If you are in doubt about what to do: whether to quarrel over milk, whether to agree to dinner, whether to put the baby to bed — ask yourself the question: do you feel that your partner loves and supports you? If you do not feel his support, there is no point in holding back discontent. It will accumulate, and subsequently it will adversely affect relationships and your emotional state.

If you feel the love and care of your partner, your sacrifice will be more like an act of kindness. Over time, this will increase your relationship satisfaction and encourage your partner to do the same for you.

About the author: Amy Gordon is a psychologist and research assistant at the Center for Public Health at the University of California.