How to Deal With Personal Stress When in a Relationship

While getting my undergraduate degree at a university in Los Angeles, I had to take care of a family member who lived in Orange County.  This meant a two hour commute on a daily basis.  If you’ve ever been stuck in L.A. traffic, then you have experienced the closest thing to hell on Earth and I commend you.  I would probably cut a finger off in exchange for never having to deal with that again.

With so much going on in my life at that moment – school, finances, work, and a relationship – the responsibilities kept piling up.  My blood pressure was worse than a crimped firefighter’s hose.  The personal stress I underwent caused a few relationships to end during that time.  I would explode in unexpected and unwarranted moments, blaming my girlfriend at the time for my own personal issues.

If you are in a similar situation that I was, hopefully I can give you some advice on how to deal with personal stress in a relationship.

Step 1: Process Your Feelings

On the whole, men have an easier time separating logic from emotion.  However, when life becomes hectic, we all fail to categorize our feelings, especially when it comes to stress.  It’s important to sit down and process your feelings so you can appropriately deal with them.

You can write down all of your worries on a piece of paper, or just take a few minutes to reflect. It helps me to put my anxiety into perspective; in the long run, ninety nine out of a hundred things I stress over are not significant issues.  If I have an assignment due, or there is a conflict at work, by next year I probably won’t even remember the problem.  Why be anxious over something that has no long term resonance?

If you find you have a lot of problems that cannot be resolved by effort alone, consider booking time with your school of college’s personal councillor, or a professional psychotherapist, who will help you work through your concerns.

Step 2: Take One Thing at a Time

Once you figure out what you are stressed about, you can start to remedy the situation by focusing on one issue at a time.  If you bottle up your frustrations, you are liable to explode at any time.  For me, this usually happened when I was with my girlfriend.  She would ask a simple question like, “when are you coming over?” – I would get angry at her for expecting me to spend time with her when she knows I have a lot of work to do.  And all hell would break loose.

In reality, I wasn’t mad at her, I just needed to vent and chose her as my target.  All of this was a subconscious way for me to process my stress.  If I would have taken the time to really think about my issues, then I could have resolved the problems in a more productive manner.

Step 3: Learn  to Separate Your Issues From Your Everyday Life

Whatever is causing your tension, learn to separate each issue from your daily life, and more importantly, from your loved ones.  Try to find out the cause of your stress and work to remedy that to put a lid on the explosions.  Sometimes, you just need to push through to the end of the week, or finish a quick assignment before bed rather than fretting about it all night. 

It helps to put everything into perspective by thinking about your future – of which your significant other is usually a bigger part than your current problems.  Avoid bringing personal issues into the relationship in an attempt to blame or criticize your partner.  In the end, you two care deeply for each other and thus should comfort and support one another.  Instead of looking at your partner as a part of the problem, learn to view them as a caring person who wants the best for you.

Article by:

K.W.