Happily married people look at the bigger picture
Stress is an internal experience triggered by an external situation (like illness, failure, or loss) or by an internal process (like worrying about illness, failure, or loss). In other words, we experience the release of stress chemistry in our bodies both when something stressful occurs and when we think about something stressful that has occurred or might occur in the future.
Marital stress is one particular flavor of stress, but is similarly triggered by an external situation or an internal process.
We can’t stop our spouses from being unique people with unique thoughts, feelings, and ways of doing things. We can ask them to do specific things or not do specific things, we can try some behavioral strategies like encouragement and feedback, but ultimately, we can’t force them to change. Eventually, most of us catch on to this fact.
Although we can’t do much to change our partners, we can do a fair amount to change the amount of stress we inflict on ourselves through thinking about stressful marital events that occurred or might occur in the future.
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