Resilient couple coping revisited: Building relationship muscle

Abstract

This chapter presents a synthesis of ideas across contributors to the book, Couple resilience : Emerging perspectives. Certain themes were foregrounded as necessary for optimal couple coping and adaptation, some of which affirmed our original thinking about couple resilience and some of which expanded it. Processes emerging as critical for couple resilience may be likened to muscle building or hypertrophy, a metaphor that we have found useful in clarifying how relationships may be strengthened by adversity. These processes include: (1) the ongoing process of stress or ‘ trauma ’ and repair, with the accumulation of repair acts building trust between partners and in the ‘We’; (2) flexibility and the associated processes of elasticity and plasticity, with acceptance of change and loss as the bridge between the two; (3) tending to the relationship in the way that well-used muscles must be nurtured (e.g., stretched, massaged) in order to retain their flexibility and be less prone to injury or tear; and (4) mindfulness training and other awareness- and acceptance-enhancing practices as a vehicle for building relationship fitness (e.g., mutual self-regulation). We conclude that a relationship that falters in the face of hardship is comparable to a muscle tearing, whereas a relationship that is fortified through adversity is like a muscle that has adaptively grown with and because of the trauma to its living structure. Areas for further investigation into resilient couple processes are discussed.