Researchers looked at the effect of negative events like losing a job, the death of a family member or financial issues.

Negativity is one of the most effective relationship killers.

Slimming negativity is the key to getting through rough things in a relationships, new study finds.

Little negative gestures in a relationship are way more powerful than positive actions, psychologists have found.

Professor Keith Sanford, who led the study, stated:

“When folks confront stressful life events, they are especially sensitive to negative behaviour in their relationships, like if a spouse appears to be argumentative, overly emotional, withdrawn or fails to do something that was anticipated.

By comparison, they’re less sensitive to positive behaviour — such as providing each other relaxation.”

Even relatively Tiny amounts of negative behaviour can add up,” Professor Sanford explained:

“Because people are especially sensitive to negative relationship behavior, a moderate dose might be sufficient to produce a nearly maximum impact on raising life anxiety.

After negative behaviour reaches a certain saturation point, it appears that stress is only minimally affected by additional increases in the dose of connection problems.”

The investigators studied 325 couples who have been married or living with a spouse.

They looked at the impact of adverse events such as losing a job, the death of a loved one or financial issues.

Another study of 154 people looked at couples in which severe illness was causing stress.

All wrote about the positive and negative behaviors their partners had performed.

Both studies found negative behaviours affected the relationship more strongly than optimistic, however medical issues were connected to lower levels of adverse behaviour.

The study’s authors write:

“It is possible that couples confronting stressful medical situations are less inclined to blame each other.

When folks face stressful life events, it is common to experience both negative and positive behavior in their own relationships.

After the goal is to raise feelings of well-being and lessen anxiety, it may be more significant to reduce negative behavior than to increase positive actions.”