Does talking about loss with a romantic partner have salutary personal and relationship effects? Prior evidence reveals the benefits of emotional disclosure in couple relationships, yet disclosure about loss has been overlooked in research on couple communication. Using a novel communication paradigm with young-adult heterosexual romantic partners (N = 114 couples), we investigated emotions, physiological arousal (skin conductance responses [SCR]), and relationship closeness when narrating a personal loss and listening to the partner's loss, and compared these loss discussions to discussions about desired relationship changes. Based on partners' self-reports, narrating loss elicited more vulnerable and, unexpectedly, more antagonistic emotions. Both narrating and listening to loss produced higher self-reported partner closeness, compared to discussing change. In support of the physiological benefits of disclosure, women's SCRs decreased over the discussion when they narrated their own loss. However, both women and men as listeners show a general trend of increasing SCRs over the discussion, suggesting the challenges of being a responsive partner. Moreover, in line with the putative protective effects of partners' biological interdependencies, partner closeness also was higher when both partners showed synchronous decreasing SCR as women narrated their loss. Although limited to young couples in relatively short relationships, these findings reveal some potential benefits of talking about loss in the context of romantic relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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当浪漫的情侣讨论个人损失时会发生什么？关系、情感和生理影响。

与恋人谈论失去亲人是否会对个人和人际关系产生有益的影响？先前的证据揭示了夫妻关系中情感披露的好处，但在夫妻沟通的研究中，有关损失的披露却被忽视了。我们使用一种与年轻异性恋浪漫伴侣（N = 114对）的新颖沟通范式，研究了在讲述个人损失和倾听伴侣的损失时的情绪、生理唤醒（皮肤电导反应[SCR]）和关系亲密程度，以及将这些损失讨论与有关期望的关系改变的讨论进行了比较。根据伴侣的自我报告，讲述损失会引发更脆弱的情绪，而且出乎意料的是，更多的敌对情绪。与讨论改变相比，讲述和倾听损失都会产生更高的自我报告的伴侣亲密感。为了支持披露的生理益处，当女性讲述自己的损失时，她们的 SCR 在讨论中下降。然而，作为听众的女性和男性在讨论中都表现出增加 SCR 的总体趋势，这表明成为积极响应的合作伙伴面临着挑战。此外，与伴侣生物相互依赖性的假定保护作用一致，当女性在讲述自己的损失时双方都表现出同步降低的 SCR 时，伴侣的亲密程度也会更高。尽管仅限于恋爱关系相对较短的年轻夫妇，但这些发现揭示了在恋爱关系中谈论失去的一些潜在好处。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。