New research suggests accommodating a partner’s trauma symptoms hurts your own mental health and relationship.
When a loved one struggles with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the natural instinct is often to help by adjusting your own behavior to avoid triggering their distress.
This process, called partner accommodation, can involve actions like “tiptoeing” around the partner with PTSD (PTSD+ partner), changing routines to avoid upsetting them, or taking over tasks they find distressing.
Although these behaviors are usually well-intentioned and motivated by a desire to aid recovery or preserve the relationship, emerging research suggests they may be detrimental to both partners.
A new study explored this dynamic, examining the associations between the frequency of accommodation and the intimate partner’s (the partner without PTSD) own mental health and well-being.
Utilizing a brief report of baseline data from a larger randomized control trial, the research focused on 67 intimate partners of individuals with probable PTSD.
The findings indicate that, contrary to intentions, accommodation is associated with worse well-being for the intimate partner.
Key Findings on the Partner’s Distress
- Mental Health Decline: Partner accommodation was significantly and positively associated with the intimate partner’s own symptoms of depression and generalized anxiety.
- Relationship Erosion: Higher accommodation frequency was significantly linked to lower relationship satisfaction and greater ineffective arguing in the intimate partner.
- Life Satisfaction Drops: Accommodation was also significantly and negatively associated with the intimate partner’s perceived quality of life.
- The Desire for Help: Intimate partners who accommodated more frequently reported greater intentions to seek mental health help. However, it was not significantly associated with having actually sought mental health help in the past three weeks.
The Domino Effect of Avoidance
The negative associations observed, such as increased depression and anxiety, may be partly explained by the avoidant nature of accommodation behaviors.
When intimate partners cancel social plans to protect their PTSD+ partner, they reduce opportunities for social activity, which can increase isolation and depressive symptoms.
Behaviors intended to prevent a PTSD+ partner’s irritability may instill fear about potential conflicts in the intimate partner.
This pattern can inhibit healthy communication and effective conflict resolution, leading to a negative impact on overall relationship satisfaction.
Essentially, accommodation can trap both partners in a cycle of avoidance.
The analyses suggested that accommodation was most strongly linked with relational variables (such as relationship satisfaction and ineffective arguing), more so than psychological or life functioning variables.
This highlights that when accommodation is present, relationship quality may be the most acutely affected domain for the intimate partner.
What Didn’t Change?
Interestingly, partner accommodation was not significantly associated with trait anger, perceived health, or work functioning for the intimate partner.
- Trait Anger: Frequent behaviors like “tiptoeing” and suppressing emotions to prevent activating the PTSD+ partner might actually lead to less anger expression, rather than more. It’s possible that a situational behavior like accommodation does not heavily influence a deep-seated personality trait like “trait anger”.
- Work Functioning: The lack of a link to work functioning might suggest that intimate partners are overcompensating in their professional lives to address increased demands and burdens within the relationship. They may be highly functional in a less stressful work environment where their relationship issues do not play a significant role.
Furthermore, the results of the study remained consistent even when controlling for the PTSD+ partner’s symptom severity, with the exception of quality of life.
This suggests that the intimate partner’s distress is not solely a result of the PTSD severity itself, but is specifically linked to the act of accommodation.
Why It Matters: Implications for Treatment
This research is crucial because it adds to the growing evidence that accommodation, despite its loving motives, may contribute to greater distress in both partners.
For the public:
If you are an intimate partner of someone with PTSD and find yourself frequently adjusting your behavior to manage their symptoms, recognize that this pattern is likely impacting your own mental health and making conflict resolution harder.
Your actions, while born of care, may be inadvertently preventing both of you from moving forward.
For clinicians:
These findings warrant greater attention to partner accommodation in both research and clinical practice.
Incorporating this knowledge into couple-based treatments for PTSD, such as Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy, may be highly beneficial.
Targeting the avoidant nature of these behaviors by encouraging small, healthy steps toward “approaching” difficult situations, rather than avoiding them, could help alleviate accommodation-related distress and improve relationship variables.
Reference
Xiang, A., Monson, C. M., Fitzpatrick, S., Wagner, A. C., Valela, R., Collins, A. M., Whitfield, K. M., Earle, E. A., Bushe, J., Mensah, D. H., Ip, J., Samonas, C., Siegel, A. N., Donkin, V. L., Varma, S., Landy, M. S. H., Morland, L., Doss, B. D., & Crenshaw, A. O. (2025). Partner accommodation associations in intimate couples with posttraumatic stress disorder. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 14(3), 195–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000259
