There may be something more to coming home after a long day and having your feet rubbed—other than it feeling good. According to a new study, employees under stress who have strong spousal support are better able to handle work and people on the job. When 400 blue- and white-collar couples were compared, stressed out employees with support at home had the following benefits over those who don’t:

• 50 percent higher rates of satisfaction with their marriage;
• 33 percent greater likelihood of having positive relationships with co-workers;
• 30 percent lower likelihood of experiencing guilt associated with home/family neglect;
• 30 percent lower likelihood of being critical of others (spouse, children) at home;
• 25 percent higher rates of concentration levels at work;
• 25 percent lower likelihood of experiencing fatigue at home after work;
• 25 percent higher rates of satisfaction with the amount of time spent with their children;
• 20 percent higher views that their careers were heading in the right direction; and
• 20 percent higher level of job satisfaction,

“Given that a lack of support from one’s spouse represents a major cause of both divorce and career derailment, this research is needed to address issues that affect both home and work,” said study author Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration in the Florida State University College of Business. ”When you’re still angry or upset from yesterday’s stress, your workday will likely go in only one direction — down.”

That effect isn’t exactly shocking, but what’s key in these relationships is knowing exactly what support your partner needs. As Hochwarter pointed out, “Some attempts to support your stressed-out spouse can backfire, actually making the situation much worse.” But there were certain supportive characteristics that had a deep impact for most couples such as:

• Awareness of one’s spouse’s daily work demands (i.e., time pressures, lack of resources, deadlines, and supervisors).
• Not “forcing support.”
• Understanding that communication lines are open regardless of the circumstances.
• Recognizing that distancing oneself from the family or lashing out is not a practical way to foster help. In fact, it tends to bring out the worst in others — and even causes the supporting spouse to become distant and act out as well.
• Being able to bring one’s spouse back to the middle — up when down in the dumps and down when overly agitated.
• Not bombarding the family with complaints about minor workplace irritants.
• Not trying to “one-up” one’s spouse in terms of who has had the worse day.
• Not being complacent — continuing to work at it.
• Remaining rational and not automatically casting the spouse as the “bad guy.”
• Not keeping a running tab on who is giving and who is getting.

At the end of the day, Hochwarter said the most telling sign of a supportive partner was “the ability for a spouse to offer support on days when he or she needs it just as much.”

“In many cases, both return home from work stressed. Generating the mental and emotional resources needed to help when your own tank is empty is often difficult. Successful couples almost always kept a steady supply of support resources on reserve to be tapped on particularly demanding days.”

Do you and your partner equally support each other after a long day of work? Do you notice a difference in your attitude toward your job the next day?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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I remember a “relationship” I had with a guy in college. I put relationship in quotes because we never quite made it to that point after months of talking and soon you’ll see why.

In school there’s typically parties almost every weekend and me and my friends were pretty much at one every week, as was he. After we’d see each other and speak, maybe have a dance or two, an odd “who can make the other more jealous” competition always seemed to brew between us and the night would take a drastic turn for the worse in no time. If he saw me dancing with a guy, he told me he’d never speak to me again, if I saw him dancing with a girl, I’d find another guy to dance with even harder. We’d go off about one another for the rest of the night to each of our friends, get on their nerves, and probably start a fight with them as well; he’d text me the next morning to see if I was still mad, and the next week we’d do it all over again. When I came across one of his female friends who I’d made out to be my number one enemies in my mind even though they were “not that cute”—inappropriate words were sure to flow. And if he saw me with any other guy, a question and answer period about the “ugly dude” was sure to follow. We were a hot, jealous, childish mess, and thankfully that’s all behind us.

Turns out, we’re not alone though. While you’d expect people in love—which we were not—to be all roses and sunshine, turns out the love a person has for their partner can actually make them more hateful to everyone around them. When participants in a small study at Florida State University were told to think about how madly in love they are with their partner, they were much more likely to make negative comments about people in photos they were shown and to rate them as unattractive. When these same participants were told to simply think about feeling intense sexual desire for their partner, they had neutral reactions to the images.

The responses were even stronger when the participants were shown images of prospective daters for a new university dating site. Not only were the people in the images attractive, they were also single, on their campus, and looking for a relationship. This time, there were nothing but negative adjectives and ratings when participants were reminded of how in love they were with their partner, since the people in the photos now posed an immediate threat. Those who were the self-reported jealous types didn’t even have to be reminded of being in love to make harsh critiques.

Jon Maner, a psychologist at Florida State, said the results show love, although a positive emotion, has a huge dark side. “The surge of romantic love lead [participants] to derogate these people. The more love they felt for their partner, the more negatively they tended to evaluate these objectively attractive members of their own sex.”

Jennifer Leo, a study researcher and graduate student, also said the participants somehow felt they were sustaining their own relationships by making others out to be undesirable. “Ultimately, love works in the service of protecting the relationship and maintaining it into the long term. Even if that means acting out.”

You can see this dynamic in it’s most extreme form played out on Snapped every week with women who refuse to let anyone else have the men in their lives but them. I’m not sure how me and the guy I was dating thought making each other jealous proved that point but I think we were somehow trying to prove why each of us should want the other by showing how desirable we were to other people. By the time we’d matured a little bit, he’d told me he never thought I was really interested in him. I don’t know how he didn’t gather that from me grinding all up on another man in front of him, but let’s just say that was the last time I used that as a mating tactic. I also learned to curb my own jealous tendencies when dating. It doesn’t matter how attractive or unattractive people around you are, a man is going to be where he wants to be. And your own jealous behavior ends up making you look less attractive in the end.

Are you the jealous type? Have you ever acted out when you perceived other people to be a threat to your relationship?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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