1 Research-Backed Way To Protect Your Relationship Through Uncertainty

The world may feel chaotic, but your relationship doesn't have to. New research reveals one key practice that makes all the difference.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | June 27, 2025

Wars are raging. The economy is teetering. The world is spinning faster than we could ever keep up with. And, unfortunately, it's not slowing down.

Recessions, pandemics, conflict and social unrest have historically been associated with steep declines in romantic relationship satisfaction. People usually expect love to be a shelter of sorts in times like these — but when both partners are completely overwhelmed, that shelter can start to cave inwards.

However, new research suggests our relationships don't have to be collateral damage in the midst of worldly chaos. In fact, they might be our best chance at staying grounded.

Why Uncertainty Is Detrimental To Relationships

Global uncertainty can deplete emotional bandwidth in ways that few people are consciously aware of. And, too often, this exhaustion gets mistaken as just a sign of the times. As an unfortunate result, this tension usually goes unchecked.

Unfortunately, relationships are often first to bear the brunt of this.

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships tracked couples throughout the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the months that followed. These months (if not years) were defined by ambiguity in almost every aspect of life: health, career, family, finances and daily routines.

The researchers found that this chronic sense of uncertainty led to significantly elevated levels of psychological distress for the participants.

Naturally, when we're this burned out from stress, our capacities for even the most basic forms of relationship maintenance run thin. Practicing patience and empathy is difficult when we can barely offer it to ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, the study found that higher levels of individual stress were linked to lower relationship satisfaction. Instead of being a source of comfort during trying times, relationships became just another source of emotional strain.

This is just one of many symptoms of systemic stress. When one or both partners feel overwhelmed, they lack the necessary emotional resources to truly look after one another in the ways they otherwise would.

Importantly, these declines aren't necessarily due to resentment or a lack of love. In uncertain times, individuals simply can't afford to divert their gaze away from everything happening globally. Consequently, they lose sight of what's happening internally — for both themselves and those close to them.

How Shared Realities Act As An Anchor In Relationships

While prior studies like these may give cause to be cynical, February 2025 research from McGill University gives us reason to be hopeful. Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study found that couples who co-create a "shared reality" experience much less uncertainty during times of doubt. More importantly, they report experiencing much more meaning in their lives, too.

In simple terms, this refers to the understanding partners share regarding what's happening in their lives. They see events unfold around them, and interpret them in similar ways. Regardless of whether these events are terrifying, chaotic, joyous or even just neutral, they unpack it — and make sense of it — together.

These shared realities can be formed in countless ways. Today, it might look like a couple venting to each other after a long day. Maybe they've been doomscrolling, watching footage of families in Gaza displaced by war, families being torn apart by deportation or seeing another climate disaster unfold.

One puts their phone down, sighs and says, "It's just headline after headline. I feel like all I can do is just sit here and watch it happen, doing nothing."

Like so many people right now, this partner is experiencing what can only be described as helpless dissonance: the feeling that the world is unraveling, and they're powerless to do anything about it.

In moments like these, we often talk about the importance of "feeling heard" or "feeling seen" in relationships. But when distress reaches this level of extremity, saying "Yeah, that sucks," or, "I'm sorry you're feeling that way," just isn't enough. Instead, what matters most is knowing that you aren't alone in these feelings, nor in coping with them.

In this case, their partner doesn't dismiss their concerns, nor do they try to fix it. Instead, they meet them where they are. They say something like, "I've been feeling that, too. It's like the world is on fire, and all I can do is watch it burn from the couch."

They talk more. They unpack their fear, their anger, their guilt. They sit with their discomfort together. Maybe in the days that follow, they find small things they can do. They donate to a cause. They join a protest. They talk to their friends. They take breaks from the news when they need to.

They remind each other that, even though they can't solve every world problem single-handedly, they can at least see them through the same lens together.

This is their greatest buffer. Their rituals in empathy remind them that even when the world feels shaky, they can still hold each other steady inside it.

As the lead author of the 2025 study, M. Catalina Enestrom, explains in McGill University's press release, "Shared reality doesn't necessarily require shared experiences."

She continues, "One partner can describe a stressful event they experienced, and if the other partner sees it the same way, this too can foster shared reality. As couples accumulate these shared reality experiences, they come to develop a sense of shared understanding about the world in general."

Why Shared Realities Work (Even Outside Of Crisis)

The power of shared reality was especially clear in high-stress, high-stakes contexts. Specifically, frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic and Black Americans during the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement reported significantly more meaning in life, and significantly less uncertainty, when they shared a worldview with their partner.

In other words, uncertainty becomes much less destabilizing if you're not holding it alone.

Your version of reality starts to feel more real if you have a partner who validates your interpretations of events. Even if nothing around you has actually changed — and even if there's nothing you could actually do to change it — you can still find meaning and control, together, in your situation.

While a shared reality is particularly important during times of upheaval, Enestrom and her colleagues argue that these benefits can be reaped even in normal, everyday life. That is, knowing you aren't experiencing daily life in complete isolation makes you feel more coherent, more connected and less alone in your own head.

Importantly, this doesn't mean you and your partner necessarily have to agree on everything. You don't need to merge your identities or parrot your ideas and feelings back at one another. Otherwise, it's simply an affirmation for the sake of affirmation. Saying the right words means very little if they aren't backed with genuine empathy; it only works if you truly care about how the other person sees the world.

The single most important part of it is that you form a framework for understanding the world. In doing so, you can rely at the very least on your shared sense of direction — even when everything outside your relationship feels completely unpredictable.

Is your relationship a safe space for expressing your true thoughts and feelings about the world? Take this science-backed test to find out: Authenticity In Relationships Scale

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.