One’s life as an individual, and as a member of a couple and family, can include a variety of happy and gratifying experiences. However, life also brings various stressful experiences, some predictable and others quite unexpected. These range from relatively minor stresses, such as hosting a holiday extended family gathering, to major stressors, such as the loss of a job or the development of a serious physical health problem. The well-being of an individual or relationship depends in part on people’s ability to cope effectively with such stressors.

Given how common stressors are, substantial research has been done to identify ways of coping that are effective and contribute to well-being, as well as those that can be ineffective or even worsen the situation. Initially, the focus was on forms of coping for individuals. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) identified two major types of coping: forms of problem-focused coping that are designed to reduce or eliminate stressors in a person’s life (e.g., counteracting the loss of a job by actively searching for a new one) and forms of emotion-focused coping that do not remove a stressor but reduce the person’s negative emotional response to it (e.g., exercising, spending time with a caring friend).

Over-reliance on emotion-focused coping strategies, especially those that involve significant avoidance (e.g., substance abuse, excessive screen time) can leave a person at risk of harm from stressors that have not been removed. Thus, a mixture of the two types may be advisable. Those two types of individual coping continue to be widely recognized in the mental health field (Schoenmakers et al., 2015; Skinner et al., 2003).

Coping with stressors within a couple or family context tends to be more complicated. On the one hand, two members may have different preferred strategies, such as when one member of a couple tends to automatically engage in emotion-focused coping to reduce upset feelings, while the other strongly prefers to “get down to business” and find ways to eliminate upsetting stressors. Those individuals are likely........

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