Protective buffering is a coping strategy used in close relationships where one partner conceals concerns, yields during conflicts, or pretends things are fine to shield the other partner from emotional distress.
It can be enacted with self-protective intentions to minimize one’s own distress or with partner-protective intentions to spare the other person.
Winterheld, H. A. (2017). Hiding feelings for whose sake? Attachment avoidance, relationship connectedness, and protective buffering intentions. Emotion, 17(6), 965 980. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000291
Key Points
- Highly avoidantly attached individuals believe expressing distress is burdensome to loved ones, especially when dependent on the relationship.
- When feeling connected to partners, highly avoidant individuals use protective buffering to spare partners distress. Beliefs about not burdening partners explain this.
- When feeling less connected, highly avoidant individuals use protective buffering to protect themselves.
- Using protective buffering to self-protect is linked to poorer mental health for the self and partner. Using it for the partner’s benefit is not.
- This research applies an attachment perspective to identify when and why people use protective buffering for different intentions.
Rationale
Previous research on the protective buffering coping strategy has focused on its negative mental health impacts but neglected important questions about why people use it and for whose benefit (Langer et al., 2009; Suls et al., 1997).
While often assumed to be used to shield partners from distress, protective buffering can also minimize one’s own distress (Langer et al., 2009; Trost, 2005). Attachment theory offers a useful framework for examining factors that predict different intentions underlying this strategy.
Highly avoidantly attached individuals limit distress expressions to maintain distance from partners (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003), but may also do so to uphold positive regard from valued others (Birtchnell, 1988). Their caregiving attempts remain unexplored.
This research tests whether highly avoidant individuals’ connectedness to partners predicts whether they hide distress to self-protect or spare partners based on internalized beliefs about emotional burden.
Distinguishing intentions further allows the examination of links to mental health.
Method
- Study 1 had 388 dating/married adults report attachment avoidance, relationship dependence, and beliefs that expressing distress burdens partners.
- Study 2 had 214 dating/married adults recall a stressful event and report their protective buffering intentions, attachment avoidance, and connectedness (inclusion of partner in self).
- Study 3 followed a similar procedure, with 205 adults now also reporting depressive symptoms and perceptions of partners’ intentions.
- Study 4 collected data from both partners in 55 couples regarding typical protective buffering intentions, attachment, commitment, and mental health symptoms.
Results
When connected, highly avoidant individuals hide distress to protect partners; when less connected, they hide distress to self-protect. Beliefs about emotional burden underlie their partner-focused buffering.
- As expected, highly avoidant individuals in more dependent relationships held stronger beliefs that distress expressions burden partners (Study 1).
- Highly avoidant individuals engaged in greater partner-focused protective buffering when feeling connected, an effect explained by beliefs that distress burdens partners (Study 2).
- In contrast, feeling less connected related to greater self-focused protective buffering for highly avoidant individuals (Studies 2-4).
- Further, individuals’ own and partners’ self-protective (but not partner-protective) intentions are positively related to poorer mental health (Studies 3-4).
Insight
These studies break new ground in applying attachment theory to predict nuances in the protective buffering coping strategy based on individual differences and relationship contexts. Highly avoidant individuals seem caught between competing drives for autonomy and relationship stability.
When feeling committed to partners, their beliefs that emotional restraint preserves harmony lead them to shield partners. Yet when connections fray, their default distancing tendencies dominate to self-protect.
Uncovering these dual underlying motives helps explain the mixed mental health outcomes linked to protective buffering in past work – self-protective buffering proves personally and interpersonally costly, but partner-focused buffering appears benign.
This research further attests to the context-sensitive nature of attachment behaviors. Feelings of connectedness can temporarily minimize highly avoidant individuals’ distancing regulation habits that typically maintain autonomy.
The fact that their caregiving attempts remain shaped by constraints on open emotionality carries important implications for interventions aiming to improve communication in distressed relationships.
Strengths
- The studies utilize strong and diverse samples of dating, married, and cohabitating couples across the adult lifespan.
- Employing both broad cross-sectional and narrow dyadic designs provides confidence in the reliability of findings.
- Analyses thoroughly disentangle the unique effects of attachment avoidance and anxiety.
- Using formal tests of moderated mediation bolsters proposed explanatory mechanisms.
Limitations
- The reliance on retrospective self-reports of protective buffering intentions raises issues of memory biases and social desirability.
- Without observational data, conclusions about actual strategy use must remain tentative.
- The generalizability is restricted by the predominantly White, educated nature of the samples.
- Replications in more diverse groups would prove informative regarding cultural variation in beliefs about emotional burden and suppression motives.
Implications
These findings reveal novel attachment underpinnings of a little-understood relationship maintenance strategy with critical well-being implications.
They underscore connecting attachment and emotion regulation perspectives. Clinicians may better promote disclosure in avoidant clients by framing it as caring for partners rather than meeting personal needs.
Additionally, interventions targeting improved communication could teach couples to openly discuss preferences regarding distress disclosure.
References
Primary reference
Winterheld, H. A. (2017). Hiding feelings for whose sake? Attachment avoidance, relationship connectedness, and protective buffering intentions. Emotion, 17(6), 965–980. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000291
Other references
Birtchnell, J. (1988). Defining dependence. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 61(2), 111-123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1988.tb02770.x
Langer, S. L., Brown, J. D., & Syrjala, K. L. (2009). Intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of protective buffering among cancer patients and caregivers. Cancer, 115(S18), 4311-4325. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.24586
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2003). The attachment behavioral system in adulthood: Activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 53-152. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(03)01002-5
Suls, J., Green, P., Rose, G., Lounsbury, P., & Gordon, E. (1997). Hiding worries from one’s spouse: Associations between coping via protective buffering and distress in male post-myocardial infarction patients and their wives. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 20(4), 333-349. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025513029605
Trost, S. E. (2005). Protective buffering among couples coping with heart disease: Behavior, intentions, and psychological distress (Publication No. 3175748) [Doctoral dissertation, University of California]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
Keep Learning
- How might partners encourage more open communication from highly avoidant individuals using empathy or compassion rather than confrontation? What communication strategies might prove ineffective or backfire?
- In what ways might gender norms and beliefs about emotionality influence tendencies to engage in protective buffering and associated mental health outcomes?
- How might health care professionals screen for and address maladaptive forms of protective buffering among couples coping with illness? What advice is warranted?
- Could interventions aim to reframe defensive self-protective buffering as a misguided attempt at caring? Might this increase self-compassion and motivation for disclosure?
