Emotion regulation and felt security in different-gender romantic relationship interactions: Two dyadic, observational studies.

Statelike felt security can change during romantic relationship conflict when the attachment relationship is threatened. According to theorizing, this change should be associated with the romantic partners’ emotion regulation. The current research leverages two observational studies involving romantic couples (conducted in 2017 and 2018–2019) to test this underexplored aspect of attachment theory. We hypothesized that higher observer-rated actor and partner balanced emotion regulation during conflict would be associated with increases in pre- to postconflict felt security, whereas higher observer-rated actor and partner hyper-emotion and/or hypo-emotion regulation would be associated with decreases in pre- to postconflict felt security. We also examined whether these hypothesized effects would “spill over” to impact levels of felt security after a positive discussion that followed the conflict discussion. Our findings reveal an association between higher observer-rated actor and partner hyper-emotion regulation and lower postconflict felt security while controlling for preconflict felt security levels. Only the actor effect was replicated across both studies, however. No evidence for spillover effects was found. The effects for observed hypo- and balanced emotion regulation were mixed across the two studies. Future research should aim to identify the mechanisms underlying the association between hyper-emotion regulation and felt security change and determine the ways in which hypo-emotion and balanced emotion regulation might be more reliably associated with felt security change. Therapists might benefit by focusing on the use of hyper-emotion regulation during conflict while encouraging positive partner discussions. We propose that a positive discussion may be a means to recover and disrupt a continued cycle of low felt security.