What is it about?
Couple Resilience is the process partners adapt, recover, and sometimes grow together when they face difficult experiences, such as illness, loss, financial strain, discrimination, major life changes, or relationship problems. This systematic review brought together findings from 31 studies involving 9,082 participants to examine how couple resilience has been defined, studied, and measured. The review identified 73 related factors. The most common relational strengths were a strong sense of “we,” coping with stress together, clear communication, teamwork, shared meaning, mutual support, interdependence, intimacy, spending meaningful time together, closeness, and trust. These strengths were generally associated with greater well-being and relationship satisfaction and with lower psychological or relational distress. However, many studies assessed couple resilience using measures designed for individuals or collected information from only one partner. The findings therefore highlight the need to understand resilience as something partners build through their interactions, rather than simply as the sum of two individually resilient people.
Featured Image
Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Couples frequently face adversity together, but research does not always capture the relational processes that help them adapt. Many studies have used individual-resilience measures or indirect indicators, such as relationship satisfaction or partner support, to draw conclusions about couple resilience. This review clarifies which relational strengths appear most important. In particular, cohesion or “we-ness,” dyadic coping, communication, teamwork, shared meaning, and partner support were repeatedly linked to healthier individual and relationship outcomes. These findings can guide the development of more accurate assessment tools and interventions that work with both partners. The review also identifies important gaps. Couple resilience needs to be studied with dyadic and longitudinal methods, across more diverse cultural settings and in relation to less-studied outcomes such as conflict, withdrawal, environmental resources, and intimate partner violence.
Perspectives
For me, the most important message of this review is that couple resilience cannot be reduced to the personal strength of each partner. What helps couples through adversity often emerges in the space between them: how they communicate, regulate stress together, support one another, make sense of difficult experiences, and maintain a shared sense of “us.” I hope this systematic review encourages researchers and practitioners to look beyond individual resilience and to assess both partners and their interactions. I also hope that the strengths identified in the review can be translated into practical, evidence-based interventions that help couples not only recover from adversity, but strengthen their relationship through the process.
Jaume Grané Morcillo
Fundacio Blanquerna Universitat Ramon Llull
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Couple resilience assessment and related constructs: A systematic review., Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy, July 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/tra0002210.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Spanish Couple Resilience Inventory (CRI-ES): Adaptation and validation in a Spanish sample
This related publication presents the adaptation and psychometric validation of the Couple Resilience Inventory for use with Spanish-speaking populations. It provides evidence regarding the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Spanish version of the CRI, supporting its use to assess positive and negative relational processes involved in how couples respond to adversity.
Italian Couple Resilience Inventory (CRI-IT): Adaptation and validation in an Italian sample
This related publication describes the cultural adaptation and psychometric validation of the Couple Resilience Inventory in an Italian sample. The study provides evidence supporting the reliability and validity of the Italian version and contributes to the cross-cultural assessment of the relational processes through which couples cope with and adapt to adversity.
Portuguese Couple Resilience Inventory (CRI-PT): Adaptation and validation in a Portuguese sample
This related publication reports the adaptation and psychometric validation of the Couple Resilience Inventory for the Portuguese population. It provides evidence for the measurement properties of the Portuguese version and supports its use in research and practice to assess the positive and negative relational behaviours associated with couple resilience.
Couple resilience assessment and related constructs: A systematic review
This systematic review examines how couple resilience has been conceptualized, operationalized, and assessed across the scientific literature. Based on 31 empirical studies, it identifies 73 related constructs, including cohesion or we-ness, dyadic coping, communication, mutual collaboration, meaning making, partner support, intimacy, closeness, and trust. The review highlights the need to assess couple resilience as a relational and dyadic process rather than relying on measures of individual resilience or indirect proxy constructs. It also provides recommendations for future research, psychometric assessment, couple-based interventions, and the study of couple resilience as a potential protective factor against intimate partner violence.
Trauma is everywhere, but so is resilience (Sherry Hamby)
In this TEDx talk, resilience researcher Sherry Hamby explains how people can draw on multiple personal, relational, and community strengths to cope with trauma and adversity. The presentation introduces a strengths-based understanding of resilience that complements the Resilience Portfolio Model used to organize and interpret the findings of the systematic review on couple resilience.
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
