Pillar 1: Connecting through Emotional Understanding and Responding
Sharing emotions together is one of the most bonding ways to connect with our partner, and yet during reproductive grief, our ability to truly share our emotional experiences with one another can become completely disrupted (Casu et al., 2019). For couples experiencing different forms of reproductive grief, including infertility, miscarriage, traumatic pregnancy, traumatic birth, and stillbirth, each member of the couple may have vastly different ways of expressing or coping with their emotions, and thus the couple may find themselves drifting apart amidst a traumatic experience (Cote-Arsenault & Mahlmeister, 2015).
This is why learning to mindfully and effectively connect in our emotional experience during reproductive grief remains one of the most crucial aspects of relating for couples. Couples who can: 1) Actively name their emotions in the moment (Domar & Cougle, 2017), and 2) accept the emotions of their partner (Casu et al., 2019) are much more likely to bond over their traumatic experience during reproductive grief.
In one of our studies (see Brigance et al., 2024; n = 961), couples who actively shared their emotions and withheld judgement from those emotions with one another had a higher chance of having higher couple satisfaction in the midst of their reproductive grief.
Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions is a model that illustrates eight primary emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation, which can combine to form complex emotional experiences. For couples navigating reproductive grief, such as infertility, miscarriage, or stillbirth, understanding and expressing these deeper level emotions can be crucial. By actively naming their emotions (Domar & Cougle, 2017) and accepting their partner's emotional experiences (Casu et al., 2019), couples can bond over their grief.