Who handles stress better, you or your SO?

[lime]

He does.

I have mild anxiety and stuff that has me climbing the walls he will just shrug off and start tackling.

[moolarkey]

Sudden things will make me lose it. Long term things I deal with extremely well.

[krystee]

He does better in stressing about less stuff (I stress about 15 things at any given time). But if we are both really stressed about something, I tend to be the one to handle it better. He gets more irritable.

[scout8]

Without question, DH handles stress better.

[gogreengowhite]

I have anxiety so be definitely handles stress better. Even when he is stressed he is quiet about it.

We tend to freak out about different things so if he does stress I can normally calm him down.

[youhadmycuriosity]

DH explodes and is perfectly calm 30 seconds later (usually traffic or house related). I am extremely easy going but when I get increasingly stressed, it will build up to a simmer.

[maddiepaddy]

I am better at planning ahead to avoid stressful situations. He's really good at getting very caught up in the stress of knowing he has to do something. So he'll stress out for weeks in advance of executing a task at the last minute that ends up only taking a few hours. So, it's a time management/stress issue I suppose. It drives me crazy. I'm more of a do things in advance and get it off my plate person, which helps me avoid situations that could become stressful.

In terms of the actual handling of stress, I suppose we're about the same. We can both be whiny, etc... when sh*t actually hits the fan.

[mbcdefg]

Me.

Totally feeling you on the Man Stress/Man Cold thing. SO many things are treated like they're the end of the friggin' world.

[cheezer]

I can handle a lot of stress comparative to most others, including DH. However, DH has a very laidback attitude which sometimes can make for him not being stressed by the same things as I am in the first place.

I will admit I had the whiniest man cold ever myself the other week. I had like 1 nostril stuffed up for 2 days and a slight sinus headache & I complained the whole time because I couldn't take a day off of work.

[purpleminion]

We both just handle it so differently. I tend to get stressed more easily than H does, but when he does get stressed, he handles it more poorly than I do.

[my3bears]

DH used to be better at managing stress for a very long time, and I used to be much more tightly wound. The past few years we've switched, with me being much more calm and DH getting stressed and not managing it well. It has sucked. Hello, I signed up for this marriage on the premise that YOU would be the calm one! hehe. DH has never been good at actually identifying how he's feeling and what is bothering him, so that complicates things even further. Things have gotten much better in the past few months otherwise counseling would be in my/his/our future.

[SJ]

Me.

He is much more moody and up & down. It takes a lot to significantly throw me one way or the other.

[Pom]

We take turns losing our shit. I am an immediate reactor and he is a slow burn to meltdown. It's a good balance, since one of us is rational at any given moment.

[irene adler]

Lol.

Dh is terrible at handling stress.

[les]

I think we both handle stress fairly well, actually. We approach stressors and difficult situations similarly.

[lagom]

We stress and freak out over very different things, so we sort of keep each other grounded that way.
We each have our strengths, and generally one of us is rational at all times.

[mskitkat]

DH by a mile. I started getting medicated for stress headaches when I was ... 12? Early.

[cinco]

My H, with out a doubt.

[candyland]

My DH can be a drama king!

[zoidberg]

I do, by far. He just can't deal with a lot.

[msmerymac]

I do for sure, although we're both pretty laid back. So he tends to internalize it. And that gets annoying.

[hopenotlost]

Him. I get panicky, anxiety makes me lose my mind, and I just generally freak.

[irishbride2]

hmm.

I handle extreme stress better.

However, I am terrible at handling minor stressors. The result is that I'm stressed about 80% of the time. So overall, he is better.

[Deleted]

He handles stress better than I do. But I have a LOT more on my plate to juggle, and I do a much better job of long term planning. So... yeah. He still wins.

[keweenawlove]

I think generally me. He tends to stress a lot more about day to day things and be a lot more vocal about things.

Granted I've been an emotional basketcase of stress this week so maybe I'm turning into the one that doesn't handle stress well.

[hamster]

Honestly? Neither.

I shut down. He drinks. (and we're both heavy drinkers on the reg.)

[h]

Hmm, tough to say. He is utterly unflappable. I have honestly never seen him freak out. But sometimes he is so low key that he doesn't have proper appreciation for the seriousness or urgency of a situation. In other words, I think sometimes he needs to stress more . I am much more likely to be whiny and dramatic, but also very good at getting shit done under pressure. Really, I think we both handle stress really well in general.

[Deleted]

I think we both do fairly well, honestly. We have our sessions of being whiney but neither of us are short tempered or lose our cool under pressure. He is a fairly typical PhD student who has been trained to assume he's going to fail (said a bit TIC) so he gets far more stressed about things he's doing than I think is warranted (because I know he'll be fine, but he has doubts) but that mostly comes across in venting vs freaking out.

[Deleted]

Me, for sure.

He handles day to day stuff really well. Super tense, stressful situations render him completely useless though. I hope and pray that nothing catastrophic ever happens and I need him to actually do something. Like, if I get knocked up and can't make it to the hospital, he'll probably be rocking in a corner while I deliver the baby with one hand and talk to 911 with the other. We've had a few situations in our 11 years together that went kind of like that.

[niq]

Her but we can both be pretty whiny.

I think I might do better with one BIG stress than I do with constant little/medium stressors.