3 Ways to Get a Loved One to Support You During Tough Times

The many situations in life that can be difficult to face are probably too numerous to count. You may have a close friend who’s in the midst of a messy divorce, problems that are piling up at work, or just be overwhelmed with the feeling that you could really use a break. Clearly, it’s your partner you would turn to first or, if you have no one who falls into that category, a favorite relative. All you want to do is vent, but as this is a longstanding problem, you might be worried that this person will begin to develop “compassion fatigue” and not want to keep hearing about it. How can you get them to listen?

Why Support Matters

According to University of Pittsburgh’s Rebecca Walsh and Amanda Forest (2024), there is tremendous value in receiving support from those who are closest to you. In their words, “A wealth of theory and research asserts the value of receiving responsive support (i.e., support that is caring, understanding, and validating and meets the recipient’s needs).” Unfortunately, based on an American Psychological Association 2022 survey, the chances are you’re not likely to get it. Almost two-thirds of Americans report receiving less support than they felt they needed.

This disheartening statistic could lead you to feel that there’s no reason to expect, much less get, the emotional hand-holding you need from your loved one. However, there is some good news. As the U. Pittsburgh psychologists note, the way you seek support can make all the difference in the world. In contrast to previous approaches that portray the support-seeker as passively hoping for help, Walsh and Forest discovered some of the newer work in the area that suggests it is possible to motivate the person you’re counting on to come through by the way you pose your needs in the situation, to get what they call “responsive support.”

It's All in the Way You Ask

It might occur to you that the best way to prod a potential support provider is to paint as bleak a picture as possible of your experiences to guilt-trip them into coming through. However, the authors believe it is precisely the opposite approach that will engender the most empathic response. Their review led them to propose three types of positivity that seekers can express to their partners:

1. Partner-oriented positivity: Express gratitude for the partner’s willingness to listen or show affection while asking for help (e.g., holding the partner’s hand)
2. Stressor-oriented positivity: Express optimism about the feared situation or find a “silver lining”
3. Unspecified positivity: Show some humor about the bad situation or show signs of happiness

Across a series of four studies that included online and in-person lab-based experiments, the U. Pittsburgh researchers created conditions intended to replicate real-life situations in which people ask their romantic partners for help. The underlying premise behind the investigations was that expressions of positivity would produce the desired outcomes. The question was which type would work the best.

Indications from the first three studies supported the predictions that some form of positivity indeed worked better in a help-seeking scenario, but the findings were based on imagined interactions, not ones involving actual romantic partners (i.e., participants were asked how they would respond to an email request for help from their partner).

The final study in the set was conducted with 103 romantic couples averaging 36 years old, and together for an average of 10 years. Each partner was randomly assigned to be either the seeker or provider of help, with seekers instructed to ask about “the thing in the world you are most afraid of.” The topics the seekers posed included such areas as professional failure, personal or family health issues, and spiders. The providers then were told to respond in any way that felt natural to them.

After the videotaped interaction, which lasted 90 to 120 minutes, providers rated how positive they felt their partner was, whether they thought they would be able to help, whether they felt that their partner deserved a caring and supportive response, and how much need they thought the seeker really was experiencing. The seekers, in turn, rated their perceptions of their partners’ responsiveness and understanding of their needs.

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Key to this real-life study were the ratings that the research assistants provided of the actual interactions between the couples, corresponding to the three potential types of positivity as well as an overall negativity index (fear, anxiety, and sadness).

As the authors predicted, positivity in general (vs. negativity) was related not only to responsiveness as perceived by the seeker but also as rated by the objective observers. All forms of positivity were effective and, importantly, none of them backfired. Pro-relational statements (expressing love) seemed, of all strategies, to be the most effective of the three.

Turning Requests Into Support

With these findings in mind, it is now time to return to the three strategies themselves to flesh them out into practical suggestions. In describing each of these approaches, the authors provide a helpful example that you could adapt to your own relationship:

Kate discloses to Alex, her partner, her mother’s recent cancer diagnosis. While doing so, she reaches out lovingly for Alex’s hand, says she is hopeful her mother can recover, and expresses gratitude that others in the family are healthy.

As you can see from this example, Kate is still fearful of what will happen with her mother, but she is also communicating the idea that Alex can be helpful (self-efficacy) and that Kate values Alex and their relationship, and, in the process, helps to alleviate what is undoubtedly sadness that Alex experiences when hearing the news.

It is important to distinguish between the type of positivity you could express in similar situations yourself from putting on a false front of good cheer and bravado. No one would communicate this bad news with anything close to a sense of happiness, but the positivity that Kate is expressing is about the relationship, not a denial of the significance of her mother’s illness.

To sum up, asking for help is in some ways the easiest but also most difficult of interactions, even in close relationships. Knowing these three pathways to finding the help you need can help fulfill your own needs for support while also furthering your emotional connection to your partner.