Alexithymia and social support in romantic relationships

• Alexithymia's influence on spousal support transactions is examined.
• Alexithymia impacts different facets of support (received, provided, and expected).
• Problems with emotional awareness disrupt key processes in intimate relationships.

The goal of the current study was to better understand how deficits in emotional self-awareness (alexithymia) can disrupt social support in romantic relationships by extending past research in two ways. At the methodological level, we wanted to gather data from both partners of support interactions in order to examine whether the lowered levels of support reported by individuals with alexithymia are corroborated by partner reports. We also extended past research by investigating additional facets of social support: provision of support and expectations of support from romantic partners. We tested our hypotheses in a sample of 69 long-term committed relationships. Both partners completed self-report measures of alexithymia and indices of social support. Individuals with elevated scores on alexithymia reported receiving less support from their romantic partners and expected more negative forms of support from their partner. They also reported providing less support to their partner. In addition, there were a number of significant partner effects, such that partners of individuals with alexithymia reported providing and receiving less support from their partners, as compared to partners of non-alexithymics. Our pattern of results, based on self-report and partner report, suggest that alexithymic individuals have difficulty with many different aspects of everyday support exchanges.