Depressive symptoms spillover between romantic partners partially explained by anxious attachment

• Published in: Personal relationships 2025-03, Vol.32 (1)
• Main Authors: Morgan, Preston C., Durtschi, Jared A., King, Salena
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1350-4126; 1475-6811
• DOI: 10.1111/pere.12584

Depressive symptoms can spillover between romantic partners. From an attachment lens, depressive symptoms passing from one partner to another may be more frequent in the context of anxious attachment. Using 1179 German couples who remained together across 4 years (five waves) from the Panel Analysis on Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics, analyses tested the extent anxious attachment moderated the initial level of depressive symptom spillover between partners' depressive symptom trajectories. Results revealed that men's and women's higher initial depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with changes in their partners' depressive symptom trajectories. However, the current study found that women's anxious attachment was associated with the link between men's initial depressive symptoms and the trajectory of women's depressive symptoms. Specifically, women who were more anxiously attached had a small, but greater risk of experiencing increased depressive symptom spillover across a four‐year period when their male partners had higher initial depressive symptoms. Together, this suggests depressive symptom spillover did occur among a general population of German couples, but primarily in the context of more anxiously attached women. Future research should examine the role attachment plays in the depressive symptom spillover among couples.