You're upset and need my help! The need to regulate your partner's emotions and daily life correlates

Romantic partners often engage in natural affect coregulation where each partner’s emotional state can attenuate or amplify the other’s emotion. Furthermore, negative mood regulation expectancies may be an indicator of romantic relationship functioning. But what happens when one partner believes that it is their role to regulate their partner’s emotions? Expectancies about a romantic partner’s ability to cope with negative emotions may influence individual emotion outcomes. The current research examines these expectancies and how they impact daily emotion processes. Eighty-four adult couples completed baseline personality measures including questions about their expectations of the effort required and their need to intervene to help regulate their partner’s emotions (Partner Emotion Regulation Responsibility Questionnaire: PERRQ). Over three weeks, partners completed evening surveys which included reports of personal affect and perceptions of their partner’s affect. Participants' PERRQ scores were correlated with inaccuracies in recognizing negative affect in their partner. PERQ scores also moderated the relationship between partner’s negative affect and the participant’s self-reported anxious mood, with high PERQ scorers reporting higher anxiety. In other words, as participants endorsed a stronger need to intervene in their partner’s emotional state, they were more likely to detect negative affect when it was absent, less likely to perceive a true lack of negative affect, and experienced a sharper increase in anxious mood when they perceived their partner to be in a bad mood. PERQ scores remained a significant moderator of this relationship even when controlling for neuroticism, difficulties in emotion regulation (for self or partner) and trait anxiety.