Exploring Black Love and Resilience: The Impact of Racism-Related Stress and Relational Coping in Black Couples
Racism-related stress has long been recognized as a critical factor in individual mental health outcomes, but its influence on intimate relationships—particularly among Black couples—remains vastly underexplored. Despite growing awareness of systemic racism’s pervasive reach, most empirical research on coping and resilience in relationships has relied on White, heteronormative samples, limiting its relevance for racially marginalized communities.
Funded by a Mental Research Institute (MRI) Doctoral Dissertation Grant, this study was conducted by Melinda Murdock, PhD, LMFT, of the University of Kentucky. The project titled “A Safe Place: Exploring Black Couples’ Perceptions of Black Love and Relationship Coping in the Context of Their Lived Experiences with Racism” examined how heterosexual Black couples experience and navigate racism-related stress, with particular attention to how racial identity and expressions of “Black Love” foster relational resilience. By centering couples’ lived experiences within their sociocultural and structural contexts, the research aimed to challenge dominant narratives in relationship science and clinical theory.
Using a qualitative, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach, the study engaged seven heterosexual Black couples (14 individuals) in semi-structured interviews. All participants met eligibility criteria requiring that at least one partner had experienced a racism-related incident in the previous six weeks. To ensure methodological rigor, the analysis included independent coding by two researchers, enabling the identification and validation of themes with minimized bias.
A central thematic construct—“A Safe Place”—emerged from the data, describing the relationship as a protective space against racialized stressors. Within this overarching concept, twelve subthemes were organized into four key domains:
Experiences and Processing of Racism: Participants described both personal and vicarious experiences of racism and the emotional, cognitive, and relational responses that followed.
Relational Coping Strategies: Couples highlighted practices such as mutual validation, collaborative meaning-making, shared humor, and joint problem-solving as ways to manage external stress.
Role of Racial and Cultural Identity: Expressions of Black Love were characterized by pride, cultural solidarity, and intentional acts of care and affirmation.
Relational Wisdom: Through shared adversity, couples reported gaining insight, deepened connection, and a sense of collective resilience.
These findings disrupt assumptions of universal relationship functioning and emphasize the need to account for cultural identity and structural context in models of relational health. Black Love, as expressed in this study, is not only a source of connection but also a dynamic mechanism of resistance and healing in the face of racial trauma.
This research presents a culturally grounded framework for understanding the resilience of Black couples and offers practical implications for clinicians, educators, and policymakers. By amplifying the voices of Black couples, the study contributes to more inclusive and equity-informed approaches to couple and family therapy.
Dr. Nathan Wood served as the faculty advisor for this project and provided mentorship and support throughout the research process. Dissemination plans include submission to the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy and presentation at the National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference, where findings will inform both scholarly discourse and applied practice.