New research reveals one cheeky habit that, contrary to intuition, may serve as a secret glue that keeps couples close.
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Gossip is likely the last thing you’d think to be a tool for lasting love. Yet, according to an August 2025 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, it might be time to rethink that assumption.
Chandler Spahr and Megan Robbins, the researchers behind the study, examined almost a whopping 100,000 snippets of real-life audio recordings, all from 76 different couples. And across these everyday conversations, the researchers found that couples spent an average of 38 minutes per day gossiping together.
The truly intriguing finding, though, wasn’t just how often couples gossiped. Rather, it was that the more these couples gossiped, the happier they tended to be. Frequent gossip was consistently associated with higher relationship quality, as well as greater overall happiness.
This finding is welcomed, but still slightly puzzling — because how can something that’s regularly dismissed as petty or toxic actually strengthen a relationship? Prior research offers us three primary reasons why.
1. Social Bonding
Gossip is much more than just idle chatter, despite what you might’ve otherwise been taught. As a 2021 study in published Human Nature explains, it’s actually a vital form of social glue. From an evolutionary standpoint, gossip is what allowed our early ancestors to depart invaluable social knowledge. In turn, they were able to evaluate others’ reputations and survive the complexities of living within a group.
In other words, gossip helped us survive. And while it may not serve that same purpose today, it still, by extension, is an efficient way to connect with others.
Of course, gossip has a bad reputation — and sometimes rightly so. We all know how much it can hurt to be the subject of an ugly rumor or mean-spirited commentary. That said, psychologists distinguish between two types of gossip, only one of which is technically harmful:
- Negative gossip, which involves criticism or schadenfreude
- Positive gossip, which actually serves to highlight others’ good traits or successes
Both can play oddly constructive roles in socialization. For couples, however, both of these forms of gossip serve as a means for them to interpret their social world together.
Say, for instance, your mutual friend just got a well-deserved promotion. You might say, “Good for her, she’s been working so hard for this, and for months, too!” Your partner might then respond, “Yeah, though I hope she’s not burning herself out.”
Both of these comments are still technically gossip, by definition. But, simultaneously, they also function as a larger conversation about work ethic, ambition and mental health.
The same can apply when you, for instance, gossip about someone in a more negative sense. For example, imagine that you have a friend who regularly flirts with others, despite being in what should be a committed relationship. You say, “That’s so disrespectful,” to which your partner agrees: “Yeah, that would really bother me too.”
It might be a bit judgmental, but it’s also a highly effective way to reaffirm your moral code with your partner. In this sense, you could consider gossip as a segue for couples to have much deeper discussions about ethics, trust and integrity — only, with much lower stakes.
2. Emotional Regulation
Gossip may be largely social, but it doesn’t necessarily only have social benefits. As research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin teaches us, gossip can also be a helpful way for us to regulate our feelings.
Researchers found that positive gossip (for example, talking about someone’s success) can inspire our motivation and pride. If you hear, for instance, that your colleague has been praised for a project of theirs, you might then be inspired to take on one that you’ve been hesitant to start.
Negative gossip, on the other hand, can activate your more self-protective instincts. Discussing someone’s mistakes or shortcomings might leave you feeling defensive, fearful or even a little bit relieved that you’re not in that person’s position. These emotional responses can, paradoxically, remind us of who we are and who we ultimately want to be.
Within a relationship, this gives you and your partner a way to come to terms with difficult emotions or thoughts together, which you might have never even thought to discuss otherwise.
Talking about someone else’s wins or failures, in this sense, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re only talking about someone else; you’re also inadvertently talking about your own hopes, fears and insecurities.
Imagine, for example, that you’ve heard through the grapevine that a friend’s marriage has hit a rough patch. Bringing this up to your partner might, in turn, spark an important conversation of your own. You might talk about whether you think it’d ever happen to you two, or about where you both think it all went wrong for them.
Through that gossip, you’re then able to think reflexively about your own dynamic. You test out emotional boundaries, and in response, regulate your own anxieties about these difficult kinds of scenarios together.
Even the more common gossip, where you vent about others, can give you a way to offload tension collectively. Your private irritations become a shared experience when you vent about them. And in doing so, gossip becomes a tool for emotional co-regulation: you and your partner work together to process, validate and soothe each other’s feelings about what happened.
3. Playfulness
And then, of course, there’s the fun of it all. Although few of us would be willing to admit it on record, a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology notes that one of the primary reasons people gossip is purely for enjoyment.
Gossip, by and large, is just one of many ways to engage in storytelling — the same kind of storytelling that enthralled us when we were children. You exchange impressions; you fill in the details with imagination; you add in a bit of dramatic flair. When you ask, “Did you see how shocked she looked?”, your partner might match your energy: “Oh my God, I thought her jaw was going to hit the floor!”
These are shared performances, and they’re quite intimate in their own right. It’s almost like improvisational theater for two.
Playfulness, in its many different shapes and forms, is often cited as one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction for long-term couples. With this in mind, good faith gossip can function as a form of relational play. You and your partner can use it to turn everyday social events into miniature stories and inside jokes.
Crucially, the purpose of these moments shouldn’t be cruelty or mockery. Rather, it should just be a way to find some delight in the mundane with your partner. The best couples know how to walk the fine line between playful gossip and mean-spiritedness. They know when to roll their eyes and when to draw the line. The pleasure should lie in the exchange itself: in the banter and the rhythm of it.
So, while gossip probably still isn’t the most noble of habits, it can still turn out to be a surprisingly elegant one. In its more lighthearted forms, it may be a great way for you and your partner to be curious together, to laugh together and to turn the ordinary stuff of social life into a shared story — one “Did you hear?” at a time.
Do you relish the opportunity to gossip about other’s misfortunes? Take this science-backed test to find out if this “schadenfreude” is cause for concern: The Schadenfreude Scale
