For many physicians, the years in residency are among the most challenging of their lives. Residency often requires them to push themselves mentally and physically with little time for themselves, let alone their relationships.
Despite these challenges, many physicians not only manage to maintain romantic relationships during this time but find that their partnerships help them thrive. It’s a concept supported by research into the role of romance in human wellbeing.
Jacqueline Olds, MD, and Richard Schwartz, MD, both Harvard Medical School professors and psychiatrists who have published books on love and romance — and who have been married to each other for more than 45 years — say that humans have evolved to need emotional connection.
In fact, it was Olds' father who discovered that the brain’s ventral tegmental area is associated with pleasure, motivation, and reward-seeking. It lights up on an MRI when someone thinks about the person they love. Romantic love triggers the release of feel-good hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin, which increase attachment and feelings of well-being and connectedness. Some research suggests that romantic love strengthens the immune system, while loneliness can have the opposite effect.
“We evolved as social animals with the group being our unit of survival, and when we are not connected to other people, we feel bad most of the time and our biology, as an organism, simply does not work as well,” says Schwartz. He adds that residency presents a curious challenge, since it requires being engaged with many patients and colleagues, but in a way that often doesn’t allow for deep connection.
“I think that having a romantic partnership is incredibly stabilizing and sort of life-enhancing,” Olds says. “Those years in residency are so stressful, and to have somebody else by your side during those stressful years is wonderful.”
Olds speaks from experience. She and Schwartz began dating when they were both in residency.
“If I look at both myself and other people during the stress of a residency, the people who were in stable romantic relationships did seem to just be more relaxed and actually have more energy and attention to devote to being a resident,” Schwartz says.
But just because maintaining a healthy romantic relationship during residency can be beneficial doesn’t mean it’s easy.
AAMCNews spoke with couples about their love stories and how they kept the romance alive during residency.
A not-so-surprise proposal
“She’s some stranger I met on the internet,” jokes Ian Browning, his arm draped around his fiancé, Taylor Wallace, MD.
The couple met on Bumble, the dating app, when Wallace was in her fourth year of medical school at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk. They clicked quickly and, within a few months, both felt that their relationship was heading toward marriage. But as Wallace’s Match Day approached, they got anxious. Browning was studying to become a physical therapist at Old Dominion University and they both wanted to stay in Norfolk within easy distance of their respective families. As Wallace finalized her rank order list for her psychiatry residency, location was a top priority. She recalls sharing with her program director at EVMS that she wanted to stay at the institution for several reasons, including her blossoming romance with Browning.
Fortunately, The Match® algorithm was in their favor. She’s now a second-year psychiatry resident at EVMS.
“I don't want to think about what it would have been like had I not matched here,” she says. “I think that would have been pretty miserable, because by the time that we got to Match Day, things were serious.”
So serious that they moved in together, and Wallace had given Browning her grandmother’s engagement ring with one instruction: the proposal should be a surprise.
For Browning, the pressure was on.
“It was hard because she's smart and I'm not good at being sneaky,” Browning says. “And it was really frustrating because I was so excited about it, and I couldn't tell my favorite person about something I was super excited about.”
In November 2024, he attempted the impossible. Browning planned a date in Colonial Williamsburg and invited a large group of her family and close friends, including her co-residents and an attending, to gather for a surprise party after the proposal.
Things went south when they accidentally ran into two of Wallace’s best friends who had flown in for the surprise. By the time Browning had shepherded Wallace to the bench he’d staked out for the proposal, she was onto him. He got down on one knee and recited a proposal speech that Wallace has no memory of because her mind went blank with excitement.
Now, the couple is planning their wedding, scheduled for November 2025.
But for Wallace, with the stress of residency, wedding planning can add to overwhelm.
Which is why Browning is happy to step in — doing most of the cooking for them both and trying to fight against stereotypes that place most of the wedding planning responsibilities on a woman.
“When she comes home after a long day, she's pretty wiped, and then I come to her with questions [about the wedding], and I feel like there's some level of mental fatigue that comes with working in health care overall,” Browning says. “The idea of having to make additional decisions after making decisions on other people's behalf all day can be pretty wiping.”
Though Browning isn’t a physician, his work in the health care field helps him relate to the joys and challenges Wallace faces day-to-day, and they both find comfort in confiding in each other.
“Going into your residency with a partner, I think it was a huge blessing, because he's a wonderful person already, but I think just having that partner is one extra social support, and especially if it's a good partner, like he is, it's this level of intimacy that you can't have with someone else,” Wallace says. “They understand you in a way that, I think, other people can't, even close friends or family. It's a whole different type of relationship, and I think having that on board is also super helpful.”
From long-distance to life partner
Ravali Inja, MD, and Anish Khanorkar’s relationship started with a fateful question: “Do you want some ice cream?”
Inja, who was a second-year medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in Missouri at the time, was meeting a friend on a trip to New York City. That friend invited Inja over to her boyfriend’s apartment, which also happened to be Khanorkar’s, since they were roommates. Khanorkar, an investment banker working in Manhattan, offered Inja some ice cream, which she accepted.
They didn’t interact much more that night, but a week later, after Inja had returned to St. Louis, Khanorkar added her on Facebook. They started chatting and within a few weeks, he flew out to visit her. For Inja, the prospect of a long-distance relationship was daunting, but they both agreed that they were looking for something serious.
“We knew that either this is going to go somewhere or it's really not,” Inja recalls. “And it was coming closer and closer to Match time.”
They managed to grow even closer despite the distance, making a point of FaceTiming every day, even if it was just to sit silently as he worked, and she studied.
In August of Inja’s final year of medical school, Khanorkar popped the question at a vineyard surrounded by their close friends and family members.
Inja matched into pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and they were married the week before she started her residency.
According to Inja, their two years in a long-distance relationship (including during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) helped prepare them for staying connected despite her residency work schedule. They each understood the other’s career demands and learned to make the most of the time they had together.
“Our careers are important to us, but then family is still very important as well,” Inja says. “We both aligned on that, and we knew that whatever comes, at the end of the day, we'll manage it.”
Inja completed her residency last year and started a sleep medicine fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This time, it was Khanorkar’s turn to move. He now commutes two hours each way to his office in Manhattan.
“I think finding a partner that is super supportive and one of your biggest cheerleaders is a game changer,” Inja says.
The couple also welcomed a baby girl in September 2024.
While it’s been challenging to keep the romance alive with the whirlwind of new parenthood, fellowship, and his commute, Inja says that they find small ways to show their love for each other. For example, folding the other’s laundry, turning off the other’s alarm on a weekend to let them sleep in, or picking up a favorite dessert to share.
And they continue the tradition they started during their long-distance days of FaceTiming every day, even if it’s just for a couple of minutes between patients and meetings.
“It means the world to both of us to acknowledge that the other is thinking about us," Inja says.
“We” time over “me” time
As modern American culture has grown more individualistic in recent generations, prioritizing alone time for self-care has become ubiquitous. But Olds and Schwartz argue that this approach to happiness is misguided, particularly for people trying to balance a demanding career and family life.
“It turns out, many of the modern concepts of what would lead to well-being are not necessarily conducive to having a good partnership or a reasonable life during residency,” Olds says. “It means that some of your favorite hobbies or pursuits might have to fall by the wayside. There was a time when some of the younger residents were asking me for a mentoring talk about how I managed [to balance my career and marriage]. And they kept saying, essentially, ‘Where did you find your “me” time?’ And I kept saying, ‘I never actually had understood that concept, and I'd never looked for “me” time. That was how I managed it, because I didn't even allow for that concept.’”
In 2019, the couple, who have two adult children, gave a TED Talk about the importance of couples paying attention to “distance alarms,” the signals the mind sends when a couple begins to grow apart. They shared an example of how they experienced these alarms when they spent hours angry with each other during a cross-country road trip to meet their first grandchild. Though it’s natural for a couple to have an ebb and flow in their relationship — being closer and more distant at different times — the key to a lasting partnership is to intentionally come back together when those “distance alarms” go off, they say.
It's especially important to pay attention to that alarm during busier seasons of life, such as residency.
“The fact is, just simply, the schedule of residency pulls couples apart and keeps them from feeling in touch with each other,” Schwartz says. “It does take, as Jacquie says, a determined effort to make sure that despite the schedules and the demand that you do engineer a chance to reconnect and to do that pretty regularly.”
Olds and Schwartz say that faculty and leaders at academic medical institutions can help support their residents’ well-being by creating a culture that’s supportive of their residents maintaining healthy relationships. This can be as simple as talking about relationships in a positive light and practicing what they preach.
For example, at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital-McLean Hospital psychiatry residency, the psychotherapy faculty take turns hosting monthly dinners and discussions for residents in their homes.
“All these residents often come not because they're so interested in psychodynamic psychotherapy, but because they're interested in supper,” Olds says.
“And they’re as interested in how the faculty is living, what their lives are like outside of the hospital,” Schwartz adds.
It’s an opportunity for the residents to see firsthand how the faculty integrate their own relationships with their careers.
But Olds and Schwartz acknowledge that, for many residency programs, promoting residents’ romantic lives is competing with many priorities. In these cases, small changes can make a big difference.
Says Olds: “I think saying, ‘Of course, we want you to have some time on the weekend for yourselves and your partners,' that would already be a huge start.”
Olds and Schwartz set the example with their own relationship. Every weekend, no matter what is going on, they carve out time to spend together, one-on-one.
“It's just making sure that in your great pie chart of time you leave a healthy slice for your partner,” Schwartz says.
