Unfortunately, conflict in romantic relationships is inevitable and has negative impacts on both mental and physical health, especially when couples engage in frequent conflict (Cohen, 2004). Therefore, it becomes important to learn about the biases that may drive conflict and hinder conflict resolution. Specifically, we are interested in seeing how a version of the rusty halo effect—a cognitive bias that causes our perceptions of a person to be heavily negatively influenced by a single instance of negative behavior (Baron, 1986)—may impede conflict resolution in romantic relationships. These perceptions are likely also influenced by the heightened retrievability of negative information as a result of the negativity bias, which suggests that negative events are more salient, potent, and dominant than non-negative events, thus making them more memorable (Rozin & Royzman, 2001). This research suggests that victims may recall more negative information while experiencing the negative affect following an interpersonal offense from their romantic partner (in this case, an instance of rival threat), which could have negative consequences for their relationships.