New research forthcoming in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science,shows that this writing intervention, implemented through just three, seven-minute writing exercises administered online, prevents couples from losing that loving feeling.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want it to sound like magic, but you can get pretty impressive results with minimal intervention,\u201d said Eli Finkel, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n The study involved 120 couples, half assigned the reappraisal intervention and the other not. Every four months for two years all spouses reported their relationship satisfaction, love, intimacy, trust, passion and commitment. They also provided a fact-based summary of the most significant disagreement they had experienced with their spouse in the preceding four months.<\/p>\n The reappraisal writing task asked participants to think about their most recent disagreement with their partner from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for all involved<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Replicating prior research, both groups exhibited declines in marital quality over Year 1. But for the spouses who experienced the reappraisal intervention \u2014 who completed the writing exercise three times during Year 2 \u2014 the decline in marital satisfaction was entirely eliminated. Although couples in the two conditions fought just as frequently about equally severe topics, the intervention couples were less distressed by these fights<\/strong>, which helped them sustain marital satisfaction.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only did this effect emerge for marital satisfaction, it also emerged for other relationship processes \u2014 like passion and sexual desire \u2014 that are especially vulnerable to the ravages of time,\u201d Finkel said. \u201cAnd this isn\u2019t a dating sample. These effects emerged whether people were married for one month, 50 years, or anywhere in between.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n This finding may be especially important given that low marital quality can have serious health implications, according to Finkel.<\/p>\n Finkel cites data that among coronary artery bypass patients, those who experienced high marital satisfaction shortly after the surgery were three times more likely to be alive 15 years later than those who experienced low marital satisfaction.<\/p>\n \u201cMarriage tends to be healthy for people, but the quality of the marriage is much more important than its mere existence,<\/strong>\u201d Finkel said. \u201cHaving a high-quality marriage is one of the strongest predictors of happiness and health. From that perspective, participating in a seven-minute writing exercise three times a year has to be one of the best investments married people can make.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time\u201d will be published in Psychological Science<\/em> later this year. In addition to Finkel, co-authors include Erica B. Slotter of Villanova University; Laura B. Luchies of Redeemer University College; and Gregory M. Walton and James J. Gross of Stanford University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release via HealthCanal: Marital satisfaction \u2014 so critical to health and happiness \u2014 generally declines over time. A brief writing intervention that helps… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[162,287,279,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10613"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10993,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613\/revisions\/10993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"marriage\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/senior_couple_meal.jpg\")
Marital satisfaction \u2014 so critical to health and happiness \u2014 generally declines over time<\/strong>. A brief writing intervention that helps spouses adopt a more objective outlook on marital conflict could be the answer.<\/p>\n