7 Minutes to marital satisfaction…

Sunday, December 3, 2023.

The best marital investment of time you can make to sustain your intimate connection takes less than half an hour per year.

Famed researcher Eli Finkel has developed a short writing exercise helps couples feel more satisfied with their marriages that is both remarkably brief and effective.

The point of this exercise, is for couples to write about their last conflict from a neutral point of view. They then try to imagine that this neutral human wants the best for both of the humans in the marital conflict.

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  Psychologists call this “reappraisal” or a “reframe.” Remarkable things happen when humans begin to see a situation in a different light.

• The research findings showed that conducted this brief exercise, only three times a year, prevented couples from falling out love with one another.

Professor Eli Finkel, the study’s first author, said:

“I don’t want it to sound like magic, but you can get pretty impressive results with minimal intervention.”

How the study was conducted

The study included 120 couples who were tracked over two years.

• For the first year, the psychologists did nothing but track marital satisfaction.

• As expected, everyone’s satisfaction with their marriage dropped in the first year.

• Then, in the second year, half of the couples were given the 7-minute writing exercise to do on three occasions.

• This is the brilliant part. The writing exercise was operationalized by conjuring an imaginary family member who loved both partners in the marriage equally, and asking for advice through an creative writing exercise.

• The results from the second year showed that all the couples still fought just as much as before. On the other hand, the couples who had done the writing intervention did not let these conflicts impact them as severely.

• As a result, these humans maintained their marital satisfaction through the second year, while the other group experienced yet another drop.

• Professor Finkel explained:

“Not only did this effect emerge for marital satisfaction, it also emerged for other relationship processes — like passion and sexual desire — that are especially vulnerable to the ravages of time.

And this isn’t a dating sample.

These effects emerged whether people were married for one month, 50 years, or anywhere in between.”

Marital satisfaction is not just critical to mental well-being, but also to physical health…

Professor Finkel said:

“Marriage tends to be healthy for people, but the quality of the marriage is much more important than its mere existence.

Having 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.”

Why not give it a try? The human imagination can not only amuse, it can also heal.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Finkel, E. J., Slotter, E. B., Luchies, L. B., Walton, G. M., & Gross, J. J. (2013). A Brief Intervention to Promote Conflict Reappraisal Preserves Marital Quality Over Time. Psychological Science, 24(8), 1595-1601. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474938