Writing on spouse rows leads to marital bliss?
People who pen down the arguments they had with their spouses are likely to be more satisfied in their marriage, according to a new study.
Just three, seven-minute writing exercises in a year can prevent couples from losing their marital happiness, Northwestern Univer-sity researchers found.
The writing should be done from a third person’s perspective, the study said. “I don’t want it to sound like magic, but you can get pretty impressive results with minimal intervention,” said Eli Finkel, lead author of the study.
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. The reappraisal writing task asked participants to think about their most recent disagreement with their partner from the perspective of a neutral third party.
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