Avatar

by Karen Young

1,862
VIEWS

The Simple Activity That Wards Off Separation & Divorce

It’s fun. It’s easy. It’s cheaper than relationship therapy and it can put the handbrake on the downward slide to arguing over the tangerine armchair that you only started wanting when he wanted it too.

In a comparison with other more intense relationship training, this simple activity has proven to be a surprisingly effective way to keep a relationship firing.

Research has shown that watching a movie centred around an intimate relationship, and chatting about it together afterwards, is at least as effective as couples therapy and training in fending off separation and divorce. (Interested? Keep reading for the list of suggested list of movies.)

What They Did:

The study randomly assigned 174 couples to one of three groups:

  • Conflict Management:

    Couples were taught how to discuss heated issues and channel the focus on what is being said, rather than on formulating a response.

  • Compassion and Acceptance Training:

    Through a series of lectures and exercises, couples were encouraged to: work together as a team, approach their relationship with greater empathy and compassion, practice random acts of kindness and affection, and use language that communicated acceptance.

  • Movie and Chat: 

    Couples attended a 10 minute lecture about how watching other couples in movies could highlight both the healthy and destructive behaviours in their own relationships. They then watched and discussed movies which centred around an intimate relationship.

What They Found:

The groups were compared three years later and all had a similar divorce and separation rate of 11%.

This was compared to a rate of 24% for a group of similar couples who received no training or instruction.

Watching relationship movies together and chatting about them afterwards is just as effective in preserving a relationship as more intensive programs.

What makes a movie and a chat so special?

As explained by Ronald Rogge, Associate Professor of Psychology at UCLA,

‘I think it’s the couples reinvesting in their relationship and taking a cold hard look at their own behavior that makes the difference. The sad truth is that when life knocks you down, you come home and the people you are most likely to lash out at in frustration are the ones you love the most.

For these couples to stop and look and say, ‘You know, I have yelled at you like that before. I have called you names before and that’s not what I want to do to the person I love the most.’ Just that insight alone, is likely what makes this intervention work.’

Rogge adds,

‘You might not be able to get your husband into a couples group, especially when you are happy, but watching a movie together and having a discussion, that’s not so scary. It’s less pathologising, less stigmatising.’

Although the research looked at couples in the early stages of marriage, finding an innocuous, easy way to look at the relationship is going to be good for any couple at any stage of their relationship.

In any relationship, having focused time with each other, free from the distraction of work, children, dishes, dinner will be sustenance for any relationship.

As Rogge notes, ‘The results suggest that husbands and wives have a pretty good sense of what they might be doing right and wrong in their relationships. Thus, you might not need to teach them a whole lot of skills to cut the divorce rate. You might just need to get them to think about how they are currently behaving. And for five movies to give us a benefit over three years – that is awesome.’

Keen to try? Click here for the list of movies and discussions questions used in the study.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Hey Sigmund on Instagram

karenyoung_heysigmund

Sometimes we all just need space to talk to someone who will listen without giving advice, or ...

View

Jan 18

Open
Sometimes we all just need space to talk to someone who will listen without giving advice, or problem solving, or lecturing. Someone who will let us talk, and who can handle our experiences and words and feelings without having to smooth out the wrinkles or tidy the frayed edges. Our kids need this too, but as their important adults, it can be hard to hush without needing to fix things, or gather up their experience and bundle it into a learning that will grow them. We do this because we love them, but it can also mean that they choose not to let us in for the wrong reasons. We can’t help them if we don’t know what’s happening in their world, and entry will be on their terms - even more as they get older. As they grow, they won’t trust us with the big things if we don’t give them the opportunity to learn that we can handle the little things (which might feel seismic to them). They won’t let us in to their world unless we make it safe for them to. When my own kids were small, we had a rule that when I picked them up from school they could tell me anything, and when we drove into the driveway, the conversation would be finished if they wanted it to be. They only put this rule into play a few times, but it was enough for them to learn that it was safe to talk about anything, and for me to hear what was happening in that part of their world that happened without me. My gosh though, there were times that the end of the conversation would be jarring and breathtaking and so unfinished for me, but every time they would come back when they were ready and we would finish the chat. As it turned out, I had to trust them as much as I wanted them to trust me. But that’s how parenting is really isn’t it. Of course there will always be lessons in their experiences we will want to hear straight up, but we also need them to learn that we are safe to come to. We need them to know that there isn’t anything about them or their life we can’t handle, and when the world feels hard or uncertain, it’s safe here. By building safety, we build our connection and influence. It’s just how it seems to work.♥️ . #parenting #parenthood #mindfulparenting

karenyoung_heysigmund

Words can be hard sometimes. The right words can be orbital and unconquerable and hard to grab hold ...

View

Jan 14

Open
Words can be hard sometimes. The right words can be orbital and unconquerable and hard to grab hold of. Feelings though - they’ll always make themselves known, with or without the ‘why’. Kids and teens are no different to the rest of us. Their feelings can feel bigger than words - unfathomable and messy and too much to be lassoed into language. If we tap into our own experience, we can sometimes (not all the time) get an idea of what they might need. It’s completely understandable that new things or hard things (such as going back to school) might drive thoughts of falls and fails and missteps. When this happens, it’s not so much the hard thing or the new thing that drives avoidance, but thoughts of failing or not being good enough. The more meaningful the ‘thing’ is, the more this is likely to happen. If you can look behind the words, and through to the intention - to avoid failure more than the new or difficult experience, it can be easier to give them what they need. Often, ‘I can’t’ means, ‘What if I can’t?’ or, ‘Do you think I can?’, or, ‘Will you still think I’m brave, strong, and capable of I fail?’ They need to know that the outcome won’t make any difference at all to how much you adore them, and how capable and exceptional you think they are. By focusing on process, (the courage to give it a go), we clear the runway so they can feel safer to crawl, then walk, then run, then fly. It takes time to reach full flight in anything, but in the meantime the stumbling can make even the strongest of hearts feel vulnerable. The more we focus on process over outcome (their courage to try over the result), and who they are over what they do (their courage, tenacity, curiosity over the outcome), the safer they will feel to try new things or hard things. We know they can do hard things, and the beauty and expansion comes first in the willingness to try. . #parenting #mindfulparenting #positiveparenting #mindfulparent

karenyoung_heysigmund

Never in the history of forever has there been such a lavish opportunity for a year to be better ...

View

Jan 3

Open
Never in the history of forever has there been such a lavish opportunity for a year to be better than the last. Not to be grabby, but you know what I’d love this year? Less opportunities that come in the name of ‘resilience’. I’m ready for joy, or adventure, or connection, or gratitude, or courage - anything else but resilience really. Opportunities for resilience have a place, but 2020 has been relentless with its servings, and it’s time for an out breath. Here’s hoping 2021 will be a year that wraps its loving arms around us. I’m ready for that. x

karenyoung_heysigmund

The holidays are a wonderland of everything that can lead to hyped up, exhausted, cranky, excited, ...

View

Dec 17

Open
The holidays are a wonderland of everything that can lead to hyped up, exhausted, cranky, excited, happy kids (and adults). Sometimes they’ll cycle through all of these within ten minutes. Sugar will constantly pry their little mouths wide open and jump inside, routines will laugh at you from a distance, there will be gatherings and parties, and everything will feel a little bit different to usual. And a bit like magic. Know that whatever happens, it’s all part of what the holidays are meant to look like. They aren’t meant to be pristine and orderly and exactly as planned. They were never meant to be that. Christmas is about people, your favourite ones, not tasks. If focusing on the people means some of the tasks fall down, let that be okay, because that’s what Christmas is. It’s about you and your people. It’s not about proving your parenting stamina, or that you’ve raised perfectly well-behaved humans, or that your family can polish up like the catalog ones any day of the week, or that you can create restaurant quality meals and decorate the table like you were born doing it. Christmas is messy and ridiculous and exhausting and there will be plenty of frayed edges. And plenty of magic. The magic will happen the way it always happens. Not with the decorations or the trimmings or the food or the polish, but by being with the ones you love, and the ones who love you right back. When it all starts to feel too important, too necessary and too ‘un-let-go-able’, be guided by the bigger truth, which is that more than anything, you will all remember how you all felt – as in how happy they felt, how loved they felt were, how noticed they felt. They won’t care about the instagram-worthy meals on the table, the cleanliness of the floors, how many relatives they visited, or how impressed other grown-ups were with their clean faces and darling smiles. It’s easy to forget sometimes, that what matters most at Christmas isn’t the tasks, but the people – the ones who would give up pretty much anything just to have the day with you.

karenyoung_heysigmund

Some days are great days. We want to squeeze every delicious moment out of them and keep them ...

View

Dec 16

Open
Some days are great days. We want to squeeze every delicious moment out of them and keep them forever somewhere safe and reachable where our loved days and precious things are kept. Then there are days that are truly awful - the days we want to fold in half, and then in half again and again and again until those days are too small to hurt us any more. But days are like that aren’t they. For better or worse they will come and they will go. Sometimes the effects of them will stay – the glow, the growth, the joy, the bruises – long after those days have gone. And despite what I know to be true - that these are the days that will make us braver, stronger, kinder and wiser, sometimes I don’t feel any of that for a while. I just see the stretch marks. But that’s the way life is, isn’t it. It can be hard and beautiful all in sequence and all at once. ⁣ One of the tough things about being human is that to live wholeheartedly means to open ourselves to both - the parts that are plump with happiness, and the parts that hurt. We don’t have to choose which one can stay. They can exist together. Not always in equal measure, and not always enough of the beautiful to make the awful feel tolerable, or to give it permission to be, but they can exist together - love through loss, hope through heartache. The big memory-making times that fatten life to full enough, and the ones that come with breakage or loss. The loss matters and the joy matters. The existence of either doesn't make the other matter any less. ⁣ What I also know to be true is that eventually, the space taken up by loss or heartache changes space for enough of the beautiful to exist with it. This is when we can start to move with. Sadness still, perhaps, but with hope, with courage, with strength and softness, with openness to what comes next. Because living bravely and wholeheartedly doesn't mean getting over loss or denying the feelings that take our breath away sometimes. It means honouring both, and in time, moving with.♥️

View Cart Checkout Continue Shopping

Pin It on Pinterest