Relationship problems are common.1 In fact relationship difficulties are one of the major reasons that people seek therapy. And even though the divorce rate is declining from its peak in the 1980s, we can still expect about one third of recently married couples to ultimately divorce.
We’re all aware of the risk that our relationships will fail. And in order to get their marriages off on the right foot, some couples engage in pre-marital or early marital counseling. This kind of counseling is often provided by religious institutions or trained therapists. While these interventions can be beneficial, they aren’t always accessible to every couple.
But could there be a simple way to help couples maintain a strong marriage? New research suggests that an intervention that involves watching and discussing five romantically-themed movies with your spouse could put you at significantly lower risk of divorce. In a 3-year long study, Ronald Rogge and colleagues at the University of Rochester found that a movie-based intervention worked as well as a therapeutic intervention in preventing divorce, cutting the divorce rate in half, as compared to a control group.2
In the study, 174 newlywed couples were assigned to one of four different groups. Two groups took part in well-known pre-marital interventions. One was assigned to a small-group intervention focusing on conflict management (the PREP program). The other group received training in acceptance and empathy (the CARE program). Each of these group workshops occurred over the course of four sessions totaling 15 hours. A control group didn’t get any sort of treatment. A fourth group had a relationship awareness intervention, using movies, which involved a single 4-hour session with the researchers, followed by four weekly at home sessions.
So how did the researchers create relationship awareness? Instead of teaching the couples specific skills, they attempted to make them more aware of the importance of working to maintain their relationships. The researchers first spent an hour explaining the importance of relationship maintenance and told the couples that everyday events, like those portrayed in films, can help them in their own relationships. The couples then watched the 1967 movie, Two for the Road, which depicts a couple examining the events in their 12-year relationship. Couples then engaged in a semi-structured discussion about one of the themes in the film, such as forgiveness or support. They were then sent home with a list of movies and suggested discussion topics for each film, and were instructed to watch and discuss one movie each week for four weeks. The full list of movies and questions is available here.
The researchers followed up with their sample three years later to see if they were still together, and if there were any changes in relationship quality. In the control group 24% of the couples got divorced or separated, compared to 11% of the couples who completed the therapeutic or movie-watching interventions. So, in terms of preventing the couples from breaking up, the movie-watching intervention was just as effective as the therapeutic ones in cutting the divorce rate in half. All couples declined in overall marital satisfaction, which is typical, but there were no differences in satisfaction between the treatment groups. The researchers also examined the extent to which each spouse reported engaging in positive and negative behaviors (those targeted by CARE), and adaptive conflict behaviors (those targeted by PREP). The findings were rather mixed, and in some cases spouses actually reported greater declines in the very positive behaviors the programs were designed to instill. The authors of the study suggested that programs that target specific skills may make people more aware of what they and their partner are doing wrong, inadvertently making them more sensitive to these negative behaviors than they would have been otherwise.
These results suggest that skills-specific interventions may not always work the way they are intended. Their main benefit may come not from the specific training they provide, but from the fact that they make couples more aware of the importance of working on their relationships. And there may be simpler and lower-cost ways to get those benefits. Watching movies about relationships and having serious discussions with your partner about themes like supporting each other, forgiveness, and conflict management can make you more aware of how these issues affect your own relationship.
It’s important to note that these interventions are preventative. That is, they are designed to help couples avoid marital trouble down the road. They are not a substitute for more intensive couples’ therapy with a trained counselor. So for couples who are already experiencing marital distress, these interventions may be too little late. But for couples who are looking to start their marriages right and reduce their risk of divorce, this simple, inexpensive method could really help. And if it doesn’t, at least it may provide some interesting date nights.
Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D. is an associate professor of psychology at Albright College, who studies relationships and cyberpsychology. Follow her on Twitter for updates about social psychology, relationships, and online behavior. Read more more articles by Dr. Seidman on Close Encounters.
References
1 Levitt, M. J., Silver, M. E., & Franco, N. (1996). Troublesome relationships: A part of human experience. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13, 523-536.
2 Rogge, R. D., Cobb, R. J., Lawrence, E., Johnson, M. D., & Bradbury, T. N. (2013). Is skills training necessary for the primary prevention of marital distress and dissolution? A 3-year experimental study of three interventions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81, 949 –961.
