Writing About Relationship 3 Times a Year Helps Sustain Marital Satisfaction

Writing a relationship report three times a year helps couples sustain marital satisfaction, according to a study.

Researchers at Northwestern University found couples that wrote regular reports about their relationship maintained their marital satisfaction, while couples that didn’t write reports noted a decline in their marital satisfaction.

The study included 120 couples, half assigned to the writing exercise and the other not.

Every four months for two years couples wrote about their relationship satisfaction, including intimacy, love, passion, trust and commitment, and wrote objectively on the most significant fight they had over the last four months.

“Couples that wrote regular reports about their

relationship maintained their marital satisfaction.”

Professor Eli Finkel, the lead author of the study, noted these results were consistent “whether people were married for one month, 50 years or anywhere in between.”

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

Source: Northwestern.edu.