MARRIED
COUPLES WHO PLAY TOGETHER STAY TOGETHER
By
Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
July
16, 2008
Most
couples know their marriages are happier when they make time to have
fun.
But often it's the fun that's first to fall by the wayside as
demands
pile
up, especially in a trying economy when couples often work long
hours
or
hold down more than one job.
Now
research from the University of Denver supports the idea that
finding
moments
to be together free of financial, family or other stresses ‹ just
to
have
fun together ‹ is not an indulgence.
"The
more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your
partner,
the
happier the relationship will get over time," says Howard
Markman, a
psychologist
who co-directs the university's Center for Marital and Family
Studies.
"The
correlation between fun and marital happiness is high, and
significant."
For
men, the connection is even more important, the researchers say.
They
found
that men are more likely than women to call their spouse their best
friend.
Markman
and co-director Scott Stanley in 1996 began a long-term study of 306
Denver-area
couples. The yet-unpublished study is based on a fun and
friendship
scale the pair developed, with statements such as "We regularly
have
great conversations where we just talk as good friends," and
"My
partner
really listens to me when I have something important to say."
They
analyzed
questionnaires from a subset of the sample ‹ 197 couples in their
second
year of marriage.
The
research adds to findings published in 2000 in the Journal of
Personality
and Social Psychology by psychologist Arthur Aron of State
University
of New York-Stony Brook and colleagues. They showed that sharing
in
new and exciting activities is consistently associated with better
relationships.
Markman,
who conducts couples retreats, says individual leisure activities,
such
as watching TV or using the Internet, don't build those positive
connections.
Other
relationship experts agree. "The thing we're working for is to
have
fun
and relaxation and enjoyment together, and then we're contaminating
it,"
says
Les Parrott, a psychology professor at Seattle Pacific University
and
co-author
of relationship books.
One
of the reasons couples have trouble is that they have different
takes on
fun
and bonding, Parrott says. "Intimacy and friendship for a man
is built
on
shared activity, but for women, shared activity is a backdrop for a
great
conversation.
What she wants on date night is a time of intimacy and
friendship.
He's disappointed because she'll never go to a game or golfing,
and
it's during shared activities that his spirit is most likely to open
up."
Gender
differences also showed up in another study by the Denver
researchers.
They asked a random phone sample of 908 people how long it had
been
since they had been on a date with their spouse; women, on average,
said
it had been twice as long as men. (In couples married 11 to 19
years,
women
said 17.8 weeks, and men said nine.)
"Males
and females have different definitions of what a date is,"
Markman
says.
"Females' definition is much more planned in advance and the
husband
puts
more effort into it. For a guy, grabbing coffee ‹ that's a
date."
Marital
interaction is also declining, say researchers in the 2007 book
Alone
Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing. Pennsylvania State
University
sociologist Paul Amato and colleagues analyzed national surveys
of
2,034 married couples in 1980 and a similar sample of 2,100 in 2000.
Those
who reported "almost always" engaging in certain leisure
activities
with
their spouses dropped.
Markman
took a less scientific approach in a solo study he began in the
early
1990s of cities with major league baseball teams; he found those
cities
had a 28% lower divorce rate than cities that didn't have teams but
had
expressed interest in one. Markman, a baseball fan, doesn't claim
that
watching
baseball is responsible for saving marriages, but he does say it
offers
couples some fun.
Apparently,
it's something many couples already know. Scarborough Sports
Marketing
of New York, which collects consumer information about
professional
sports, found that more than 3.9 million married women attended
a
major-league game from August 2006 through September 2007, compared
with
2.5
million for professional basketball, football and hockey combined.
San
Diegans Georgi Bohrod Gordon, 63, and her husband, Rich Gordon, 62,
are
avid
baseball fans who even go to spring training. She says baseball talk
sparks
their conversation, even during the rough spots.
"Sometimes
when things are getting a little tense ‹ because they can ‹ we
can
say things like, 'How 'bout them Padres?' and we can go back into a
very
comfortable
world of conversation, which then might lead to less tension,
and
it opens up the doors to a lot of other conversations," she
says.
Thomas
Bradbury, who co-directs the Marriage and Family Development
Laboratory
and Relationship Institute at the University of California-Los
Angeles,
believes having fun together can become a self-fulfilling prophecy
for
couples: "People in happy relationships generate these
activities, and
as
they generate these activities, it keeps their relationship strong
and
healthy
and fresh."
-AMAZING
SIDEBAR to "play together" article
LESS
TIME TOGETHER
The
percentage of people who say they "almost always" share
activities with
their spouses has declined over 20 years.
Visit
friends
1980:
53%
2000:
34%
Go
out for leisure activities
1980:
62%
2000:
44%
Eat
main meal together
1980:
78%
2000:
66%
Source:
Alone Together: How Marriage in America is Changing, 2007, by Paul
Amato
and colleagues
For
the full article with photos and reader poll:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-15-fun-in-marriage_N.htm
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