Romcoms 'save marriages': Study finds watching a film about relationships and discussing it can help cut divorce rates

With Valentine’s Day looming, many of us are saving for flashy gifts to impress our beloved.
But your bank manager can breath a sigh of relief as the real secret to a good marriage lies in a cheap and cheerful night in… watching a romcom.
Researchers found that couples who discussed five movies about relationships over a month cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half.
The study, involving 174 couples, is the first long-term investigation to compare different types of early marriage intervention programmes.


The findings, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, show that an inexpensive, fun, and relatively simple movie-and-talk approach can be just as effective as other more intensive therapist-led methods - reducing the divorce or separation rate from 24 to 11 per cent after three years.
Study lead author Doctor Ronald Rogge, associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in the US, said: 'We thought the movie treatment would help, but not nearly as much as the other programmes in which we were teaching all of these state-of-the-art skills.

'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.'
He added: 'It's incredibly portable.
'There are really great marriage intervention programmes available now, but most require trained therapists to administer them. If couples can do this on their own, it makes it so much easier to help them.'
The researchers randomly assigned newlyweds to one of three groups: conflict management, compassion and acceptance training, and relationship awareness through film.

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The conflict management group learned a technique for discussing heated issues that slows down the pace of the exchange and helps individuals focus on what their partner is saying instead of rushing to respond.
The compassion and acceptance training group participated in an intervention designed by Dr Rogge and his colleagues aimed at helping couples work together as a team and find common ground around their similarities.
Couples were encouraged through a series of lectures and exercises to approach their relationships with more compassion and empathy by doing things such as listening as a friend, practicing random acts of kindness and affection, and using the language of acceptance.
The movie-and-talk group devoted half as much time to their assignments and all but four hours took place in their own homes.
Participants first attended a 10-minute lecture on the importance of relationship awareness and how watching couples in movies could help spouses pay attention to their own behavior, both constructive and destructive.
They then watched Two for the Road, a 1967 romantic comedy about the joys and strains of young love, infidelity, and professional pressures across 12 years of a marriage. Afterwards, each couple met separately to discuss a list of 12 questions about the screen couple's interactions.
The participants were sent home with a list of 47 movies with intimate relationships as a major plot focus and asked to watch one a week for the next month, followed by the same guided discussion for about 45 minutes.
All three methods halved the divorce-and-separation rate to 11 per cent, compared to the 24 per cent rate among the couples in the control group. Partners in the control group received no training or instructions but were otherwise similar in age, education, ethnicity, relationship satisfaction, and other dimensions.
Discussing relationship movies, it turns outs, was just as effective as more intensive skills-building programmes.
Dr Rogge said the results suggest that many couples already possess relationship skills, they just need reminders to put these into practice,
He added: 'I think it's the couples reinvesting in their relationship and taking a cold hard look at their own behaviour 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 nice. 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.
'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.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550697/Romcoms-save-marriages-Study-finds-watching-film-relationships-discussing-help-cut-divorce-rates.html#ixzz2sDuaIQTq
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