Having established myself in yesterday's post as a great romantic, I thought I'd share a little advice--from an interesting study.
Some researchers assigned married couples to three experimental conditions: 1) not having a date night, 2) having a date night but going to their usual places, and 3) having a date night and going to new places/ new activities. They found that the only the couples in the third condition experienced a bump in marital satisfaction. They interpret these findings as indicating that novel activities have a beneficial biochemical effect.
A couple of thoughts:
- wouldn't it be a drag to sign up for a study about increasing marital satisfaction, and then be in the control group? "Here's a six-pack, why don't you see if anything good is on TV tonight"
- I'm a little bummed that #2 doesn't help much--familiar haunts are familiar because we go there a lot because we like it.
Oh well, maybe I should take my wife to the accountant with me for V-day tonight--that would be novel!
Some researchers assigned married couples to three experimental conditions: 1) not having a date night, 2) having a date night but going to their usual places, and 3) having a date night and going to new places/ new activities. They found that the only the couples in the third condition experienced a bump in marital satisfaction. They interpret these findings as indicating that novel activities have a beneficial biochemical effect.
A couple of thoughts:
- wouldn't it be a drag to sign up for a study about increasing marital satisfaction, and then be in the control group? "Here's a six-pack, why don't you see if anything good is on TV tonight"
- I'm a little bummed that #2 doesn't help much--familiar haunts are familiar because we go there a lot because we like it.
Oh well, maybe I should take my wife to the accountant with me for V-day tonight--that would be novel!
1 comment:
What about hang-gliding dates?
I too was bummed about the effect of #2. This article served as our inspiration for a spontaneous camping trip this past weekend, but we got a little more than we bargained for when an elephant decided to spend the night with us. I think that's enough adrenalin for for a while.
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