This Low-Effort Activity Could Improve Your Relationship
You don’t need to be with your partner to effectively use this relationship hack.
Time to click through your old Facebook albums: In long-term relationships, merely looking at pictures of your partner can increase your infatuation, attachment and marital satisfaction, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychophysiology.
“We know that love feelings typically decline over time in long-term relationships and that declining love feelings are a common reason for breakups,” study author Sandra Langeslag, an associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and director of the Neurocognition of Emotion and Motivation Lab.
She says each person can complete an assessment of their marital satisfaction and love regulation. (In social science jargon, “love regulation” is how we use behavioral or cognitive strategies to boost the intensity of our feelings. For instance, in a relationship that you want to go the distance, you may consciously choose to have positive thoughts about the other person or make a point to try something new together regularly.)
Some of the spouse pictures and pleasant pictures were preceded by emotional regulation prompts, such as, “Think of one good personality trait of your spouse,” and “This man is fulfilling his dream of hang gliding.”
As the pics were shown, the participants used sliders to indicate how infatuated with their spouse they felt, how attached to their spouse they felt and how satisfied with their marriage they felt.
In the end, Langeslag and her team found that viewing pictures of the spouse increased infatuation, attachment and marital satisfaction compared with viewing pleasant or neutral pictures.
Read the rest of the story at the link below.