Married couples play together and stay together

Mag 07, 2012 Attualità, World Wide

deflam’s Picture from Flickr.com

Nice

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 a research (2008) 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, such as have an holiday together in the mountains, at the seaside, in an exotic island, etc.  — 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.

The correlation between fun and marital happiness is high, and significant.

For men, the connection is even more important. They found that men are more likely than women to call their spouse their best friend.

Don’t forget that the results of one of our European researches dated 2008, made in Italy, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium – Osservatorio sulla famiglia e la persona, worldwide Aka Permanent Survey about family and person, born in Milan 1994 – have 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.” We analyzed questionnaires from a number of 750 couples in their third year of marriage.

We showed that sharing in new and exciting activities, such as leisure time in a natural landscape, between luxuriant vegetation and blue sea is consistently associated with better relationships.

Basically we also recorded that individual leisure activities, such as watching TV or using the Internet, don’t build those positive connections.

A psychology professor at Seattle Pacific University, Les Parrott says “The thing we’re working for is to have fun and relaxation and enjoyment together, and then we’re contaminating it”.

One of the reasons couples have trouble is that they have different takes on fun and bonding. We say: “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.”

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 leisure activities, and as they generate leisure activities, it keeps their relationship strong and healthy and fresh.”

To live together and to share leisure time, particularly in a close panorama in a natural landscape and a blue  sea in front of you is really good for couples, generally speaking. For instance, a beach, within a natural park, formed by  sand that looks like brown sugar is always a nice recipe for  couples to be happier and stay better together in their life.

Mauro Pecchenino