Romance movies the key to a lasting relationship
One of the longest-running arguments between man and woman is what film to watch come movie night? Will it be the women’s preferred “rom-com” or “chick-flick” or the man’s choice which is usually “any other movie”? But there may be another reason for watching a good romance film – other than the sometimes much needed cry when all seems lost for our on-screen couples – a new study from the University of Rochester in the USA has found that watching romance movies can help real-life relationships.
The three-year study, which observed 174 couples, compared different types of marriage intervention programs such as relationship counselling but found the cheap, fun and simple “movie-and-talk” approach was just as effective as intensive and expensive therapy options, cutting the divorce rate in half.
“We thought the movie treatment would help, but not nearly as much as the other programs in which we were teaching all of these state-of-the-art skills,” said lead researcher and associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, Dr Ronald Rogge.
Couples attended a 10-minute lecture on the importance of relationship awareness and how watching relationships in movies would help them pay attention to their own behaviour in a relationship, whether constructive or destructive. Then couples watched the move Two for the Road, a 1967 rom-com about the joys and strain of love over 12 years of a marriage. Afterwards, each couple met separately to discuss a list of 12 questions about the screen couple's interactions.
Then each couple was sent home and instructed to watch a romantic film from a list once a week for the next month. The movies that were chosen all featured intimate relationships as a major focus, with highs and lows, as opposed to “falling in love” movies like When Harry Met Sally. Films like Gone with the Wind, Terms of Endearment, The Way We Were, Date Night and The Notebook were watched and couples were asked to have a similar discussion about the movie.
The results were surprising with researchers finding the divorce-and-separation rate was halved from 24 per cent among the couples in the control group to 11 per cent. Couples in the control group received no training or instructions but were otherwise similar in age, education and relationship satisfaction.
“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,” said Dr Rogge, continuing, “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.”
Dr Rogge is pleased that the “movie-and-talk” approach has proved effective.
“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,” he said, adding, “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,” he said.
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