Rekindle couple’s Romantic Love while Reinventing Date Night
It has been often seen that long-married couples schedule to spend a weekly off with friends or at their favorite eating zone to strengthen their marital bond. But by spending time together in the company of friends is not enough to prevent the relationship from getting stale.
Scientist after long study & real world experiments can now offer long-married couples a simple but affective solution for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place that is ‘ Reinventing date night ’. Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology says , “ Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy ”.
The goal behind it is to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. This activity looks simple but works well like trying a new restaurant , trying something more unusual or thrilling. This theory is based on the assumption that new experiences activate the brain. There are some moments that ignite a romantic love & obsessive thoughts about the partner.
Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment. But several experiments show that novelty by simply doing new things together as a couple may help bring the butterflies back.
Over the past several years, Dr. Aron and his colleagues have tested the novelty theory in a series of experiments. In one such study researchers used standard questionnaires to measure, 53 middle-aged couple's relationship quality and then randomly assigned them to one of three groups.
Couples spend 90 minutes a week doing what they normally would do when spending time together. Another group spent 90 minutes a week on "exciting" activities that was attractive yet unfamiliar to the couple like going to a concert, plays, skiing, hiking and dancing. The third group was not given direction.
Although the experiments are considered to be inconclusive because they were not performed in a controlled environment. After 10 weeks, the couples again took tests to gauge the quality of their relationships. Those who had undertaken the "exciting" date nights showed a significantly greater increase in marital satisfaction than the "pleasant" date night group.
One of the more interesting experiments involved couples that were assigned to do a mundane task such as simply walking back and forth across a room. Some couples were assigned a more interesting and more challenging activity. They had their wrists bound as well as their ankles and had to crawl back and forth pushing a ball.
The couples level interest in their relationship was measured before and after the activity with questions like If they were bored with your current relationship. This is where it gets interesting. Those couples that had the more challenging activity reported larger increase in love and satisfaction and those that were held to the more simple task did not show any meaningful change.
And recent brain-scan studies show that romantic love really can last years into a marriage. Last week, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Albuquerque, researchers presented brain-scan data on several men and women who had been married for 10 or more years.
Brain scans confirmed it, showing increased brain activity associated with romantic love when the subjects saw pictures of their spouses. Interviews suggest that couples were still very in love with their spouses .The scientists believe regular injections of novelty and excitement most likely play a role in the ability to create the long lasting feelings.
Fisher said. "Just go to a new part of a town, take a drive in the country or better yet, don't make plans, and see what happens to you." You don't have to recreate your wedding night every night.
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Scientist after long study & real world experiments can now offer long-married couples a simple but affective solution for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place that is ‘ Reinventing date night ’. Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology says , “ Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy ”.
The goal behind it is to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. This activity looks simple but works well like trying a new restaurant , trying something more unusual or thrilling. This theory is based on the assumption that new experiences activate the brain. There are some moments that ignite a romantic love & obsessive thoughts about the partner.
Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment. But several experiments show that novelty by simply doing new things together as a couple may help bring the butterflies back.
Over the past several years, Dr. Aron and his colleagues have tested the novelty theory in a series of experiments. In one such study researchers used standard questionnaires to measure, 53 middle-aged couple's relationship quality and then randomly assigned them to one of three groups.
Couples spend 90 minutes a week doing what they normally would do when spending time together. Another group spent 90 minutes a week on "exciting" activities that was attractive yet unfamiliar to the couple like going to a concert, plays, skiing, hiking and dancing. The third group was not given direction.
Although the experiments are considered to be inconclusive because they were not performed in a controlled environment. After 10 weeks, the couples again took tests to gauge the quality of their relationships. Those who had undertaken the "exciting" date nights showed a significantly greater increase in marital satisfaction than the "pleasant" date night group.
One of the more interesting experiments involved couples that were assigned to do a mundane task such as simply walking back and forth across a room. Some couples were assigned a more interesting and more challenging activity. They had their wrists bound as well as their ankles and had to crawl back and forth pushing a ball.
The couples level interest in their relationship was measured before and after the activity with questions like If they were bored with your current relationship. This is where it gets interesting. Those couples that had the more challenging activity reported larger increase in love and satisfaction and those that were held to the more simple task did not show any meaningful change.
And recent brain-scan studies show that romantic love really can last years into a marriage. Last week, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Albuquerque, researchers presented brain-scan data on several men and women who had been married for 10 or more years.
Brain scans confirmed it, showing increased brain activity associated with romantic love when the subjects saw pictures of their spouses. Interviews suggest that couples were still very in love with their spouses .The scientists believe regular injections of novelty and excitement most likely play a role in the ability to create the long lasting feelings.
Fisher said. "Just go to a new part of a town, take a drive in the country or better yet, don't make plans, and see what happens to you." You don't have to recreate your wedding night every night.
Source
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