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The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Va., Bryan McKenzie column
Feb 12, 2012 (The Daily Progress - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Watch the hazy, lovey-dovey TV ads around Valentine's Day and you quickly learn that all it takes to win her heart is a looping hoop of designer gold festooned with diamonds and worth about three months' pay.
The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia has a different take. The person you love is like a campfire, they say; if you don't pay attention to him/her, he/she will go out on you.
OK, that's not exactly how they put it.
"Given the expressive focus of today's 'soul-mate' marriages, from which couples increasingly expect high levels of intimacy, communication, and personal fulfillment, date nights may be particularly valuable to our contemporary cultural moment," is how researchers put it in the project report "The Date Night Opportunity."
"The growing grassroots movement on behalf of date nights may be especially meaningful to today's couples, often intent on cultivating and maintaining an intense emotional or romantic connection with one another," the report states.
It may sound fancy, but it's the same thing as keeping your campfire burning. Going out once a week, and not just on Hallmark's Day of Love, helps stoke the embers.
"Date nights may help partners and spouses to 'stay current' with each other's lives and offer one another support," the report states. "Communication also can be an important vehicle for approaching mutual difficulties productively and for fostering intimacy between partners."
Date nights help build the heat.
"Most couples experience a decline in relationship quality after a few years, partly because they become habituated to one another and are more likely to take one another, and their relationship, for granted," the report says. "Couples who engage in novel activities that are fun, active or otherwise arousing -- from hiking to dancing to travel to card games -- enjoy higher levels of relationship."
Date nights fan the flames.
"Insofar as date nights allow couples to focus on their relationship, to share feelings, to engage in romantic activities with one another, and to try new things, date nights may strengthen or rekindle that romantic spark that can be helpful in sustaining the fires of love over the long haul," according to the report.
Burn, baby, burn!
"Date nights may solidify an expectation of commitment among couples by fostering a sense of togetherness, by allowing partners to signal to one another -- as well as friends and family -- that they take their relationship seriously, and by furnishing them with opportunities to spend time with one another, to communicate, and to enjoy fun activities together," the report states.
Date nights help ease that great love killer, stress.
"Stress related to work, finances, parenthood, or illness can prove corrosive to a relationship, insofar as it causes one or both partners to become irritable, withdrawn, violent, or otherwise difficult to live with," the report states. "Date nights may be helpful for relieving stress on couples, as they allow them to enjoy time with one another apart from the pressing concerns of their ordinary life."
Enough said.
The report used studies of about 12,000 adult couples questioned from 1987 to 2011 about how frequently they spent time in an activity alone with their spouse or partner and about their satisfaction with their relationships.
Research specifically on date nights is needed, the report notes, but "the longitudinal character of the data suggests that the relationship may indeed be causal."
In English? Throw another log on the fire.
___ (c)2012 The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) Visit The Daily Progress
(Charlottesville, Va.) at www2.dailyprogress.com Distributed by MCT Information
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