Family Therapy Center

Attached below are some very helpful relationship articles.  Please enjoy this very useful information:

Now, I’m not suggesting that divine intervention will get anyone to take out the trash or do the dishes, but new scientific research shows that praying for others helps us overlook their faults and accept their mistakes. Here are the details, courtesy of Science Daily.  

Florida State psychologist Nathaniel Lambert asked volunteers to recall a time when their spouse irritated them, or hurt their feelings. Then, he had half of the people say a single prayer for their partner's well being, while the other half simply talked about their spouse. Afterwards, the volunteers took a test that measured their level of resentment. Guess what? The people who’d chatted about their spouses stayed mad, but those who prayed didn’t have any hard feelings!

That got Lambert thinking. If one prayer has an impact, what would long-term prayer do for a relationship? So, he repeated the study, but this time he had the participants pray every day for a month. Not only were the people who prayed more willing to forgive, they also tested higher on things like empathy and compassion. The question is - why does it work? Lambert thinks that praying for others shifts our focus from how we feel to how they feel, and that makes it easier to move past the resentment and start working as a team.

Give Your Marriage an Annual Tune-Up

You take your car to the mechanic for regular tune-ups, to keep it running smoothly. So, why not do the same for your marriage? According to ABC News, a new study finds that getting an annual tune-up – in the form of marriage counseling - can do wonders for your relationship. James Cordova is a Professor of Psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts, and author of the study. He says that the state of a marriage has a dramatic impact on the physical and mental health of the people in it. So over time, whether or not your marriage is happy actually becomes a health concern.

Cordova followed 68 couples over a two year period. Their ages varied, but on average they were in their mid-forties and had been together 15 years. Half of the couples were given marriage checkups, which involved two appointments – one to complete a questionnaire and the other for a therapy session. The other half of the participants didn’t get any therapy. The results? Cordova says marital satisfaction improved for the couples who’d been through the counseling, but not for those who hadn’t.

One couple said their biggest weakness was communication, and the therapy helped them find more effective ways to talk to each other. The wife said she’d learned to speak more clearly so her husband could understand where she was coming from. Prior to the study, she said she had a bad habit of speaking before thinking. Cordova says the couples who took part in the checkups felt more “intimate” in their relationships. They became more accepting of each other, warts and all. Maybe most important, they became more active in taking deliberate care of their marriage.

These days, the most common problem for couples is not being able to fit their marriages into their hectic lifestyle. Cordova says once they realize that’s a problem, spouses can figure out ways to put their marriage first – including getting an annual counseling session. This will help couples learn to focus on what’s RIGHT about their relationship and build on those strengths.