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[Man] "Then why did you marry me?" [Woman] "I"m beginning to wonder" [Ronald Rogge] The
early years of marriage are a risky time for couples. We know that about half of couples
in the United States divorce, but a lot of those divorces occur in the first four or
five years. And so we wanted to try and find ways to help strengthen those marriages, and
hopefully prevent some of those divorces. [Man] "Here's to a good marriage." [Rogge] So in this
study, we had two groups of couples that we gave actual workshops, we brought them in,
we taught them skills on how to communicate. And compared to a group that didn't get any
treatment, we found that after three years they had far lower divorce. [Woman] "Just
trying to discover where the strings are attached" [Rogge] But we wanted to see, if we did a very minimal
intervention, having these couples watch movies and talk about it, would lead to benefits
[Man] "What kind of people would just sit like that without a word to say to each other?"
[Woman] "Married people." [Rogge] The amazing thing is that with just watching five movies together,
and talking for a half-hour, 45 minutes at the end, we got benefits over three years,
we cut the divorce rate in half. [Man] "Do you ever think of marrying just for fun?"
[Woman] "Marriage, fun? Fiddle-dee-dee" [Rogge] We wanted to give the couples in the movie condition
some choice about what movies they were going to watch together, [Woman] "If I push too
hard it"s because I want things to be better" [Rogge] There are lots of romantic comedies out there
about a man and a woman falling in love, but it doesn't really show them having fights
as a couple, or giving support to each other after a long stressful day, because they don't
end up together until the last frame of the movie. So it needed to be a movie that showed
a long-term relationship so it would make sense to talk about, well how did the couple
on screen provide support, and how are we doing that? How did the couple on screen fight,
and how are we doing that? [Man] "Well that"s not the point." [Woman] "It certainly is" [Man] "Not"
[Little girl] "Bicker, bicker, bicker". [Rogge] People watch movies all the time,
and yet they still get divorced. We actually don't think that it's the movies that's the
magic here, I mean don't get me wrong, movies are pretty magic, but to strengthen your relationship,
we actually think that it's the time that the couples took to spend together and focus
on their relationship that mattered. [Man]"You make me want to be a better man" [Rogge] And taking
a moment out of their busy life to think about, how am I acting to my partner, this person
that I love the most in the world, and is that the way I really want to be acting?
[Man and woman arguing] [Man] "Could I please get a word in edgewise?" [Woman] "Go ahead."
[Rogge] What really excites me about this is that it gives us a way that we can reach out and help couples
on a wide scale, without needing thousands of therapists trained to work with each of
the couples. We can offer couples a way of strengthening their relationships they can
do completely on their own, and it's not like they"re just, they have to do it with five
movies and stop, they could make it a yearly thing they do around their anniversary, watch
a movie together and talk about it. That would be a fantastic thing to do, and a great present
to give themselves each year.
[Woman] "Know what you are?" [Man] "What?" [Woman] "Lovable" [Man] "I know, I know".
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