Right fights
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
How married couples fight - from the earliest years of marriage - can influence whether they stay together.
Kira Birditt of the University of Michigan examined data on 373 couples interviewed four times over 16 years. She looked at, for instance, constructive strategies, such as listening to the other spouse's point of view. She found that when one partner used such strategies but the other withdrew, their chances of divorce rose:
``It's not effective to use a constructive strategy if your spouse is leaving the room. So it would be important that you both sit down together to talk about problems.'' (8 seconds)
Birditt says, though, that spouses - especially wives - can change strategies over time.
The study in the Journal of Marriage and Family was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.