Noah Larson

Yeah, so we did find that not only does savoring have these direct benefits for couples' relationship, but when couples are feeling more stressed, savoring can kind of have this protective buffering effect from that stress.

And so one kind of reason why this might be is that by savoring, the couple's able to really direct their attention, at least temporarily, away from those stressors and towards the positive experiences from their relationship.

So there's more focus on

Yeah, so there's many different activities that a couple could do together to savor.

These could be activities that focused on events from the past, like reminiscing about maybe a shared trip or a vacation together.

It could be events in the present, so maybe kind of going on a nice walk together, watching a sunset.

It could also be focused on future events.

So maybe it's, you know, kind of talking about an upcoming, you know, graduation or vacation or something that you as a couple can look forward to.

So really kind of spending some time to just kind of talk about those positive events, whether they're past, present or future.

Yeah, so, you know, there were some interesting findings.

I think one was that savoring not only benefits couples' relationships, but it even has benefits for their individual health and wellbeing.

So we found that when couples savored more, they reported having better quality of life,

And savoring also protected couples' stress against mental health difficulties.

So I think that's one interesting thing is that this joint savoring process, it can even benefit couples' mental health and protect their mental health from stress.

Yeah, so there's definitely some similarities between savoring and gratitude.

And both of these are kind of considered relationship maintenance processes or tools in the research.

So they're both kind of two different activities that, you know, an individual or a couple could do together to try to enhance their relationship.

Um, so gratitude is something that we've looked at a little bit.

Um, and you know, that can kind of be incorporated in the savoring process as well.

Um, kind of, you know, as a couple talking about, um, you know, things your partner did for you that you're thankful for, um, and expressing that gratitude.