Noah Larson

So we can say joint savoring kind of involves those two parts.

So having some kind of shared experience and then focusing on kind of memories or positive events from your relationship.

Yeah, so there's some differences when we're savoring together with our partner.

One part of that is that we are focusing on experiences from our relationship.

And so not only are we really kind of enhancing the positive experiences from our life, but we're really focusing on that attachment relationship with our partner.

And finding ways to kind of solidify those positive experiences with our partner.

Yeah.

So we do find that, you know, in our research that these savoring processes, they do benefit couples relationship quality.

And so we looked at a few different areas, the couple's conflict, their kind of sense of confidence and having a future together, and then their satisfaction with their relationship.

And what we found was that the couples who savored more kind of experienced more benefits in all three areas.

So overall, kind of as the more that these couples are doing the savoring, the better the relationships are as a whole.

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, you know, one kind of reason why this might be is that, you know, 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 kind of those positive events, but then also more kind of focus on the strength of their relationship and their ability as a couple to withstand those stressors.

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.