Dating Other Couples May Improve Your Romantic Relationship

Want to put the spark back in your romantic relationship? Start dating other couples, suggests a new study.

Romantic relationships often start out as enjoyable or even exciting, but sometimes may become routine and boring. A Wayne State University study has revealed that dating couples who integrate other couples into their social lives are more likely to have happy and satisfying romantic relationships.

Richard B. Slatcher, assistant professor of psychology in WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a resident of Birmingham, Mich., specializes in social and health psychology.

His recent research suggested that spending quality time with other couples might be an important way to improve long-term dating relationships.

His study investigated 60 dating couples in a controlled laboratory setting. The object was to better understand how friendships between couples are formed, and to learn how these friendships affected each couple’s romantic relationship.

Each couple was paired with another couple and given a set of questions to discuss as a group. Half of the groups were given high-disclosure questions intended to spark intense discussion, while the other half were given small-talk questions that focused on everyday, unemotional activities.

“In this study, we discovered that those couples who were placed in the “fast friends” group felt closer to the couples they interacted with, and were more likely actually to meet up with them again during the following month,” said Slatcher. “We also learned that these same couples felt that this friendship put a spark in their own relationships, and they felt much closer to their romantic partners.”

The couples in the high-disclosure group reported greater increases in positive feelings after the intense interaction. They also felt the interaction was more novel and that they learned new things about their romantic partner compared to couples in the small-talk group. In addition, one-third of the couples in the high-disclosure group contacted the other couple they met in the study, while none of the couples in the small-talk group initiated contact with the couple they had met.

“This study suggests that if your romantic relationship has a case of the doldrums, having fun with another couple may help make your own relationship more satisfying,” said Slatcher.

The study recently appeared in Personal Relationships.

Les 10 commandements de Rencontres

5 Sites for Spotting Singles

By Ki Mae Heussner

Traditional dating sites may help you plan a rendezvous for the future, but newer location-oriented services can tell you where potential dates might be right now.

Some are dedicated mobile dating platforms that use GPS technology to help you find potential matches in your immediate vicinity. Others use location information to show you where you’re more likely to find members of the sex you’re interested in. All give singles a high-tech way to plot a night out on the town.

Check out five sites below:

Ratio Finder

Using data from the location-based social network Foursquare, Ratio Finder maps out local businesses based on where men and women tend to congregate.

The site calculates Foursquare check-ins by gender and then visualizes the data on a map, currently only available in New York and San Francisco.

Want to know where you have the highest odds of finding the ladies or the gents? Ratio Finder displays a map of the city with dots of different sizes indicating places of interest. Pink dots refer to female check-ins, blue dots to male check-ins. The bigger the dot, the more popular the place is among members of that particular sex.

The New York map, for example, shows a giant pink dot over the rooftop garden cafe at the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, where it says there are 91 percent more females.

MeetMoi

If you want to meet other singles while you’re on the go, MeetMoi uses your phone to update your location information in real time and send you alerts when potential matches are nearby.

The service exists as an application for iPhones and Android phones and uses GPS technology to help users meet people while they’re out and about.

Users set up a profile with the service, indicating what they’re looking for in a date. When MeetMoi finds two nearby users with matching preferences, it sends each a message, opening the door for conversation.

If they want to meet up, they have an hour to take the next step. MeetMoi is free to join, but has a premium service for a monthly subscription fee.

Skout

Another popular mobile dating site, Skout lets users see nearby singles and reach out to the ones they want to meet. The company says its community includes about one million users and helps them connect with weekly emails on new singles in their area.

Skout also says its site is very careful about keeping its users safe. It doesn’t disclose the exact street addresses of its users, so the only way others can locate them precisely is if they willingly provide their locations.

Grindr

Billing itself as the “the go-to place for gay, bi, and curious guys to meet,” Grindr uses GPS technology to help users connect with other men in their area.

Users upload a picture and complete a profile and then use the service to see who’s nearby. Accessible via Apple mobile devices and BlackBerrys, the service says its the largest all-male location social network.

PinPointsX

And for those who are really looking for nothing more than a fling, PinPointsX uses mobile technology to give users what it calls a “Passion Map.”

The adult-oriented service says it’s the leading application for hookups and can lead users to a night of fantasy and sexual fulfillment.

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