Thank You to 'The Couple Connection'

OnePlusOne has circulated information about the Enduring Love? Questionnaire through their ‘do it yourself’ relationship support service on the couple connection website. This support was another boost to the questionnaire responses and we now have close to 4,000 men and women who have completed the questionnaire! Thank you if you are one of them.

In addition, OnePlusOne has just published 'Understanding 21st century relationships: a compendium of key data' (PDF document). This is a user-friendly collection of key data aimed at a wide audience. The chapters look at the statistics but also focus on the experiences of couples and families and explore new ways in which relationships can be supported in the future. The first chapter looks at trends in marriage, cohabitation and divorce statistics.

On 1 May 2012 and on 10 July I was invited to speak to about 30 GPs at a large and busy North London Health Centre about the Enduring Love? project. I talked about our methodology and an indication of interim findings, specifically about the frequency and the quality of relationship support provided by GPs. I also gave information about relationship support websites and about the connection between couple relationship quality and public health.

I drew on the recent policy paper 'What do couple relationships have to do with: public health?' from The Tavistock Centre For Couple Relationships (TCCR) who found evidence that shows that the quality of relationships affects factors which impact alcohol use disorders, cardiovascular diseases, blood pressure and Type 2 Diabetes among others. TCCR argues that the context of disease management may also need to include broader relationship factors rather than keeping the intervention focused on the disease exclusively.

I was also asked to speak in a community centre in a deprived housing estate in the North London area on 28 April 2012. As part of a workshop series on practical relationship support, I was asked to set the scene by giving one workshop on relationship trends and statistics as well as social policies, education and support programmes.

This is my seventh blog. You won’t be hearing from me now until September as I will be volunteering for the Olympics as a German/English interpreter. Thanks in advance for your all your comments and suggestions. You can email me at Martina.Klett-Davies@open.ac.uk.