One such study, conducted by the University of Virginia National Marriage Project, also found that couples who think about, talk about, and practice their religious beliefs at home enjoy an even stronger positive effects in their relationships compared to those couples who only attend church together regularly. Belonging to a church assembly and participating consistently produces many benefits in a marriage that are often greatly underestimated. Churches typically provide couples with marital and family support (formally or informally) model successful unions, define ethical behavior for relationships, encourage partners to fulfill marital and familial roles and responsibilities, promote constructive conflict resolution, and so forth.
However, as the study revealed, couples who bring home these reflections on marriage and live their faith together through shared prayer, study, and devotion achieve the greatest success in their relationships. Their religious belief system provides them with a sense of purpose and meaning about life in general, and their relationship, in particular. But experiencing their faith through involvement in spiritual activities in the home has been found to be the key influence with respect to marital success and home life happiness.
These shared spiritual activities were even found to offset negative factors that typically threaten the success of marriage. For example, lower levels of income and education are generally correlated with lower relationship quality among married couples. But, shared involvement in prayer, scriptural study, church attendance, and so forth virtually erase the negative effects of the above factors in terms of relationship success.
