There positive news for married couples with strained relationships. The largest ever, all inclusive clinical trial revealed that couple therapy can help even the most distressed of married couples, provided they wish to improve their married relationship and salvage their marriage.

Andrew Christensen, University of California Los Angeles Professor of Psychology reveals, "It takes only one person to end a marriage but two people to make it work".

The study took into consideration 134 married couples, 71 in LA and 63 in Seattle. The average age group of the couples was between 30s and 40s, a little more than half of the couples also had children.

The couples were "chronically, seriously distressed". They got into frequent fights. All the couples wanted to work on their marriages.

The couples undertook 26 therapy sessions over the span of one year. It was revealed that psychologists followed-up these couple every six months for five years after therapy ended.

The couples were given two kinds of therapy. The first was the conventional behavioral couple therapy, which centered on bringing about positive changes, including finding better ways to communicate.

The second type of therapy offered to them was integrative behavioral couple therapy. The aim of this therapy is to facilitate the understanding of one's spouse's emotional sensitivities.

It was revealed that nearly 2/3 couples showed considerable clinical improvement.