If you and your spouse seem to be speeding through life on parallel tracks that never meet, you're not alone. Couples seem to be doing almost everything apart these days — from dining and hobbies to friendships and having fun.

The trend, first documented last year in a major long-term study of marriage, is drawing attention to the need to shore up emotional ties between spouses.

"For marriage to work, we have to realize how important a secure attachment is," said Diane Sollee of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, sponsor of a conference of more than 2,000 marriage researchers and trainers this week in San Francisco. The growing separateness of couples' lives, and techniques to keep it from driving them apart, are hot topics at the conference.

In one of the most comprehensive studies of marriage, Penn State sociology professor Paul Amato and others compared two separate random samples of more than 2,000 married people each in 1980 and in 2000. They found that the likelihood of couples spending lots of time together visiting friends, pursuing recreational activities, dining or shopping together, or teaming up on projects around the house, fell 28 percent. Spouses also are less likely to get along well with their partners' friends.

"People may be bowling alone these days," the study says, referring to a best-selling book about the breakdown of social ties, "but married couples are also eating alone."

The separateness has become so prevalent that researchers are altering the traditional structure of marriage-education programs. These seminars, which have gotten a boost in recent years from federal funding, teach couples communication and problem-solving skills and have always required both partners to be present. But the University of Denver's Scott Stanley and Howard Markman, founders of PREP, one of the biggest marriage-education programs, are testing a new seminar that allows spouses to attend solo; they'll release research at the San Francisco conference showing the new approach can be helpful.

One therapeutic remedy, "emotionally focused therapy," is gaining favor. The method rests on British psychiatrist John Bowlby's research on the emotional bonding, or attachment, that is essential to normal development in infants. The technique guides couples to recognize they're emotionally attached to their partners in much the same way a child is to a parent, and to learn to be more responsive, open and forgiving.