Habits of Happy
Couples
Mark Goulston, MD
appy couples know that the real relationship
begins when the honeymoon is over. Here are the habits of highly
happy couples...
1. Go to bed at the same time. Remember
the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to
bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the
temptation to go to bed at different times even if one partner
wakes up later to do things while his/her partner sleeps.
2. Cultivate common interests. Don’t
minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you
both enjoy. If you don’t have common interests, develop them. At
the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own. This
will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from
appearing too dependent.
3. Make trust and forgiveness your default
mode. When happy couples have a disagreement or an
argument that they can’t resolve, they default to trusting and
forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.
4. Focus on accentuating the positive. If
you look for things that your partner does wrong, you can always
find something. If you look for what he/she does right, you can
always find something, too.
5. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after
being apart for the day. Couples who say hello with a
hug reaffirm their love for each other.
6. Say "I love you" and "Have a good day" every
morning. This is a great way to buy some patience and
tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams,
long lines and other annoyances.
7. Say "good night" every night, regardless of how you
feel. This tells your partner that regardless of how
upset you are with him, you still want to be in the relationship.
It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any
single upsetting incident.
8. Do a "weather" check during the
day. Call your partner at home or at work to see how
his day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so
that you’re more in sync later in the day. For instance, if your
partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect
him to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to
you.
9. Walk hand in hand. Happy couples are
pleased to be seen together and often are in some kind of
affectionate contact -- hand in hand or hand on shoulder, for
example. They are saying that they belong with each other.
10. Stick with it. Even if these actions
don’t come naturally, happy couples stick with them until they do
become a part of their relationship. It takes 30 days for a change
in behavior to become a habit and a minimum of six months for a
habit to become a way of life -- and love.