"10 THINGS Happy Couples do"
By Mark Goulston, M.D.
Discover the 10 things that happy couples do:
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. They go to bed at the same time, even if one
partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.
2. Cultivate common interests.
After
the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few
interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities
you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not
present, happy couples 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. Walk hand in hand or side by side.
Rather
than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples
walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more
important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.
4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode.
If
and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t
resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than
distrusting and begrudging.
5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong.If
you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find
something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always
find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy
couples accentuate the positive.
6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work. Our
skin has a memory of "good touch" (loved), "bad touch" (abused) and "no
touch" (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin
bathed in
the "good touch," which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.
7. 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.
8. Say "Good night" every night, regardless of how you feel.
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you
still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.
9. Do a "weather" check during the day.
Call
your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going.
This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync
when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an
awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be
enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.
10. Be proud to be seen with your partner.
Happy
couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of
affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or
back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they
belong with each other.
Even
if these actions don’t come naturally, happy couples stick with them
until they do become a part of their relationship. They know that 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.
Dr. Goulston is the co-founder of CouplesCompany.com and the author of The
6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship (Putnam, 2001).
