If you’re working to improve your marriage or relationship, here are the 10 habits
of 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. They go to bed at the same time, even if one
partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps. And when their
skins touch it still causes each of them to tingle and unless one or both are
completely exhausted to feel sexually excited.
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.
Happy
couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete
behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It
takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new a behavior to become a habit. So
select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it
will become a habit…and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the
wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask their forgiveness
and
recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.
If there was one key to happiness in love and life and
possibly even success it would be to go into each conversation you have with
this commandment to yourself front and foremost in your mind, "Just Listen."
Source: Psychology Today
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