3 components of a happy relationship

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The beginning of a relationship is like a holiday: a lot of romance, fresh feelings, dreams of a wonderful future. But life is made up of ordinary, unremarkable everyday life, and it is they that determine how happy you will be. How do you choose a partner with whom, after 10, 20 and 50 years, you will be as fun and comfortable as in the first weeks?

Why is it so important to choose the right life partner?

Start with simple calculations: 90 years minus your age. Your score is the number of years you will spend with your life partner (if you are lucky enough to live that long). It turns out for many years.

There is a good way to deal with a complex task: you divide a large task into several small parts and concentrate on how to complete a specific small task. This is an effective way to beat procrastination. It is also suitable for choosing a life partner.

Let's start from afar. How do you envision an ideal relationship? An amazing love story, like in a book or a movie, many romantic moments, trials that you go through together, exciting adventures and always a good ending.

But human happiness is not just isolated highlights, which, as a rule, are highlighted in films or books. These are the details of everyday life, small events that determine our daily well-being.

So, if we want to successfully marry or get married, we need to pay attention to the small details. Getting married and living together is not your honeymoon in Thailand, but the next 70 vacations you will spend together. This is not a festive dinner in a new home - these are all evenings when you will have dinner together.

Marriage is a common day spent together.

So, we put aside kisses in the rain, sex several times a day and other delights of the beginning of a relationship. Further we will talk about how to make your gray days with your partner as happy as possible.

1. Strong friendship

We enjoy our time with friends. That is why they are our friends. But only with some friends spending time is so interesting, cool and great that you don't want to leave.

If you have people like that in your life, it will be a shame if you choose the wrong person as your life partner. You're missing out on a great opportunity to spend 95% of the rest of your life with someone you really care about.

True friendship includes:

• Same sense of humor … You don't want to spend 50 years of your life pretending to laugh at unfunny jokes, do you?
• Fun … The ability to find something funny in a not very funny situation - a flight delay at the airport, a long trip, unpleasant errands. Unsurprisingly, research confirms that how much fun you have together is a great predictor of a couple's future.
• Respect for your partner's mindset … Your life partner should be your psychotherapist in both work and life matters. And if you don’t respect the other person’s way of thinking, you will not tell him about your problems, because you are not interested in what your partner has to say about this.
• Common interests, affairs, acquaintances … Otherwise, a lot of what makes up your personality now may disappear when you start a serious relationship, and you and your partner will have to painfully figure out what to do together on a free weekend.

True friendship only gets better over the years. And if you are friends with your partner, you will never get bored with each other.

2. Feeling at home

If someone tells you to sit in a chair for 12 hours straight without moving, before you think why the hell they are being forced to do this, you’ll get the idea that it’s best to make yourself as comfortable as possible.

Because even a small discomfort after a few hours will turn into real torture. When you are going to be doing something for a long time, it is best to make it as comfortable as possible.

When it comes to relationships, constant discomfort between you and your partner can be a constant source of unhappiness that only increases over time.

Feeling “at home” means that you feel safe, comfortable and natural, you can be yourself in peace, and so does your partner. Here's what it takes:

• Trust and safety. Secrets are poisonous to relationships because they build an invisible wall between people, leaving them alone. Also, who would like to spend 50 years cheating and getting upset that they are cheating? On the other hand, there are suspicions, which are also directly related to the feeling of home, or rather the absence of it. This is why dating on the side is one of the most detrimental things to relationships.
• Natural chemistry. Communication should be simple and natural, you should be on the same wavelength. If communication takes place at different levels, it becomes tiresome very quickly.
• Accept other people's flaws … You have disadvantages. Your future life partner has flaws. To be human is to have flaws. And the worst way to spend time together is criticizing each other's shortcomings. This does not mean that you do not need to improve yourself, but when it comes to your life partner, you need to develop a healthy attitude towards it. Something like this: “Every person has their own set of shortcomings. This is my partner, and his shortcomings are part of the kit with which I am going to spend my whole life."
• Positive atmosphere … The general atmosphere of your relationship is what you will stew in for the rest of your days (or your relationship). If it's negative, is it worth the time? Relationship specialist John Gottman argues that couples with fewer than five good interactions for one bad interaction are doomed to divorce.

3. Intention to build a good relationship

Relationships are difficult. Expecting a strong relationship without any effort is the same as expecting to climb the corporate ladder and do nothing about it.

Nowadays, when people in most parts of the world can enjoy freedom and choose their own path in life, it is quite difficult to compromise and deny yourself the things that you used to do while you were alone.

So what do you need to learn to create a good pair?

• Interaction skills … Communication is as important to relationships as oxygen is to life. The lack of communication has ruined many couples. In a study of divorced couples, participants most often said they would change their communication style in their next relationship. It can be difficult to achieve good interaction in a couple, so you need to pay attention to this point or even consult a family therapist to establish communication.
• Maintaining equality … Relationships quickly slide towards unequal rights. When the mood of one person determines the mood of a couple, when the needs or opinions of one person are above the needs of another, when one person acts with another in a way that no one can do with him. If so, you're in trouble.
• Fair fight … The fight is inevitable. But there are good and bad ways to lead it. An honest fight serves as a relaxation of tension, in such a pair they approach problems with humor and carefully listen to each of the parties, avoiding becoming personal. Also, good couples have fewer quarrels than unsuccessful ones. According to John Gottman, 69% of typical family fights are based on differences of opinion, and such problems cannot be resolved. Good couples know this and try to bring up such topics as little as possible.

When looking for a life partner or in assessing a current partner, it is important to remember that every relationship has its flaws and if there are several flaws in your relationship from the list, this is not a reason to end them right away.

But it is better if you have positive ratings on most of the points, since each of them affects whether you will be happy in life or not.

Since this is already a rather long list, you shouldn't complicate it even more by setting a rigid framework for potential partners. Especially if they don't play a special role in your long journey through life together. It will be cool if your partner plays the guitar, but don't add it to your list of "must-haves."

It's good if this year you had beautiful romantic evenings and exciting adventures together. Just remember that life is more about everyday life, which is much more important.