Happy Valentine's advice

Habits of Happy Couples    Mark Goulston, MD

 Happy 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.

--
Hollecrest & Associates Inc   -"Turnaround Consultants"

http://www.ic.gc.ca/ccc/search/cp?l=eng&e=123456239975 .


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