How to Have a Happy Marriage, According to Psychologists and Couples Therapists

Life is busy, and it’s unlikely you’ll be fully present in every conversation you have with your partner. “Part of this is knowing there are moments where you need to be present...to give that person your full attention,” psychologist Ramani Durvasula, Ph.D., professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, tells Woman's Day.

Active listening involves putting away your phone or stepping away from the dishes, being emotionally plugged-in, reflecting back what your partner is saying, and asking questions—including, “is there anything I can do to help?”

“Many times people believe [a partner] should implicitly know what we’re thinking,” Durvasula says, but adds that’s just not the case.

You’re much better off avoiding ambiguity: share your intentions, expectations, and discomfort. Avoiding conflict in these situations just leads to more pain or a lack of closeness. “If you don’t want to go to the family dinner, then say it in as many words,” Durvasula says.

There are two ways to share gratitude, and you should do both, Durvasula says. One is planned gratitude: twice a day, make a point of saying thank you for something your partner has done. “In most healthy relationships, your partner has done a couple of things in the last 24 hours,” she says, even if what you’re grateful for is that they exist. Or that they emptied the dishwasher.

Second is real-time gratitude. This can be gratitude for the simplest things, like taking out the trash. But when you see it, praise it. “That mindfulness of saying thank you creates tremendous connective tissue in a couple because it shows that you're aware of the other person.”

Check in with your partner. It doesn’t have to be a serious sit-down, Durvasula says. You can make a ritual of it over Sunday breakfast or an evening glass of wine on your patio, and it should become a pleasant occurrence.

The point is that it’s a chance to check in about expectations and needs in the week ahead and make small tweaks to the week prior, like “I know you were busy, but I’d really appreciate a text when you know you’re going to be late.”

“It’s a chance to keep recalibrating and getting it right,” Durvasula says.

John and Julie Gottman have done more than 40 years of research on couples, and through that found four tell-tale predictors that a relationship wouldn’t last. They are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Criticism is attacking someone’s personality or character; contempt is when criticism turns from attacking a person’s personality to attacking their sense of self; defensiveness is warding off responsibility by making yourself the victim; and stonewalling is avoiding conflict by withdrawing.

The Gottman Institute has a handy breakdown of how to counteract these horsemen, though you may find you need professional help if you find them coming up frequently.

“Healthy couples fight,” Durvasula says. “In fact, if you stop fighting, you're in trouble. At least if you're arguing, you still have skin in the game—you actually care what's happening in this relationship.”

But healthy couples focus on the issue at hand. If you’re upset about your partner’s recent behavior at a party, don’t veer off into past indiscretions or make accusations or curse or insult each other. Keep the conversation locked on how you felt about that very specific situation.

Psychologist Rachel Orleck, Psy.D., Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist and relationship coach, tells Woman's Day that most of us have a “script” in arguments for why our partner does something—and it’s usually not very flattering. If we’re not aware of these scripts, we can make all kinds of assumptions about our partner’s body language, tone, word choice and more, which can make fights worse and lead to feeling disconnected from our partner.

Instead, it’s important to learn these patterns, name them, and talk about them. “Even if those scripts and those feelings are coming up, allow them to take the back burner for a minute and stick with the assumption that this is a person that really cares about [you] and that [you] really care about [them.]”

“Connected couples tend to have more curiosity,” Orleck says. Rather than respond to their partner’s criticism or behavior with defensiveness, anger, or accusations, they’re able to pause their reaction to ask questions. “Even if you don't like where they're coming and if it hurt you and it makes you angry.”

For example, you might ask: “Can you tell me more about that? I want to understand what got us to this place.”

Although compromise and negotiating might mean meeting in the middle in business, that’s not always a helpful framework in relationships.

Let’s say you and your partner have different needs when it comes to how much time you spend together: you want to connect seven times a week, but they’d prefer two. Rather than agreeing to four nights a week, happy couples stay flexible. Some weeks, you get all seven nights, others they get two nights a week, and some weeks you meet in between.

Happy couples “are generally pretty open to saying, ‘I know that in the future my need is going to get met so we'll focus on you in this moment,’” Orleck says.

Relationships are tricky, and Orleck says that the cultural myth that good relationships are easy does real damage. Tools like couples therapy should be considered as a preventative measure rather than long-term damage control. “We go to the doctor for things like my wrist hurts and I want to make sure it doesn't get worse,” she says.

In other words: when something starts to feel off in your relationship, get it checked out. “The people who seek me out to get help are very far down the road in terms of feeling disconnected,” she explains. “That makes it that much more difficult for the couple to regain trust and to feel more connected… because they felt so deprived for so long."