Five Secret Tools for a Happy Relationship

Key points

• It’s important for couples to explore meaning, purpose, strength together as well as individually.
• It may sound paradoxical, but partners in happy relationships should be able to express unhappiness.
• Also important is the amount of quality time spent not only with each other but also with loved ones.

As my husband and I reflected on what makes us happy together, we tried to extract our five secret tools for happiness and researched what psychologists said on some of those topics.

1. Finding our MPS

Harvard positive psychology teacher Tal Ben-Shahar writes about his MPS method of finding what an individual wants to do in life: M stands for meaning, P for pleasure, and S for strength. Ben-Shahar draws three circles: One circle is for what gives you meaning; the second circle is for what gives you pleasure; and the third circle is for what you are good at. The goal is to find what activity or activities are at the intersection of those three circles. Activities that give you meaning and pleasure and that you are good at are worth committing to.

My husband and I go one step further. We draw three circles, but instead of each circle being for one person only, we draw each circle for us as a couple. We brainstorm what gives both of us meaning, what gives both of us pleasure, and what we are good at together, and we commit to those activities. We determine what long-term goal we want together as a couple in the future and work towards it in the present.

2. Spending quality time with each other and with people we care about and who care about us.

Indeed, in the Harvard study of adult development, where Dr. Robert Waldinger and colleagues studied a first generation of adults from 1938 until now (for the last 75 years), the number-one predictor of happiness was quality time spent with people we care about and who care about us. It was also the number-one predictor of physical health and longevity. Dr. Waldinger comments in his TED Talk that, in his study, people who were the happiest at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. Those people replaced work friends with play friends when they retired.

According to Dr. Waldinger, at the beginning of the study, the people interviewed thought money, fame, and high achievements would be the most important things in their lives. But when those same people were asked 75 years later what the most important things in their lives had been, they said the most important was quality time spent with family, friends, and people in their community. When asked what regrets they had in their lives, they said they regretted not having spent enough quality time with their loved ones.

This was confirmed by Bronnie Ware (Australian palliative care) in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, where she explains that the top two regrets were not spending more time doing what they were passionate about and not spending enough time with their loved ones.

3. Doing new things together regularly

We go on new hikes together, meet new people together, explore new stores, try new places to eat, listen to new books on tape together, and go on new and exciting trips together. The more new experiences we have together, the closer we feel to each other.

Indeed, a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology shows that novel activities boost relationship satisfaction through higher feelings of security in addition to growth. Positive arousal emotions, as well as relying on each other, trusting each other, and offering and receiving support from each other, are hypothesized to be the important factors.

4. Having reassuring habits

We have reassuring habits of hugging, telling each other love words, and thanking each other every day.

It could seem paradoxical that we need the combination of new activities and regular old habits, but I would push the paradox one step further by saying that we also make it a regular old habit to do new activities every week.

We make it a habit to hug and tell each other that we love each other every morning when we wake up and every night before going to sleep. We thank each other every day for what we perceive the other did for us. This is very reassuring and soothing for each other. It also prevents us from wasting time worrying about the other’s feelings.

Our reassuring habits are similar to going to the gym on a regular basis. If we only go to the gym once every three months, that gym will be difficult, and we will be sore afterward, but if we go to the gym every day or every other day, our muscles will be used to the movements, which will come easy to us.

Hugging, loving, and thanking each other follow a similar process. If we only practice them once every three months, it will be awkward. We won’t know how to do them, and it will feel strange afterward, but if we practice them every day, it will be much easier and will become second nature.

5. Allowing each other to feel and express unhappiness

We accept each other as human beings, which means that we know that happiness cannot be there all the time. We each have moments of sadness, anger, frustration, etc., and we stay with the awareness of the moment and with what is true for us.

We express our sadness, anger, frustration, or whatever feeling is real and true for us in the present moment. We make a point of hearing each other, finding solutions together, and being there for one another at any moment of our journey on Earth together.

For us as a couple, happiness is deeper than pleasure, with an additional feeling of purpose and meaning, with the satisfaction of growing together, learning together, and evolving together on the complex and unpredictable journey of life.

Every couple will have their own definition of happiness and their own secrets. Sharing happiness secrets might help others find their own happy road and give more meaning to their own life.

© Chris E. Gilbert, MD, PhD 2023, all rights reserved.