5 Keys To A Better Love Life

I re­cent­ly asked 5 of the most suc­cess­ful cou­ples I know for their best ad­vice on how to cre­ate a fan­tas­tic love life. They laughed at first. They thought I was ask­ing about sex. I as­sured them I wasn’t. I want­ed to know what they’d done to keep their love alive for 100+ com­bined years of life to­gether.

What came next sur­prised, in­spired, and frus­trat­ed me all at once. Th­ese ideas were so sim­ple, so straight­for­ward. Why weren’t more cou­ples putt­ing them to use in their own re­la­tion­ships? Richard, hap­pi­ly “liv­ing in sin” with Deb­bie for 39 years, said it best. “Most peo­ple just don’t seem to care enough to put a bit of ef­fort in­to their re­la­tion­ship ev­ery day.”

If you re­al­ly do care then you’ll have what it takes to put the fol­low­ing con­cepts to use and reap the ben­e­fits. In spite of all the com­plex­i­ty that love serves up, th­ese keys will make short work of ad­d­ing joy to your re­la­tion­ship.

1. Ask For Praise
Ex­pect­ing your part­n­er to no­tice things with­out prompt­ing is of­ten very un­fair and can lead to re­sent­ment. Keep the beast away by speak­ing up and bring­ing at­ten­tion to things you’d like your part­n­er to no­tice. If you’ve done some­thing you’d like your part­n­er to take no­tice of, say some­thing! Got your hair did? Say some­thing! Fixed the din­ing room table so it doesn’t teeter? Say some­thing!

You did this in­st­inc­tive­ly when you were a child. Re­mem­ber run­n­ing up to a par­ent or guar­dian and ask­ing them to look at a pic­ture you’d col­ored or cape you’d made out of an ex­pen­sive table­cloth? For most of us, the re­sponse was one of amaze­ment (if a bit con­trived) and vo­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion for our ob­vi­ous ta­l­ents.

You’re not so very dif­fer­ent now. You still love to be praised when you’ve done well. Even if it’s some­thing you should have done ear­li­er in the week or missed a de­tail on. How to get that praise? Ask for it and agree to give it when your part­n­er asks you for some ap­pre­ci­a­tion. You know not to crush a child’s spir­it by ig­nor­ing their ef­forts to im­press you. Are you as smart about your part­n­er?

2. In Ev­ery­thing, Give Thanks
Say “Thank You” and make an ef­fort to reg­u­lar­ly de­mon­s­trate your genuine grate­ful­ness for all your part­n­er does for you. There are go­ing to be times when this will seem an im­pos­si­ble chore. Per­haps you’ll be fu­ri­ous with your part­n­er over some­thing or other and they’ll point out some­thing they did, hop­ing for praise. How will you re­spond? Will you of­fer your praise and thanks then deal with your anger se­parate­ly? Or will you close up like a shell and tor­ture your part­n­er with in­con­so­lable si­lence?

You care about mak­ing your re­la­tion­ship work so I ex­pect you’ll swal­low your mo­men­tary pride and say thank you. Af­ter all, your part­n­er de­serves at least the same cour­tesy you’d give to a com­plete stranger. When you can­not be gra­cious, be po­lite. Make a habit of of­fer­ing thanks to your part­n­er, even for the tini­est of things, and a sa­pling of thank­ful­ness will grow in­to some­thing strong enough to sup­port you both.

3. Sche­d­ule Time For Each Other
If you were wor­ried about killing spon­ta­neous ro­mance by sche­dul­ing time with your part­n­er, you wouldn’t be read­ing this. For the rest of us with busy lives and hec­tic sche­d­ules, an ex­haust­ing Wed­nes­day is easi­er to han­dle know­ing that Thurs­day at 6pm we get a few hours with our best friend.

All that’s left is to ac­tu­al­ly be pre­sent with your part­n­er dur­ing the fo­cused time you have to­gether. This, ac­cord­ing to all voic­es heard in my less-than-sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey, is one of the hard­est parts of any long-term re­la­tion­ship.

Din­n­er with kids at the table doesn’t count as re­al pres­ence. Sitt­ing on the couch while you both have lap­tops run­n­ing in front of you doesn’t count ei­ther. In fact, most of the things we do as cou­ples fall in­to the realm of proxim­i­ty in­stead of true pres­ence. A sim­ple test (thanks, Deb­bie!) is to see if you need to get your part­n­er’s at­ten­tion be­fore talk­ing for them to hear what you say. If you do, they weren’t re­al­ly there to be­gin with.

You’ll be tempt­ed to use your reg­u­lar time to­gether as the time for you to an­gri­ly vent and argue. Don’t do it! This is your time to catch up with the per­son you love. If you can’t think of some­thing won­drous and warm to say, chew on si­lence and just be. There’s some­thing about fo­cused pres­ence with a loved one that helps trou­bles sink away just a bit. Make the most of your time to­gether!

4. Agree On How To Argue
Some­time when you’re not even a lit­tle an­gry with each other, sit down and talk about how you fight. Then lay down some rules you both agree to fol­low dur­ing fu­ture ar­gu­ments.

Mary, a 74 year-old mother of four and wi­d­ow of two shared three of her rules:

No­body leaves dur­ing an ar­gu­ment with­out say­ing where they’re go­ing.
Ar­gu­ments that last longer than 3 days are ob­vi­ous­ly stupid and will not be al­lowed to cont­in­ue.
An ar­gu­ment will nev­er mean that the re­la­tion­ship it­self is in ques­tion.
Mary’s fi­nal rule re­s­o­nat­ed with me be­cause that’s some­thing I work very hard to do in my own re­la­tion­ships. One of the most dif­fi­cult but smartest things to say dur­ing an ar­gu­ment is, “I love you but I’m so pissed at you about/for/be­cause [insert ar­gu­ment here].” Keep­ing the ar­gu­ment se­parate from the re­la­tion­ship sta­tus is key to gett­ing things back on track. You could call it a short­cut through very dark woods.

5. Say You’re Sor­ry Ev­ery Day
Apol­o­giz­ing is a lot like learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage. The more you prac­tice it in re­al-life si­t­u­a­tions, the bet­ter you be­come at it.

If you don’t do some­thing worth say­ing sor­ry for ev­ery day, you’re ei­ther an an­gel or com­plete­ly blind to your own in­ad­e­qua­cy. You need not com­mit some great da­m­age against your part­n­er be­fore say­ing you’re sor­ry. Just be your­self. In the course of be­ing your­self you’ll say some­thing with­out think­ing, for­get to pick up some­thing from the store, or com­plain about your day with­out ask­ing about your part­n­er’s. You’re a mas­ter at mak­ing mis­takes! =)

The more you ask for for­give­ness, the easi­er it will be to ad­mit to and gain for­give­ness for all the things you do that might drive your part­n­er away if not tak­en care of. Its nev­er easy to swal­low your pride and ad­mit to screw­ing some­thing up. But you need to do this and make a habit of it if you want to make your re­la­tion­ship the best it can pos­si­b­ly be.