What Is The Secret To A Long And Happy Romantic Relationship?

What is the secret to a long and happy romantic relationship?

Recently there was an article in The Guardian entitled ‘Gender inequities are important’: why couples fall out of love’. It’s trying to understand what breaks people up in order to help us find out the secret to a long and happy romantic relationship.

The article cites the recent findings of Saurabh Bhargava of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, on men and women relating to a decline in relationship satisfaction. For example, it states that men report experiencing a 9.2% reduction in romantic feelings over the span of a long marriage, whereas women experience a 55.2% reduction. It says that this is largely due to men not doing their fair share of household chores and emotional labor and a woman’s slow build-up of resentment about this is a relationship killer (as opposed to one significant event).

This might not be news to most of us. I certainly found myself nodding along as I was reading.

But there was one quote in the article that especially caught my attention.

Camilla Nicholls, a couples counsellor, says the findings don’t match her professional experience: “The significant gender gap suggested by the research doesn’t really register in the consulting room.”

Although Nicholls is not invited to expand on this- not mentioned again in the rest of the article- this little quote got me wondering. What is my actual experience as an Australian couples counsellor and relationship coach vs the theory/research based on interviews?

Does my experience line up with the data quoted in the article?

It surprised me to realise that I agree with Camilla.

There might be a secret to a long and happy romantic relationship, but it’s not solely located in gendered behaviour.

For starters, there is no mention of queer folks in this article. I work with a lot of queer couples and also people in less traditional relationship models. The issues around unequal distribution of household chores, child-rearing and emotional/mental labor are not exclusive to people in opposite sex relationships.

These issues are not exclusive to the behaviour of men and women.

Even in the most gender-neutral home, arguments arise about who does what and what’s fair and what isn’t. The standards might generally be higher (they just are!), but in many queer households there’s still one person who is cleaner. A primary carer when it comes to children. There’s someone who holds more responsibility- not necessarily by choice- for remembering birthdays/writing shopping lists/answering relentless questions and providing ‘a little extra’ when it comes to loving-care.

And there is still the slow, simmering build-up of resentment when someone experiences unfairness in a romantic relationship.

So I don’t think that experience is totally gendered.

Sure, this behaviour is more than likely due to a world that elevates patriarchal values and the global market economy, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

Don’t get me wrong- it’s incredibly important for us to acknowledge and address these problems: as a society, in our romantic relationships and as individuals.

But does this kind of stuff actually spell the end of a relationship?

Well, again, not so much in my experience.

In fact, I hate to say it, but I reckon a lot of folks who live with long-simmering resentment tend to just go on living with it. They might not be very happy, and they will likely withdraw from their partner over time, but it’s a dynamic people can go on and on in forever.

That kind of dynamic can, however, lead to some kind of ‘blowing up’ of the relationship. Someone starts keeping secrets, someone has an affair (even in ethically non-monogamous relationships, sex and love with others can become a problem when there’s a breaking of the agreed rules, when any kind of duplicity enters the scene and it becomes unethical), someone starts being snide and cruel, someone develops an addiction, someone starts working too much and is absent etc… It’s not necessarily the person who’s feeling resentful and withdrawn who blows things up though, it can be anyone.

These are the things that bring most folks through counselling doors. I would love it if people came earlier (relationship coaching is a really good option), but it’s understandable for a whole host of reasons that it usually takes the big stuff for us to admit we need help.

If this kind of breakdown is something you want to avoid in your relationship, or you look at the vast majority of long-term relationships and hope you won’t be like them, then it’s vital to try and understand what the hell is going wrong. Because no one is immune, regardless of gender.

But what is the secret to a long and happy romantic relationship, then, if it’s not understanding this problem and addressing it?

The unequal distribution of household, relationship and emotional labor is important, no doubt. But there’s something else that fits more with my experience as a couples therapist and relationship coach. Something which matters to almost all of us in lots of different contexts.

Ask yourself this:

Do I feel seen?

Does your partner or do your lovers see you?

Do you see them?

Do you feel (mostly) understood and appreciated for what you bring to the relationship?

Is that experience of seeing/being seen genuine?

Is it updated, is it current (and not from 15 years ago)?

Being seen is crucial to most humans. I’m not even sure why we’re like that, but most of us need it. When you ask someone why they chose to marry their partner, you’ll find there was usually a moment where the person responded to them in a way that made them feel seen.

Really truly seen.

I often hear the words ‘They just got me’.

We all want to be known, loved and cherished by at least one special person.

So what are you doing to show each other that you do SEE this amazing, wonderful, unique person?

If this is the secret to a long and happy relationship, how do you maintain it over time?

I’ve been reading ‘How To Do Nothing’ by Jenny Odell, which contains multitudes of research, art and experiences on how the attention economy is stealing our time and our minds. It’s a brilliant manifesto that sneaks up on you when you thought you just dropped in for some low-key self-help. As an artist, birdlover, human, neighbour and teacher, Odell offers insights on how to get our attention back from those who wish to take it for the purposes of selling us stuff. After all, our attention is one of the last things we still truly own.

She encourages us to explore bioregionalism, which on a basic level involves choosing consciously to be exactly where we are (though this oversimplifies the exhaustive catalogue of thinkers, doers and makers she gathers her ideas from).

What does it mean to you, to be exactly where you are in your romantic relationship?

What does it mean to you to stand still with someone you love while the world swirls around you?

In Odell’s book, she shares stories about being thrust into a new experience of the same-old by external forces. One such story is about going to the supermarket after helping a stranger in the street who had a sudden seizure, where everything was heightened and all the people suddenly became ‘real’ and important.

She then quotes some great stuff from David Foster-Wallace on bringing your attention on purpose to such chores:

if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way.

 

But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.

Isn’t that beautiful?

So it’s a bit out of context here. Maybe it sounds too sappy or pie-in-the-sky. But also… it’s important.

Do you know that you get to choose, sometimes, how to exist in your own life? We can’t always choose how we feel (often we can’t ). But we can choose what to do with those feelings and we can reflect on how we want to be with one other.

This is all within your power.

How you think about love and who you are in your relationships is in your power.

Romantic relationships and friendships aren’t something happening to you. They’re something you choose. You don’t have the power to change someone else. But sometimes, when you bring something new and different, they will meet you in that.

Whether you do this consciously (as in, you say ‘you know we need to work on our communication and trying to understand each other more. Here’s an exercise we can get stuck into in which we internalise one another for a different kind of conversation’) or whether you start very small on your own is up to you.

What do you find your attention landing on when you step out of your normal pattern, even just for 10 mins, and notice your person? See your people?

Sit in a different chair. Delay the TV for half an hour. Put on a different album. Ask a question you haven’t asked in a long time, or share something about yourself.

Or don’t say anything at all and simply observe, from a place of genuine curiosity, with goodwill and loving-kindness. Wait for annoyance or the need to be distracted to subside.

See what comes up.

Give it time.

In truth, there’s no code-cracking secret to a long and happy romantic relationship. But there’s a bit of magic in the every day, if you invite it.

Patterns take time to establish (certainly the negative ones did) so keep going, making mistakes, get lost, and start again. Getting your attention back and focusing it on places and people of your choosing is really hard. But it is worth it. Don’t wait for something external to knock your relationship over, or for boredom and resentment to guide your choices.

Choose you and them and now.

Start today.

Let us know how you go in the comments below .

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Main image by Mikhail Nilov