Do happy couples really exist?

Do happy couples really exist?

Do happy couples exist? Absolutely. Research from around the world shows that at least 10% of all married people are truly happy. Moreover, marital happiness contributes far more to personal happiness than anything else, including professional and friendship satisfaction!

Do happy couples really exist? Why should you care?

This is a key question whether you are single, newly divorced, dating someone who might be the One, or involved in a relationship that has lasted a while but you have trouble committing! If your goal is to be in a lasting, happy, and committed romantic relationship, you must clearly understand and visualize that goal or vision if you hope to be successful. Which means you need to know what a healthy relationship looks like. In fact, if you don't, you're just going to stumble, face heartbreak after heartbreak, feeling alone and lonely. Unfortunately, a soul mate doesn't just come across as a perfectly fitting puzzle piece or twin personality. Thus, a soul mate is someone who develops and maintains a living state of love in word and deed with you.

Chances are you've had few win-win relationship patterns; the kind of true love that makes you healthier, happier and richer. It can be difficult to imagine this kind of relationship for yourself, and difficult to learn the skills that happy couples use on a regular basis. Until now!

Do happy couples really exist? The big news

The good news is that you can learn these skills and practice them with people around you (they will immediately make you happier!). This, in turn, will help you become the person who could be in healthy, loving, and lasting love. We've seen this happen in our coaching program with people from all kinds of difficult childhoods and relationships, including those who were abandoned or experienced childhood trauma and those who were betrayed, left or hurt in their romantic relationships as adults! Which means there's hope to find true, lasting love no matter what you've been through.

Do happy couples really exist? How happy couples work

There is one thing that happy couples have in common. The way they talk and act with each other is surprisingly similar and 180 degrees different from what happens in unhappy relationships. Researchers have identified nearly all of these healthy patterns, or what I call Living Love Habits, by studying tens of thousands of happy couples. My husband, Sam, and I studied the skills of happy couples in our Comprehensive Family Therapy Institute and used them in our own lab, our marriage.

Do happy couples really exist? The Eight Habits of Living Love

All happy families are alike.

Each unhappy family is unique in their grief.

-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Tolstoy's powerful observation was this: There is a commonality among happy families. The way they talk and act with each other is surprisingly similar and 180 degrees different from what happens in unhappy families. As I said earlier, researchers have identified almost all of these healthy habits by studying tens of thousands of happy couples. My husband, Sam, and I have used these habits for many years. They have not only empowered us through family upheavals, setbacks, losses, and other assorted slingshots and arrows, but they have also given us growing emotional connection, happiness, personal empowerment, and moments of delightful bliss. In fact, in our coaching practice, we've prescribed these powerful practices to help thousands of other couples create true, lasting love.

The Eight Habits: Cultivate intimacy: spend time alone as a couple, share honestly and be close! Act out of dedication and service: be there and provide em...