How To Have A Successful Married Life
4 practical tips for success
Succeeding in your life as a couple: a vast subject... If we emerge from our schooling by mastering (more or less) the Pythagorean theorem and spelling, we are nowhere taught how to take care of our relationship as a couple.
And yet! Learning how to be happy as a couple would probably contribute much more effectively to our happiness than being top of the class in chemistry. Indeed, according to numerous studies, there is a close relationship between the level of individual happiness and having a fulfilling relationship.
This seems logical: we are relational beings, and the marital relationship is the central relationship in our lives. Our spouse is the person with whom we spend a large part of our time, and with whom we build a common life…
And in our opinion there are two relatively little-known facts about romantic relationships:
- To love is an action commitment
- Loving and relating can be learned through many skills.
What are the essential things in a relationship? How to develop them? What makes a couple strong?
In one sentence: how do succeed in your life as a couple?
1 – Tip number 1: build solid foundations for a successful life as a couple
How to build a house? By building on solid foundations (well before choosing wallpaper or windows). For the couple, it's the same thing: we cannot hope to go through the years together and happily without having laid solid foundations for our union.
Each couple is different, and therefore has its recipe, and its own culture: this is what makes the couple wonderful.
In our opinion, this couple’s culture is based on at least 3 pillars: your common history, your shared values, and your daily activities created together.
A shared history is the foundation of your relationship.
2 – Tip number 2: develop rich and fluid communication in your relationship as a couple
We hear it everywhere: communication is the key to a functioning relationship.
We agree with this (even if it is not the only key), but in my opinion, this advice can be difficult to implement: concretely, communicating well, what does that mean? About what, and how to communicate? Here are some ideas below:
Communicate, yes, but talk about what?
You can feel like you communicate a lot with your partner, and yet say nothing that “matters”.
Superficial discussions “The weather
is nice today” “The
the elevator is broken”
Factual conversations “Here’s what I did today” “
We need to go shopping”
Intellectual conversations “I
didn’t like my trip to England” I
don’t agree with the latest government reform”
Emotional conversations “I
I’m sad to only see you once this week” “I
I’m nervous about tomorrow’s exam”
Conversations about the relationship
“I would like us to go to counseling to try to move past this betrayal”
3 – Tip number 3: give sexuality the place that suits you both in your relationship
We hear everywhere that sexuality is a pillar of a couple's life: we are rather mixed on the subject.
Indeed, saying this can put a lot of pressure on couples, like an injunction to sexuality. But it's more complicated than that: libido can fluctuate, and some couples don't feel the need to connect in this way... and that's OK.
We will therefore rephrase: physical intimacy is one of the pillars of life as a couple. And it doesn’t just happen through sexuality: there is also tenderness, an outstretched hand in the street…
If, however, for you as for many couples, having a fulfilling sex life is important, here are some tips for maintaining and developing chemistry in the couple.
Communicate about your sexuality
One of the pillars of fulfilling sexuality is fluid communication on the subject, although this does not always seem obvious at first glance.
These discussions will create a stronger intimacy between you, and it will be beneficial well beyond the bed.
4 – Tip number 4: arm yourself to overcome trials and difficulties together
This advice is probably the most valuable: to be happy as a couple, it is about stopping looking for perfection, and understanding that it is normal to go through “with” phases, and more complicated phases.
Agree to embrace the waves of the relationship
Contrary to what we see in films (where everything depends on the meeting, then everything happens afterward), life as a couple is not a long, quiet river.
First of all love in itself cannot be linear: it is bound to fluctuate, both in its nature and in its intensity.
