Seven small habits that keep a marriage happy

Most love stories begin well. The first meeting, the first long conversation, the first time you hold a hand — it all feels like a film. Then a few years pass. Flowers, gifts and a nicely written post on someone's birthday stop doing the work. What keeps a marriage warm after that is not a secret and not a grand gesture. It is a handful of ordinary habits, repeated on ordinary days.

1. Say thank you, still

After years together it is easy to think a thank-you is no longer needed — the tea, the dishes, the shopping, the locked door are simply what people do. Couples who have been happy for forty years tend to do the opposite. They thank each other for small things, out loud, long after anyone would expect it. Respect is what is being said, not politeness. Nothing in a marriage should quietly become owed.

2. Argue, but not to win

Happy couples are not the ones who never disagree. They are the ones who disagree without damage. The question that keeps a fight small is not "am I right?" but "are we solving this?" Two people on the same side of a problem argue very differently from two people on opposite sides of each other.

The useful question in a disagreement is not who is right. It is what we do now.

3. Understand rather than remake

A great deal of unhappiness comes from waiting for the other person to change — the habit, the temper, the way they are with money. People do change, but rarely on somebody else's schedule and never because they were told to. Couples who last say the same thing: you take the person as they are, and you decide which differences you can live beside.

4. Two people, one home

A healthy marriage does not mean doing everything together, keeping the same friends or holding the same opinions. It means each of you keeps something of your own — work, a friendship, a hobby, an hour of quiet — and the other treats it as normal rather than as a loss. A person who is whole on their own has more to bring to the marriage, not less.

5. Five minutes a day

Not a long conversation, not a serious one: five minutes in which you both say how the day went, what is on your mind, what made it better. Done daily it keeps the small things small, because nothing has to wait until it is big enough to be worth raising.

6. Forgive, and let it go

Mistakes will happen on both sides. Couples who are still happy after decades say the same thing about them: apologise as soon as you see it, and once a thing is forgiven, stop bringing it back. A marriage in which every old mistake can be produced as evidence becomes exhausting for the person holding the file as much as for the one in the dock.

7. Love is a decision, not only a feeling

Feeling comes and goes; the decision is made daily. Will I stand beside this person today? Will I speak to them with respect today? Will I actually listen today? A marriage in which both people can answer yes most days is a marriage that lasts — and that is closer to work than to luck.

In short

None of the seven is difficult. That is the point: they are small enough to do on a bad day, and that is exactly when they hold.

This piece was written for SheTu. The seven habits are the common counsel of long-married couples and counsellors; a report on them in Prothom Alo (prothomalo.com) prompted it.