The happy couple checklist

By Linda and Charlie Bloom

Linda: When my husband Charlie and I were interviewing the happiest couples we could find, we could clearly see that they were among the group that was keeping passionate romance alive over many decades. These were some of the themes that ran through their stories. Please consider this list and add some components of your own.

• Vision: Hold a grand vision of what your partnership can be and roll up your sleeves to get to work to manifest that vision.
• Define Romance: People have different ideas about romance. Be sure to have conversations defining what romance means to you so you can manifest what you are longing for.
• Commitment: Commit each day and demonstrate that commitment.
• Interests: Have an interesting career, hobbies, and areas of interest to keep each individual lively.
• Adventure: Keep your sense of adventure alive, try new things, and take risks.
• Listening: Listen deeply.
• Curiosity: Be curious with the wonder of a child.
• Questions: Ask questions that show your sincere interest.
• Healing: Heal all past wounds.
• Learning: Keep learning and growing. When you remain interesting your partner will be interested in you. Having an interesting career, hobbies, and other areas of interest keep each individual lively. And therefore, they bring their happy interesting self to their partner.
• Privacy: Honor your partner’s privacy by spending time apart.
• Staying Power: Don’t quit during the hard segments of the partnership.
• Honesty: Be honest and trustworthy.
• Agreements: Keep agreements, big ones like fidelity, and even the small ones count.
• Tolerance: Be tolerant and accepting of your partner’s shortcomings.
• Good news: Focus on your partner’s assets and strengths.
• Respect.
• Conflict Management : Arguments can be enlivening and exciting. Those who are conflict-avoidant can repress emotions with a result of flattening the relationship. Disappointments, frustrations, hurts, and grievances need to be brought forward. Only then can the couple negotiate to have their needs met. Respectful airing of differences breathes passion into the partnership, keeping the romantic quotient high.
• No threats or ultimatums.
• Forgiveness: Be willing to forgive past transgressions.
• Myths: Examine your beliefs to find if there are limiting ones that may be detracting from having an excellent partnership.
• Self-revelation: Reveal rather than conceal; express rather than repress.
• Secrets: No secrets or lies.
• Needs: Tell your partner what you need.
• Attractiveness: Stay attractive.
• Humor: Humor is associated with novelty and the unexpected and will bring lightness and fun.
• Stretch: Stretch into your partner’s world if you possibly can.
• Sex: Refine your sexual relationship for maximum pleasure. Making love in a place in the house other than your regular bed adds sparkle.
•  Intimacy: Non-sexual intimacy is a deep knowing of each other, the innermost parts of each other. 
•  Gratitude: Express gratitude for the way your partner enriches your life.The above characteristics of couples that keep romance alive over decades can be yours. 
• Please don’t be confined to this list. If there are other items that you can give yourself credit for, by all means do so. And if there are attitudes and behaviors that you identify as those areas where you need to improve, by all means note those. 
• It’s unlikely that you would get a perfect score of 100% by checking off every item on the list, but it’s a worthy goal to master each one over the years together. It requires some work on our parts to be eligible for such a passionate, long-term romance. But what have we got better to do with our time.

Originally published at Psychology Today