As Daniel Jones, author of Love Illuminated, explains: we spend our youth asking "How do I find love?" and midlife asking "How do I get it back?"

Anyone in a relationship or who plans on being in one needs to know how to keep love alive over the long term. But how do you learn the secret to this? Everyone is happy to explain "how they met" but few give the details on "how they stayed together."

So let's look at what science has to say.

"Happily ever after" ain't easy

Aside from being the epitome of lazy writing, "happily ever after" is not simple.

Ty Tashiro explains that couples in their first year of marriages score 86 percent for marriage satisfaction. By the seventh year, it's under 50 percent.



So the real stat is two-thirds of marriages do not live "happily ever after."


Why is marriage so hard over the long term?

One of the main reasons is what science calls it "habituation." Which is a fancy way of saying we get bored.

Early on, when a couple can finish each other's sentences it's romantic. But over time "predictable" is a huge negative.




So is there any way to bring those tingles back?

Yes. Here's how.

What you can learn from arranged marriages

"Arranged marriage! AGH! Weird!"

Hold on a sec. We can learn something here. What do researchers find when they compare at 50 arranged marriages and 50 "love" marriages?

Love marriages start out happier — but that declines quickly.

Arranged marriages start out less happy, but after 10 years, they're happier than love marriages. And stay that way.


What's the secret behind the long term success of arranged marriages?

They have to work at it.

They don't passively rely on "magic" and intense emotion. They have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to make it work.



Elements of fairy tales such as Cinderella were present in 78 percent of people's beliefs about romantic love. Those people were more likely to have experienced disillusionment, devastation, and angst in their relationships than were those who gave less credence to fairy tales. – Lockhart 2000 [100 Simple Secrets of Great Relationships]

Feeling like it's all magic means it's out of your control — and that without that initial magic, it's hopeless.



Don't fix the bad. Increase the good.

Look at your spouse as something you purchased "as-is." Research shows trying to change them doesn't work:

…when participants (N = 160) focused their relationship improvement attempts on changing the partner, individuals reported more negative improvement strategies, lower improvement success, and, in turn, more negative relationship evaluations… results suggest that targeting the partner may do more harm than good despite that relationship evaluations pivot on whether the partner produces change. ["Improving intimate relationships: Targeting the partner versus changing the self" from Journal of Social and Personal Relationships]

John Gottman, researcher and author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, says 69 percent of a couple's problems are perpetual. These problems don't go away yet many couples keep arguing about them year after year.

Most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other's mind – but it can't be done. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, or values. By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage. [The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work]

So if you can't change them and they won't change you, how can you reduce the bad stuff?

You can't. But you don't need to.



Shelly Gable, professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has demonstrated that how you celebrate is more predictive of strong relations than how you fight. [Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being]

Okay, so you need to increase the good times. What's the best way to do that?

(This part is exciting. I mean, literally.)

Forget romance. Think excitement.


Researchers did a 10 week study comparing couples that engaged in "pleasant" activities vs "exciting" activities. Pleasant lost.

Those who had undertaken the "exciting" date nights showed a significantly greater increase in marital satisfaction than the "pleasant" date night group… [For Better: How the Surprising Science of Happy Couples Can Help Your Marriage Succeed]


Because we're lousy about realizing where our feelings are coming from.

Excitement from any source will be associated with the person you're with, even if they're not the cause of it.


…Whether the couples were only dating or long-married, the ones who did the shared novel activity were more likely than the ones who did the shared neutral activity to agree to statements like "I feel happy when I am doing something to make my partner happy" and "I feel 'tingling' and 'an increased heartbeat' when I think of my partner" after the activity than before. [The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does]


Sum up

Keeping love alive can be tricky. You need to actively work at it and it's more important to increase the good then to reduce the bad.

And the best way to do that is by increasing excitement.

So you're hopping on roller coasters and going white water rafting — but what do you need to do when you're there?

Pretend you're on your first date.



Why? On first dates we make an effort to impress. And we're full of hope.



Sandra Murray and her colleagues have been studying romantic relationships now for several decades, and have found that idealising one's partner is a sure recipe for marital success; moreover, the higher one's ideals are and the more one idealises one's partner, the more satisfied one is with the relationship – and the longer it is likely to last. [The Science of Love]



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