What Makes Love Last

When couples are trustworthy they send each other the message that they and the partnership are unique and irreplaceable. During couples’ counseling I call this “creating the sacred” because “sacred” and “sacrifice” have the same root—both words originated in early religious practices that involved sacrifice as a form of worship. In a long-term, committed relationship, sacrifice entails both people agreeing to give the romance priority over other goals and dreams. Learning to do this may be difficult for couples who no longer connect emotionally. These “partners” may have coped with years of unhappiness by leading separate, parallel lives. It can be hard to break this habit, but it is certainly possible.

couple’s mutual trust score indicates how deeply they are in this together and have each other’s back. In contrast, trustworthiness indicates a partner’s willingness to sacrifice for the relationship, to sometimes put his or her own needs on the back burner because the partnership matters most.

the Nice box housed positive emotions and behaviors such as interest, amusement, humor, laughter, excitement, joy, validation, and empathy.

The Nasty box held all negative behavior including displays of anger, criticism, belligerence, bullying, defensiveness, sadness, disappointment, fear, tension, whining, disgust, stonewalling, and contempt.

Trusting each other doesn’t mean that Al and Jenny will always put the other’s needs ahead of their own—that is unlikely to be healthy. But it does mean that their happiness will be interconnected. They will each change their own behavior to increase the other’s payoffs.

Trust is not some vague quality that grows between two people. It is the specific state that exists when you are both willing to change your own behavior to benefit your partner. The more trust that exists in a relationship, the more you look out for each other. You have your beloved’s back, and vice versa. In a trusting relationship you feel pleasure when your partner succeeds and troubled when he or she is upset. You just can’t be happy if achieving your payoffs would hurt your significant other.

Happy couples tell me all the time that mutual trust is what lets them feel safe with each other, deepens their love, and allows friendship and sexual intimacy to blossom.

analyzing the anatomy of this poison, I have figured out how to defeat it. I now know that there is a fundamental principle for making relationships work that serves as an antidote to unfaithfulness. That principle is trust.

a husband always puts his career ahead of his relationship, that is betrayal. When a wife keeps breaking her promise to start a family, that is also betrayal. Pervasive coldness, selfishness, unfairness, and other destructive behaviors are also evidence of disloyalty and can lead to consequences as equally devastating as adultery.

Despite their commitment to sticking it out, they have lost something fundamental between lovers, a quality often termed “magic” or “passion,” that exists at a primitive, “animal” level. That’s why they end up in the roach motel.