5.1 What Makes Relationships Last

You’ve been together two years. The honeymoon phase ended a while ago. Now it’s just… normal. Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Are you settling? Or is this what lasting love actually looks like?

The Myth of Effortless Love

Movies end at the wedding. Songs are about falling in love, not staying in it. We’re saturated with stories about love’s beginning and almost none about its middle.

This creates a dangerous myth: that lasting love should feel like early love. That if you have to “work at it,” something’s wrong. That the right relationship is effortless.

Research tells a different story. Lasting relationships aren’t effortless — they’re skilled. The couples who stay together and stay happy aren’t luckier. They’re better at specific, learnable behaviors.

The 5:1 Ratio

John Gottman’s research at the University of Washington’s “Love Lab” tracked couples over decades, measuring everything from heart rate to facial expressions during conflict. His team could predict divorce with remarkable accuracy.^[1]

The key finding? A ratio.

Stable, happy couples maintained approximately 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction during conflict. Couples heading toward divorce had ratios closer to 0.8:1 — nearly equal positive and negative.

This doesn’t mean avoiding conflict. It means the overall emotional climate stays predominantly positive even when you disagree. The positives buffer the negatives.

What counts as positive:

Showing interest in what they’re saying
Expressing affection
Demonstrating care
Being appreciative
Finding opportunities for agreement
Empathizing with their perspective
Using humor appropriately

What counts as negative:

Criticism (attacking character, not behavior)
Contempt (mockery, eye-rolling, disgust)
Defensiveness (denying responsibility)
Stonewalling (shutting down, withdrawing)

The ratio matters more than the absolute amount of either. You don’t need a conflict-free relationship. You need enough positive deposits to weather the negative withdrawals.

The Four Horsemen (Revisited)

Gottman identified four communication patterns that predict relationship failure with alarming accuracy:^[2]

1. Criticism

Attacking your partner’s character instead of addressing specific behavior.

Destructive: “You never think about anyone but yourself.”
Alternative: “I felt hurt when plans changed without discussing it with me.”

2. Contempt

The strongest predictor of divorce. Includes mockery, sarcasm, name-calling, eye-rolling, and hostile humor.

Contempt communicates disgust and superiority
Research shows it even predicts immune system suppression in the receiving partner
It’s impossible to resolve conflict when one person feels contemptuous

3. Defensiveness

Denying responsibility, making excuses, meeting complaint with counter-complaint.

Destructive: “That’s not my fault — you’re the one who…”
Alternative: “You’re right, I could have handled that better.”

4. Stonewalling

Shutting down, refusing to engage, physically or emotionally leaving.

Often happens when heart rate exceeds 100 BPM (“flooding”)
The stonewaller appears checked out; the partner feels abandoned
85% of stonewallers are men (physiological, not character-based)

The research: Couples displaying these patterns had significantly higher divorce rates. In one study tracking newlyweds, these behaviors predicted marital outcomes with 83% accuracy.^[3]

Repair Attempts: The Secret Ingredient

Here’s what actually distinguishes satisfied couples from unsatisfied ones: not the absence of conflict, but the presence of repair attempts.^[2]

Repair attempts are efforts to de-escalate tension during conflict:

“Can we take a break and come back to this?”
“I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”
Using humor to lighten the mood
Reaching for physical connection
“I can see your point, even though I disagree.”
“We’re getting off track. What are we really arguing about?”

The critical finding: In happy couples, repair attempts work. In unhappy couples, they’re ignored or rejected.

The difference isn’t the quality of the repair attempt. It’s whether the relationship has enough positive sentiment for repairs to land. This is called positive sentiment override — when the overall relationship climate is positive, you interpret ambiguous behaviors charitably. When it’s negative, you interpret the same behaviors as hostile.

A repair attempt from a loved partner feels like connection. The same words from a resented partner feel manipulative. Same behavior, different reception.

Turning Toward vs. Turning Away

Gottman observed couples in a simulated apartment environment, tracking what he called “bids for connection” — small moments where one partner reaches out for attention, affection, or engagement.^[4]

Examples of bids:

“Look at that bird outside”
Sighing loudly while reading something
“How was your day?”
Reaching for their hand
Sharing something funny you saw online

Partners can respond in three ways:

Turning Toward

Acknowledging and engaging with the bid.

“Oh wow, that’s a beautiful bird.”
“What are you reading? You seem frustrated.”

Turning Away

Ignoring the bid, not responding, missing it entirely.

Continuing to look at phone
“Mmhmm” without looking up

Turning Against

Responding with hostility or irritation.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Why do you always interrupt me?”

The research: Couples who divorced within six years had turned toward each other only 33% of the time in the apartment study. Couples still married turned toward 86% of the time.

These aren’t dramatic moments. They’re mundane. But the accumulation of turning toward — or away — builds or erodes the relationship’s emotional bank account.

The Investment Model

Research on commitment identified three factors that predict whether people stay in relationships:^[5]

1. Satisfaction

How happy are you with the relationship? Are your needs being met?

2. Quality of Alternatives

What are your other options? Could you do better elsewhere?

3. Investment Size

What have you put into this? Time, energy, shared resources, intertwined lives?

The finding: People stay in relationships when satisfaction is high, alternatives seem worse, and investments are substantial.

This explains why people stay in unsatisfying relationships (high investment, poor perceived alternatives) and why they leave satisfying ones (better alternatives appear, low investment).

It also explains why the early months matter: building investment early creates commitment that sustains through later difficulties.

Relationship Maintenance: What Actually Works

A meta-analysis of relationship maintenance behaviors identified what predicts sustained satisfaction:^[6]

Positivity

Being cheerful, optimistic, and pleasant around your partner. Not fake — genuinely bringing positive energy.

Openness

Discussing the relationship directly, sharing feelings, talking about where things are going.

Assurances

Explicitly communicating commitment and love. Telling them they matter. Not assuming they know.

Spending time with shared friends and family. Integrating lives. Creating overlapping social worlds.

Shared Tasks

Sharing responsibilities fairly. Doing household work together. The mundane logistics of life as partnership.

The finding: These maintenance behaviors predicted both relationship satisfaction and commitment over time. Relationships don’t maintain themselves — they require active, ongoing investment.

What Long-Term Love Actually Feels Like

Neuroimaging research on couples married an average of 21 years who reported intense romantic love found something important:^[7]

Their brains still showed activation in dopamine-rich reward regions — the same areas active in early love. But they also showed activation in regions associated with:

Attachment and calm
Maternal bonding
Long-term pair bonding

Translation: Long-term love isn’t the absence of passion. It’s passion plus security. The obsessive, anxious quality of early love fades (that’s the low serotonin normalizing). What remains is reward activation without the anxiety.

Long-term love feels different from early love — calmer, safer, steadier. But the brain scans show it’s not less. It’s more — the original reward system plus additional attachment circuitry built over years of turning toward each other.

The U-Shaped Curve

A meta-analysis of relationship satisfaction across the lifespan found:^[8]

Satisfaction declines from age 20-40
Reaches its lowest point around 40
Increases from 40-65
Plateaus in late adulthood

Only 10-30% of couples show significant declines. Most maintain stable satisfaction.

The implication: If you’re in the decline phase (often coinciding with career demands, young children, financial pressure), know that it’s statistically normal — and often temporary. The couples who maintain active investment through this period emerge into increasing satisfaction on the other side.

Examples

Priya and Arjun have been married 8 years. When she comes home stressed about work, he puts down his phone and asks about it. When he makes a bid for connection — “want to watch something together?” — she usually says yes, even when she’s tired.

Their ratio stays well above 5:1 not because they never fight, but because the thousand small moments of turning toward have built enough positive sentiment that conflicts resolve quickly. Repair attempts land. Neither feels contempt.

Meera and Vikram were happy for the first two years. Then life got hard — job loss, a health scare, money stress. They stopped turning toward each other. Bids for connection went ignored. The ratio flipped.

When he tried to repair during fights, she heard manipulation. When she expressed needs, he heard criticism. Positive sentiment override had reversed. The same words that once meant love now meant attack.

They’re working with a therapist now, rebuilding the ratio bid by bid. It’s slower going than the erosion was.

Ananya left a relationship after five years. Friends were surprised — it seemed fine from outside. But the ratio had been off for years. No dramatic fights, just a slow accumulation of turning away. Bids met with indifference. Needs expressed and dismissed. Investment that never got reciprocated.

Leaving wasn’t dramatic. It was the inevitable result of a depleted emotional bank account.

What Predicts Lasting Relationships

Factor	What It Means	How to Build It
5:1 Ratio	More positive than negative interactions	Increase deposits, reduce the Four Horsemen
Repair Attempts	De-escalation during conflict	Learn to pause, apologize, use humor, reconnect
Turning Toward	Responding to bids for connection	Notice bids, respond with engagement
Maintenance Behaviors	Active relationship investment	Assurances, openness, shared tasks, positivity
Positive Sentiment Override	Interpreting ambiguity charitably	Build enough positive history that trust is default

Reflection

Think about your current or most recent relationship:

What’s your approximate ratio of positive to negative interactions?
When your partner makes a bid for connection, do you turn toward, away, or against?
When you try to repair during conflict, does it land? If not, what’s the relationship climate like?
Are you actively maintaining the relationship, or assuming it maintains itself?
What does your emotional bank account look like?

One Thing to Do

For one week, track your bids and responses.

When your partner reaches out — even in small ways — notice whether you turn toward (engage), turn away (ignore), or turn against (respond with irritation).

When you reach out, notice their response.

This single awareness often shifts behavior automatically. Seeing how often you turn away without realizing it motivates turning toward. The bids are already happening. You just have to start noticing — and responding.

Lasting love isn’t about finding the right person. It’s about doing the right things, repeatedly, over years. The couples who stay together aren’t luckier. They’re more skilled at the mundane, daily practice of turning toward.

That’s learnable. Start today.

References

Buehlman, K. T., Gottman, J. M., & Katz, L. F. (1992). How a couple views their past predicts their future: Predicting divorce from an oral history interview. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(3-4), 295-318. Gottman Institute
Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Taylor & Francis
Gottman, J. M., Coan, J., Carrère, S., & Swanson, C. (1998). Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(1), 5-22. doi:10.2307/353438
Driver, J. L., & Gottman, J. M. (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43(3), 301-314. doi:10.1111/j.1545-5300.2004.00024.x
Rusbult, C. E., Martz, J. M., & Agnew, C. R. (1998). The investment model scale: Measuring commitment level, satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. Personal Relationships, 5(4), 357-387. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.1998.tb00177.x
Ogolsky, B. G., Monk, J. K., Rice, T. M., Theisen, J. C., & Maniotes, C. R. (2017). Relationship maintenance: A review of research on romantic relationships. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 9(3), 275-306. doi:10.1111/jftr.12205
Acevedo, B. P., Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., & Brown, L. L. (2012). Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(2), 145-159. doi:10.1093/scan/nsq092
Bühler, J. L., Krauss, S., & Orth, U. (2021). Development of relationship satisfaction across the life span: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 148(5-6), 401-426. doi:10.1037/bul0000342

This is Module 5: Building Something Real. More chapters coming soon.

Go back to: Module 1: Know Yourself First