What Do Couples Who Stay Together Do Differently?

Couples who last still argue, sometimes loudly, about money, chores and whose turn it is. What sets them apart, across four decades of lab studies, is a short list of everyday habits, like answering a partner’s small bids for attention and cheering each other’s good news.

They also keep fights mostly warm, try new things together, patch things up mid-argument and say thanks.

Each habit below comes with the study that measured it. These are patterns found across groups of couples, mostly American, so read them as a picture of what lasting couples tend to do, never as a promise about you and yours.

1. Turn toward small bids

The psychologist John Gottman calls these small reaches “bids.” The Gottman Institute defines a bid as any attempt by one partner to get the other’s attention, affirmation, affection or some other positive connection. It can be a question about your day, a hand on your shoulder, or “Look at that bird.”

You can turn toward a bid with a look, a “where?”, or a real answer. Or you can keep scrolling while the moment slips by without either of you noticing it was a moment at all.

Ink and halftone illustration of a woman with a long dark braid and a grey scarf on a city bus in late afternoon sun, pointing out the window at a small brown bird on a bare branch. Her husband, in a navy turban with a grey-flecked beard, has turned his head toward the window to follow her finger, smiling. — *The Gottman Institute counts a squeeze of the hand as a bid too, along with small questions like how a meeting with your manager went.*

What the apartment lab found

At Gottman’s lab at the University of Washington, researchers filmed newlywed couples, including some who stayed in an apartment fitted with cameras, and checked on them six years later. Couples still married at that follow-up had turned toward each other’s bids 86% of the time. Couples who had divorced averaged 33%.

The Gottman Institute reports these figures from the six-year follow-up of Gottman’s newlywed couples and credits his 2001 book The Relationship Cure.

The divorced couples didn’t ignore every bid, but they missed about two out of three.

In a 2004 paper on 49 newlywed couples, Janice Driver and Gottman found that playfulness and enthusiasm at dinner went with more humor and affection in later conflict talks.

Turning toward on a busy day

Of all the habits here, this one is the easiest for you to practice, because the next bid is usually only minutes away. Busy is fine. “I want to hear this, give me five minutes” still turns toward your partner, as long as you come back in five minutes.

2. Keep fights mostly warm

Gottman and Robert Levenson published a 1992 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on 73 married couples, first seen in 1983 and again in 1987. They sorted couples by the balance of positive and negative behavior on tape. Couples whose talks tipped negative showed more stubbornness, withdrawal and defensiveness. They also faced a higher risk of the marriage ending.

Where 5 to 1 comes from

The well-known number grew out of this line of work. The Gottman Institute puts the “magic ratio” at 5 to 1: during conflict, stable and happy couples have five or more positive interactions for every negative one.

Unhappy couples sit at 1 to 1 or lower.

You don’t need to keep a tally mid-argument, since the ratio only describes what happy couples did on tape.

A fight can include a laugh, a nod or a “that’s fair” without either of you dropping the point.

3. Get excited about good news

Psychologists call telling someone your good news “capitalization.” In 2004, Shelly Gable and three colleagues published four studies in the same journal on what happens next. Sharing good news went with more positive feelings that day, most of all when the listener answered with enthusiasm and follow-up questions, a style the team called active-constructive. Couples who usually answered that way reported more intimacy and higher daily marital satisfaction.

When your partner walks in and tells you, “I got the job,” you have four broad ways to answer.

In Gable’s 2004 studies, only the top-left style went with greater relationship satisfaction, while the other three tracked with lower commitment and daily satisfaction.

The polite reply that misses

The surprise is the box at bottom left. A pleasant “oh, nice” sounds supportive to you as you say it, yet in Gable’s data it sat with the two destructive replies.

Good news counted more than bad

A 2006 follow-up with Gian Gonzaga and Amy Strachman filmed 79 dating couples talking about recent good and bad events. Two months later, how partners had handled the good news was more closely tied to relationship well-being and breakups than how they handled the bad news.

Give your partner’s ordinary Tuesday win your full attention.

4. Try something new together

Arthur Aron and four colleagues ran a set of lab experiments for a 2000 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In one setup, partners were tied together at the wrist and ankle on one side and crawled across a long mat, over a barrier, and back 3 to 4 times. Comparison couples did a dull task, each rolling a ball on their own.

The tied-together couples came out more satisfied, on questionnaires and in researchers’ ratings of a conversation they had afterward.

Boredom was the link

The team’s surveys pointed to boredom as the reason. Shared novelty went with less relationship boredom, and less boredom went with higher satisfaction.

Ink and halftone illustration of the braided woman in a grey sweater and the man in the navy turban laughing at a misstep during an evening beginners' dance class in a community hall, holding hands, while other couples practice behind them under warm pendant lights. — An earlier 1993 study by Reissman, Aron and Bergen gave couples 90 minutes a week of assigned activities for 10 weeks, and the couples doing exciting ones ended up more satisfied than those doing merely pleasant ones.

The word that matters for you is new. A class neither of you has taken, a trail you’ve never walked, or a dish from a cuisine you’ve never cooked all count. Each is also a little awkward for both of you, which is part of what the lab was testing.

5. Repair before it boils over

Every couple says things badly sometimes. The habit researchers track is what you do in the next minute.

Gottman calls these moves repair attempts, and a 1998 study of newlywed conversations in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, with James Coan, Sybil Carrère and Catherine Swanson, is one of the papers behind the idea.

A 2024 review in the journal Family Process sums up repair attempts as efforts to bring a talk back to positive feeling through apologizing, taking breaks and accepting influence. That last one is Gottman’s term for letting your partner’s point change what you do.

The Gottman Institute counts any statement or action as a repair if it stops negativity from escalating, and silly ones count too.

A clumsy repair still counts

A repair works when one of you offers it and the other accepts it. The Gottman Institute is blunt about the stakes, calling “the consistent failure of repair attempts” a sign of an unhappy future.

Everything in this section assumes two people who are safe with each other.

If a partner hurts, threatens or controls you, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

6. Say thanks for ordinary things

In a 2013 study in the journal Emotion, Sara Algoe, Barbara Fredrickson and Shelly Gable had romantic partners thank each other in the lab. When the partner being thanked came away seeing the thanker as more responsive, their relationship quality improved over the next 6 months.

Appreciation travels both ways

A 2012 paper led by Amie Gordon, titled “To have and to hold,” found that people who feel appreciated by a partner tend to appreciate that partner back. Appreciative partners were more responsive to each other’s needs, more committed, and more likely to still be together over time.

Outside observers in the 2012 study rated appreciative partners as more responsive and committed during conversations in the lab.

Algoe’s earlier 2010 paper with Gable and Natalya Maisel has a title worth taking literally. It calls everyday gratitude “a booster shot for romantic relationships.”

You can act on that title today. Thank your partner for the boring work, like taking the trash out in the rain or booking the dentist, and name what it cost them. “Thanks for calling the landlord, I know you hate the phone” lands harder than a general thanks.

Start with the next bid

In 1983, Gottman and Levenson first studied the 73 couples they would check on again four years later. Every study on this list since then has measured something small, like a reply, a joke, a thank-you or an hour spent trying something new.

Pick the first habit and try it tonight.

When your partner points at something, asks a question or sighs across the room, put your phone down, look up, and answer.