7 Secrets for Saving Your Marriage And Living Joyfully Ever After

By Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW

If you are married or are in a committed relationship, there are a few things I know are true. First, you want your relationship to be full of love, passion, and mutual support. Second, there are stresses that can pull the relationship apart. Third, you want to increase the good things in your marriage and decrease the bad. I want to help.

For most of my life I didn’t really understand how to have a great relationship, even though I’ve been a marriage and family therapist for more than 40 years. I was married twice and divorced twice. I became increasingly stressed, depressed, and angry. It’s only since Carlin and I have been together (34 years now) that I’ve come to learn the secrets of a successful marriage:

1. Good begets good and bad begets bad.

We know intuitively that when things are going well in our relationship, we feel joyful and happy, we look forward to more good things, and positive things result. But when things are going poorly, we begin to expect the worst, and things start to go downhill. Research from neuroscience shows that our expectations can actually rewire our brain. In his book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, Rick Hanson, Ph.D. says, “The simple truth is that we how focus our attention, how we intentionally direct the flow of energy and information through our neural circuits, can directly alter the brain’s activity and its structure.”

Remember: Focus on the good things in your relationship and more good will come.

2. Our brains are biased toward negativity.

No matter how much good we have in our relationships, over time our brain tends to focus on the negative. Why is that? Research from the emerging field of “affective neuroscience” demonstrates that the brain is hard-wired to pay more attention to the negative than the positive. The basic rule was: Find good things to eat. Avoid being eaten. Miss a “goodie” and we could come back another day. Miss a “baddie” and we’re lunch for the lion. Focusing on the negative didn’t always make us happy, but it kept us alive through most of human history.

As neuropsychologist Rick Hanson puts it, “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences.” As a result, says Hanson, “We usually learn faster from pain than from pleasure. In relationships, trust is easy to lose and hard to regain.”

Remember: If things look bad, it may be the negativity bias at work.

3. Good experiences don’t stick in the brain.

In his book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, Hanson tells us that while our brains are like Velcro for negative experiences, they are like Teflon for positive ones. “Unless you consciously take in good experiences, it usually washes through your brain like water through a sieve. The experience felt good, but from the standpoint of building neural structures, it may as well not have happened. This “Velcro-Negative and Teflon-positive” brain bias helped me change my marriage for the better.

Remember: If things aren’t looking good, it may be the good stuff isn’t sticking.

4. A simple, yet profound, process can hard-wire happiness into our brains.

In addition to our negativity bias, most of us have experienced various degrees of trauma from past relationships in our family of origin and from earlier relationships. We all feel the reality of the idea “once burned, twice shy.” Most of us have been burned more than once and our brains are on the lookout for any indication of future hurt.

But what would it be like if we could overcome the negativity bias, reprogram our brains to hold on to the positive, and keep us on the path for a healthy, joyful relationship that can last forever? In Hardwiring Happiness, Hanson offers a simple four-step process that he summarizes as HEAL yourself:

1. Have a positive experience.

2. Enrich it.

3. Absorb it.

4. Link the positive and erase the negative.

I’ve tried it. It’s simple, yet based on the latest findings from neuroscience.

Remember: You can change your brain so the good stuff sticks and the bad stuff slips away.

5. Focus on our basic needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection.

A neuroscience approach to need satisfaction suggests that there are three core needs. Hanson describes them as follows:

• Safety (Relates to the brain system that helps us avoid harm)

• Satisfaction (Relates to the brain system that helps us approach rewards)

• Connection (Relates to the brain system that helps us attach to others)

To have a healthy relationship we have to feel safe with one another and avoid harming them or being harmed by them. We have to work together to achieve the satisfactions and benefits of a long-term committed relationship. We have keep our attachment strong with each other so that we’re not pulled apart by the stresses of life or the lure of “someone better.”

Remember: Balancing and satisfying our core needs is what life is all about.

6. Satisfying our attachment need is the key to a successful marriage.

Most of understand the importance of avoiding harm and going after rewards, but often neglect our core need for attachment. In my book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well, I describe some of what we’re learning from the new science of love and the importance of attachment in our relationships.

Research by Sue Johnson, John Gottman, and others demonstrates that our need to depend on one precious other—to know that when we “call,” he or she will be there for us—never dissolves. When marriages fall apart it’s less about problems with sex or “communication,” as some people believe, but more about feeling unappreciated, uncared for, and disconnected.

Pick up any men’s or women’s magazine and you’ll find cover lines blaring: “Seduce Him! This Sexy Move Works from 20 Feet Away”; “28 Things to Try in Bed…Or in a Hammock…Or the Floor”; and “Sex Academy—Get an A in Giving Her an O.” In our ignorance, we’ve made physical intimacy the sine qua non of romantic love.

The tragedy is that by focusing so heavily on sex and neglecting love, we fail to get either. In our pain we check out emotionally, which eventually leads to small, then large, betrayals and eventually to a relationship that falls apart.

Remember: Staying emotionally connected is the best thing you can do for your marriage.

7. Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological, it is our greatest strength.

Like most of the people in Western society, I believed that “dependency” was something I needed to avoid like the plague. I believed that a “real man” was strong, independent, and self-sufficient. He didn’t complain and he never showed his weaknesses. To a lesser degree women are also raised to value independence and see dependence as a weakness to be overcome.

“Again, this is backwards,” says Dr. Johnson. “Far from being a sign of frailty, strong emotional connection is a sign of mental health. It is emotional isolation that is the killer.” We need to learn to become more open and vulnerable to each other and value our dependency on that “one special someone.” This isn’t romantic nonsense. It’s a scientific fact.

Remember: We are as dependent on each other for emotional support as children are on their parents.

Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW, is the Founder and Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live well throughout their lives. Though focused on men’s health, MenAlive is also for women who care about the health of the men in their lives. Diamond’s new book Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well