One of my favorite stories came from Mike and Jackie, a couple from Canada. They shared that they’d commissioned a painting depicting them 20 years in the future. It hangs in the hallway outside their bedroom as a constant reminder of how they want to end up.

The painting serves as an especially poignant reminder of what matters for them. For example, Mike previously struggled with workaholism, causing him to neglect his relationship and lose touch with what really mattered in life. Seeing the painting every day was a physical cue guiding Mike to stay focused on the relationship at the heart of his life, rather than slipping into bad habits.

This is one example of many of the importance of building a relationship with our future self (or selves, in a couple). Are these just moving platitudes, or does our relationship with our future self actually dictate our behavior today?

The short answer is it does. And we can change that impact for our benefit.

The Science of Our Relationship with Ourself

Our relationship with ourself is one of the most important connections in life. And one of the most fascinating facets of this relationship is our conception of our future self.

There is an intriguing line of research dedicated to examining our relationship to our future self, and researchers have found the quality of that relationship impacts our behavior today.1 For example, one clever study had participants look at computer-generated image approximating what they’d look like in the future before deciding how much to save for retirement. Savings rates increased for people who saw images of their future self compared to a control group.2

This reveals the importance of having a healthy relationship to our future self: it guides us to make better choices today.

The three key factors in a healthy relationship to our future self are:

1. How similar it feels to us now.

2. How vivid and realistic it is.

3. How positively we regard it.3

When these are strong, we tend to make wiser decisions for our long-term happiness.

So our relationship with ourself is clearly important. Now, how might that relationship with ourself improve our relationship with our partner, and vice versa?

Relating to the self, relating to others

You don’t have to get a custom painting made of each other in the future to benefit from the science of your future self (though I fully support you going that route as well).

Here are 3 fun ideas for a future self date night that will help you to strengthen your relationship to your future selves and each other:

#1) Share a one-page letter to your future self with your partner

There are two main approaches to take to this:

1. Write a letter from your future self to you today about a challenge you are facing right now

2. Write a letter from yourself today to your future self explaining what you’re trying to protect or build in your life right now.

#2) Ask your future selves for advice

Think of this date night as a conversation with yourselves. Ask each other: what do you think future-us will thank present-us for doing to protect and enhance in our relationship?

#3) Make altered photos of yourselves in the future

Upload a photo of yourself into an AI tool like ChatGPT and ask it to make a version that is 20 years older. You might have to tell it to make the aging more obvious if the first pass doesn’t look very different (AI tools are generally designed to flatter and validate us).

Look at your photos together. Discuss how they make you feel, what you may want to change, and what things you might want to double down on to preserve.

Here’s to supporting each other to build a better relationship with yourself so that your relationship to each other can be even better. Cheers!

More often than I am proud of, I find myself sitting with my young son and being bored, wishing that I was somewhere else.

It’s not because I don’t enjoy spending time with my son! Rather, it’s because, no matter what I am doing, my head is often drifting away to something I’m working on. I often obsess over these professional projects that I’m not fully present with people that I love and care about. I just wish I was working.

This is a huge problem for entrepreneurs in particular. When I interviewed 100+ couples where one or both were entrepreneurs, I heard repeatedly that the entrepreneur’s passion for their work1 often took a toll on their relationship. Partners would say things like this:

• “We don’t have a lot of time together. If he’s not fully putting his time into his company, he gets into something else. He makes time for me. But he doesn’t slow down well.”

• “She’s always looking for something new, and there’s never a break. She always wants to grow vs. maintaining where we are at.”

• “He’s working all the time. It’s hard to get him away from the computer to do something else. The biggest challenge is to get him to disconnect because his mind is always going.”

As I reflected back on my own life and my guilt, I began to wonder if this fixation was always a bad thing. While we often throw labels on this like workaholism, ADHD, or selfishness,2 maybe a passion for work can be simply neutral, or even good?

As I dug into this possibility, I discovered there was a lot to learn about passion and how it crosses domains of life. This learning has become the heart of what I believe is a different way for couples to think about their partnership, mutual support, success, and thriving.

How Our Passions Impact Our Relationships

First, I learned that there are multiple definitions of passion. Here is the best umbrella definition I found of passion: something that you identify with, spend a lot of time on, value as an activity, and generally enjoy.

That is not a bad thing. And that definition doesn’t imply that passion is necessarily disruptive to a relationship. In fact, my study of entrepreneurial couples reached the same conclusion. While the quotes I shared above demonstrate the strain a passion for work can put on a relationship, I heard plenty of examples where that entrepreneurial passion seemed to be positive:

• “I want to be good at the few things I can focus on. One of those, being a good husband. Manage time well, manage energy well…always leave something in the tank for home.”

• “I would just add that my purpose is to help people, that shows up at work, I talk to my kids, I bring that to our relationship. [I want to be a] strong community member, family member, neighbor…[I’m] always trying to find that balance.”

I can’t imagine trying to build a life where I am less passionate about work. And while that passion can yield bad outcomes, it can also lead to vitality, flow, and creativity in all areas of my life. Passion, like most powerful feelings in life, can be positive or negative, depending on the context.

This led me to what is known as the Dualistic Model of Passion. This framework tells us that passion comes in two primary forms:

1. A Harmonious Passion that feels chosen by us and amplifies multiple parts of our lives. This is the entrepreneur whose passion for helping people grow makes them a supportive partner and parent.

2. An Obsessive Passion that feels like it controls us and is only associated with success in that domain. This is the entrepreneur who never takes a night off because they always can find another thing to do at work.

I came to see these two types of passion as like water (harmonious) or ice (obsessive) because of how they interacted with other parts of our lives.

For example, a harmonious passion for an activity is associated with improved performance and better relationships (among other benefits). In contrast, an obsessive passion is associated with improved performance, but at the cost of greater odds of burnout, emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and even problematic behaviors like gambling.3 And, indeed, in my research on almost 400 entrepreneurs, this is exactly what I found: both types of passion were associated with improved business success, but obsessive passion was associated with lower relationship satisfaction, and harmonious passion was associated with higher relationship satisfaction and life satisfaction.

I came to see the struggle to balance a demanding, high-pressure job with a relationship as coming down to one question: how can we build or strengthen a harmonious passion for work so that our passion supports our relationship, other areas of life, and our business, rather than simply powering our professional life?

Making Passion Work for You and Your Relationship

How might we develop a more harmonious passion for work, for the benefit of our relationships, our own well-being, and the long-term sustainability of our work?

The crucial component to finding this positive passion is the feeling of choice. When we feel like the desire to work is controlling us, it is likely obsessive; when it feels chosen, it is likely harmonious.

So how can we best facilitate work feeling like a choice? Here are 3 fun ideas:

1. Couples discussion: Have coffee or tea as a couple and talk about how to strengthen what you like about yourself at work. This can include traits and strengths, something you don’t want to lose, or personal values that make work meaningful to you. Then ask:

   1. What is one small thing you can do to strengthen these positive traits at work?

   2. What is one small support my partner could provide that would make work better for you?

2. Expressive Writing: Journal for about 10 minutes a day, 3 days in a row, reflecting on when work feels like a choice and when it feels compulsive. This is known as expressive writing, and it has numerous benefits.4

3. Discuss your “Unicorn Space.” One of the biggest indicators of obsessive passion is not getting our needs met in other areas of our lives. Your partner likely struggles to support your work behaviors if they feel their needs in your relationship are going unmet. As a powerful exercise: talk about what it would be like for each of you to have one personal passion that is not productive, family related, or professional. As author Eve Rodsky says, “when we stop doing things we feel interested in, we stop feeling interesting.” What better gift could you give your relationship than support for a personal passion of your partner’s that makes them feel interesting?5

While I’d like to say that I’m fully present all the time with my son, the reality is that I still occasionally lose myself in my passion for work. But the more I can accept this passion as a strength which needs to be channeled, the more I feel able to feed that passion at the right time, while also prioritizing time with my son.

Here’s to a life of more passion: for each other, for things you love, and for work that matters.

We’ve all said this. Every so often, you just end up in a conversation with your someone that just stuck in your craw1 and you can’t let go.

For me, it was one small comment from my then girlfriend over 20 years ago. She told me that while she thought I was smart, talented and creative, I would never be successful because I was unable to focus.

That stuck with me for the rest of our relationship. It was hurtful coming from anyone, but especially from someone I expected to have my back. But, looking at it now, as with many things we struggle with in life, it wasn’t actually that bad. If I could have just let it go, we both would’ve been happier.

Because the truth is, that girlfriend also said lots of nice things about me. And I’m pretty sure that she didn’t mean I would be a failure in life. She likely thought, not unreasonably, that I could benefit from being more disciplined and focused, but she just said it in a clunky way that picked at my insecurities.

The tough reality of relationships is that they involve a ton of letting go. Even the happiest couples get heated from time to time, and we all say things we regret, especially to the people we love most. So if we do this ourselves, why is it so hard to let go when our partner does it? What can we gain if we assume positive intent and let bygones be bygones?

The Science of Letting Go

Research says that we struggle to let go due to lack of closure or resolution. Take a trip to Vienna with me.

In 1927, psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was observing waiters at a busy Austrian cafe and noticed something interesting. The waiters could take orders from a large table of customers and relay it flawlessly to the kitchen staff without writing anything down. Rather than focusing on how much these waiters could remember, however, she wondered, when do they forget?

It turns out the answer was pretty much immediately. Zeigarnik discovered that, once a waiter had passed an order to the kitchen staff, they almost immediately forgot the order details.

This led to what came to be known as The Zeigarnik Effect: the idea that our brains are wired to spend more time on unfinished tasks than on finished ones. Specifically, Zeigarnik found that people could recall unfinished tasks 90% better than finished ones.2 Relationship scientist John Gottman has said that this is the most likely candidate for why some relatively small things can stick with us for years: because they are unresolved.3 It is likely that the more “unfinished events” that we let stick around, the more ruminations we will have about the relationship, which may cascade into much bigger problems.4

Taking the Pebble out of Your Shoe

To be clear, what I am about to say applies to smaller events, like a stray comment or a small mistake, not deeper betrayals or traumas. Those wounds definitely require a skilled therapist.5

But let’s talk about the small things that we just can’t let go of. My favorite metaphor for these sorts of incidents is that they are like a pebble stuck in our shoe.6 While we think these little things are harmless, just as a pebble can lead to a painful blister over time, small annoyances can cause a great deal of distress.

So, why don’t we just pause and take the pebble out? After years of personal experiences, therapy training, and psychology research, I’m convinced that we don’t speak up about these small things that bother us because it is hard to do it artfully. It may seem foolish to litigate a small comment shortly after the fact, especially when it makes us feel emotionally agitated. It’s easy to imagine picking up that small frustration leading to an unnecessary fight.

But this inaction only compounds the problem. We are more likely to regret the times we failed to take action than the times when we did speak up.7 And that inaction is what turns a small thing into a big frustration.

After surveying the different tools for “clearing the air” in these situations,8 I decided to build something that captured the keys to settling issues with someone we care about in a way that keeps the conversation productive using something we’d all recognize: our hand.

The High-Five Clearing

• 👍 Thumb. Because I really care about our relationship, I’d love to have a short conversation. Is now a good time? (If not, find another time!)

• 👆 Pointer Finger. This situation that I’d like to talk about is: <1-2 sentences describing what happened>

• 🖕Middle Finger. This affected me because: “<the story I’m telling myself> which led to <2-3 feelings>”9

• 💍 Ring Finger. (Because I care about our relationship) my part in this situation is: <1-2 sentences>

• 🤙 Pinky Finger. 1 thing I am requesting that we can do to make it better right now is: <an apology, a hug, a change in behavior, a conversation about a topic, etc.>

Here’s what this might sound like:

• Permission: “Because I love you, I’d like to have a short conversation about something that happened last week. Would now be an okay time?”

• Situation: “The situation I want to chat about is yesterday morning when you engaged Ian him around plans for his birthday party as I was trying to get him out the door.”

• Story and Feelings: “I have a story that the parents who show up late to school are doing a kind of ‘walk of shame’ and are the mediocre parents everyone else is judging. I end up feeling embarrassed when I show up at school and anxious throughout the run up to getting out the door.”

• My Part: “My part in this is that I haven’t shared my feelings or how important being on time is to me, and I’ve probably been pretty passive-aggressive when this situation comes up.”

• Small Step: “I would really appreciate it if we could agree to prioritize getting him out the door on time in the mornings and save conversation topics and non-essential things for the evenings or weekends. I will commit to sharing when I am starting to feel anxious instead of being passive-aggressive and affirming that we are a good team together. Would that work for you?”

3 Common Mistakes to Avoid In The High-Five Clearing

1. Don’t ramble: It’s hard, but really try to stick to 1-2 sentences per finger. Less is more.

2. Don’t forget to take responsibility (the ring finger): Relationships aren’t 50/50, they are 100/100. It’s very hard to engage with someone who won’t be vulnerable and admit responsibility for their part in a situation. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, just more than zero.

3. Don’t get stuck on “the facts”: we all live in our own subjective world, and we can quickly get lost trying to argue about what actually happened (easy to dispute) instead of its subjective impact on us (very hard to dispute).

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! It’s a lot more fun to walk around without the pebbles in our shoes.

While David was first completed in 1504, its history far predated that. It was carved from a block of marble quarried in 1464, and at least two sculptors tried to work with it before eventually quitting. The block then sat untouched in the elements for a quarter of a century, with no other sculptor touching it until Michelangelo took on the commission in 1501.2

Michelangelo took a decidedly different approach that may have been the key to his eventual success. Rather than trying to impose his will on the marble and perfect it, he fell in love with the flaws of the block and worked to see the perfection within those imperfections.

This is the important lesson: arguably the most famous statue of all time was only made because the artist fell in love with its flaws.

The Michelangelo Phenomenon

In a relationship, we are often encouraged to see our partner in a positive light. While this has merit,3 it may be even more important to know what “light” our partner wants to be seen in. Rather than trying to idealize our partner, what happens if we focus on recognizing their own vision of who they want to become?

This is where Michelangelo comes in. The Michelangelo Phenomenon occurs when someone understands who their partner wants to become in the future (their “ideal self”) while affirming and non-intrusively supporting behavior aligned with their vision. For example, if one person wants to be more present, their partner could notice when they naturally put the phone down (“I loved how you were with me just now”) and support opportunities for more presence (e.g., leave our phones in a drawer for a walk) without trying to control their choices.

The Michelangelo Phenomenon is associated with two powerful outcomes: first, one partner’s affirmation and support predicts the other partner’s movement toward their ideal self (as reported by both parties); and second, it is connected to stronger relationship satisfaction and commitment.4

Of course, embracing this requires actually working to understand what your partner views as their ideal self, rather than imposing your own ideal vision onto them. If you do the latter, there’s actually a name for that as well: The Pygmalion Phenomenon, which is associated with a range of negative outcomes on personal and relational wellbeing.5

In a world so often obsessed with self-optimization, it is powerful to pause, get curious about who your partner wants to become, and support each other on your journeys.

Falling in Love with our Flaws

So how can we, like Michelangelo, make our own relationship into our own version of David? Think of it as personal development without a self-centered lens: rather than thinking about what you want and focusing on where you want to go, focus on who your partner wants to become and how to consistently affirm and support their progress.

My favorite way to do this is a simple, 5-question activity which makes for a great date night conversation.

The Michelangelo Conversation

This is a series of five questions, which can be covered in 30-60 minutes of distraction-free conversation.

#1) What Is An Ideal Self Role You Want To Work On? Choose a role you play in life–partner, parent, child, sibling, boss, whatever–where you intrinsically want to grow in the coming year (not one where you feel pressure to perform).

Example: I want to focus more intently in my role as a parent this year.

#2) What Is Your Ideal Self Aspiration In That Role? Describe in one sentence what an observer will see or experience if you achieve your desired growth in this role.

Example: My son will see me as an attuned parent who praises his strengths and efforts, facilitates his growth by engaging his interests, and supports healthy boundaries while always loving him (all feelings and needs are valid, not all behaviors are).

#3) What Are Your Ideal Self Traits? Identify three traits that will help you achieve this growth. Briefly share how each trait can help you to move towards your aspiration (#2).

Example:

1. Curiosity: I want to ignite my curiosity around my son’s current world and interests. When an activity aligns with learning for me, I stay engaged at a much deeper level.

2. Intentionality: I want to revisit my intention to be present and attuned with my son when I am with him. The fact that I run the childcare calendar can sometimes cause me to (gulp) think of time with my son more like a task to be managed, rather than time to enjoy.

3. Creativity: With a little bit of creativity, I can often find a more enjoyable and stimulating activity for each of us.

#4) What Is Your Ideal Self Goal? Brainstorm one small, repeatable goal that makes concrete progress toward becoming your ideal self.

Example: Whenever I have my son for more than one hour one-on-one, I will brainstorm at least 3 specific activities to do during our time together, and let him choose what we do.

#5) What Is Your Ideal Self Affirmation? Once you’ve laid out this goal, ask your partner to share one specific moment from the last month where you behaved in alignment with your ideal self aspiration (#2) and/or traits (#3). Have them share what you did, when it happened, and the positive impact. After they’ve responded, be sure to say “thank you” to your partner and then switch roles.

Example: My wife, Anna, kindly shared that “Cameron does a great job of tuning into Ian during morning wake up routine by engaging in funny banter and playtime with Ian’s favorite songs and toys to facilitate waking up and getting dressed and ready for school!”6

When we understand who we truly want to become, and recognize who our partner wants to become, we can realize one of the greatest joys and opportunities in a relationship: facilitating a life of growth by falling in love with each other’s flaws. It worked out well for Michelangelo, so why not try it out for yourself?

There used to be a local conference in my hometown of Portland called Cuddle Con (or Cuddle Conference).1 At Cuddle Con, cuddling aficionados gathered to share hugs or snuggle in a non-sexual way; a premise that I assumed was a made up example of a quirky Portlandia event.

But when I actually read the article, I was moved by the participants’ stories. The most riveting case was of a man who drove ten hours from California to participate in the conference. When asked why he made the effort, he said that since his wife had died five years prior, he hadn’t so much as touched another human being.

Isn’t that astonishing? We have created a world where someone can go five years without touching another person. It got me thinking, what is the role of (nonsexual) touch in our lives as human beings? What about when it is a romantic partner, a friend, or a stranger? How does physical contact change things?

It might not surprise you that touch is a relationship superpower. But it might surprise you why and how.

The Science of Affectionate Touch

Here’s my favorite study on touch: 183 couples were broken up into two groups. One group talked about their day and watched a video for 10 minutes while holding hands, and finished with a 20 second hug. The second group rested quietly for the same amount of time, with no touch.

Then the researchers surprised participants with every psychologist’s favorite tool for provoking anxiety: public speaking! Each participant had three minutes to prepare a 3-minute recorded presentation on a recent situation that caused them stress or anger.

Researchers learned that the two groups responded very differently to this stressful task. Participants from the first group who’d received physical contact from their partner experienced smaller blood pressure and heart rate increases compared with the no contact group. Affectionate touch literally reduced their bodies’ physiological stress response.2

Affectionate touch is associated with increased love between partners,3 more positive emotions, and greater well-being,4 resulting in changes to our physiology and how we think.5 Even imagining affectionate touch from someone we care about promotes a greater sense of security.6

There are many more examples of studies showing the positive impact of physical touch:

• Women who held hands with their spouse while in an fMRI were less distressed compared to those who held hands with a stranger. Significantly, the degree of relief the women felt was correlated to how happy the relationship was.7

• A study of 953 adults over five years found that the frequency of affectionate touch with their partner predicted increases in spouses’ own relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, and mental health.8

• One study in Germany found that men who kissed their wives for 6 seconds or longer in the morning lived 5 years longer than those who didn’t.9

All of this points to a clear conclusion: physical touch is good for your relationship satisfaction, your mental health, and perhaps even your longevity. To a degree, we need it to thrive in life.

So, should you go to Cuddle Con?

No, you don’t have to travel to Portland for the next Cuddle Con. But I would recommend working to integrate consensual and affectionate touch in moments of stress and moments of reconnection in your relationship.

This is especially important because affectionate touch tends to decline over the course of a relationship; like so many good things in life, it takes intentionality to maintain. The longer couples are together, the less likely they are to hold hands, and parents are almost twice as likely to not cuddle as couples without children.10

Here are three fun ways to do this:

1. Create your own “Cuddle Con”! It could be a movie night where you snuggle or hold hands, a weekend where you agree to have some affectionate touch as part of every shared activity, or a week where you snuggle every morning or evening.

2. Talk about your opportunities to integrate touch: Do a date night where you each share how you want to include touch as a part of your relationship rituals, especially around stressful times (inside and outside of the relationship) and daily partings and reunions. For example, you might want a certain kind of goodbye hug or to hold hands at dinner.

3. Re-engineer your house! I’m not talking about a remodel. But one of my favorite suggestions from therapy training is to literally buy a smaller couch to facilitate more physical touch. This could also extend to the size of your bed, how you lay out the dining room table (do you sit next to each other or across from each other?), or even having only one reading lamp in bed.

Remember that touch should be all about a safety signal (“I’m here, you’re safe, and we’re okay”), not as a tactic to get more physical intimacy. The science says you will likely improve your love life, but only if you do it for the right reason.11

Enjoy Valentine’s Day next week! I hope you have a special time together, and don’t forget to cuddle 🤗

Mine is wanting Anna to come to bed earlier.1 Over the years, I have found there are two ways I frame this in my head:

• First, why doesn’t my partner come to bed at the same time as me every night?

• Or second, how can I spend more time snuggling with her?

These two ways of framing an issue are rooted in our deepest human nature. While our modern world may feel light years away from our ancestors on the savannahs of Africa, our underlying genetics have barely changed. We evolved to cope with both environments of abundance (food is plentiful and predators are absent) as well as of scarcity (e.g., an extreme drought), and, unfortunately, we often misread our environment in the modern world with significant consequences.2

This dichotomy of abundance versus scarcity dictates how we think about what we want in our relationships. We either have approach goals, which focus on what we want more of (more snuggle time), and avoidance goals, where we focus on what we want less of (my partner coming to bed late).

Together, these two types of goals act like a hidden compass that quietly shapes our relationship happiness. When we point our compass towards the approach goals we want, instead of the avoidance goals we don’t want, it completely changes how we view our relationships.

The Science of Relationship Goals

Why does it matter how we frame our complaints? Psychologist Emily Impett and her colleagues made a breakthrough discovery about how the types of relationship goals we set matter. They found that people approach their relationships with two distinct goal orientations that predict everything from daily satisfaction and longevity to sexual desire.3

• Approach goals focus on pursuing something you want—seeking fun, growth, intimacy, and connection. People with approach goals ask: “How can I get more of the things I do like?”

• Avoidance goals focus on preventing something you don’t want—avoiding conflict, rejection, or disappointment. People with avoidance goals ask: “How can I get less of the things I don’t like?”

The research revealed something striking: approach-oriented individuals consistently reported higher relationship satisfaction, felt more responsive to their partners’ needs, and created more positive relationship dynamics. Even more fascinating, their partners also benefited: people dating approach-oriented individuals felt more satisfied and supported, and outside observers confirmed that the approach-oriented couples were happier and more attuned.

The reason approach goals affect us positively is likely that they put us into a state of safety and plenty, allowing us to see new opportunities, appreciate what is good in the relationship, and create space for our partners to address our needs in creative ways. In contrast, avoidance goals cause us to focus on what we lack, feel stuck with what is bothering us, and limit our partner’s potential for creative solutions.

Think about a relationship complaint you have that you have been framing as an avoidance goal. Do you think it is serving you and your relationship today? Let’s explore some alternative ways to frame it.

Shifting Your Relationship Compass

The good news? You can consciously shift from avoidance to approach thinking in three ways:

1. Reframe Frustrations: Instead of “We need to stop fighting about money,” try “Let’s create a financial plan that excites us both.” Instead of “I don’t want to feel disconnected,” try “I want to build more intimacy between us.”

2. Shift to “We” Goals: For example, “I’d like to have a shared adventure this weekend that we both enjoy—would you like to hear a few ideas?” Or the opposite request, “I’m feeling a bit tired, what’s a way we could enjoy the weekend that meets both of our needs?” This opens the door to brainstorming for an outcome that meets both parties’ needs.

3. Scan for Positives: Each day, commit to noticing one thing your partner does well rather than what they do wrong, and compliment them on it. Each week, set one approach goal for your relationship in the coming week and brainstorm three ways that you might accomplish it. For example, “more connection time during dinner” might be accomplished by suggesting a new recipe to cook together, using a conversational game, or a walk after dinner.

Remember my complaint about not coming to bed together? When I learned to shift towards “I want to spend more time snuggling with my partner,” we were able to come up with a creative solution that rebalanced our evening and morning responsibilities so we could both get more of what we wanted. Even better, by reorienting towards what you want in a way that includes both parties, it increases the likelihood you will perceive your partner’s positive qualities.4

Your relationship compass determines your relationship destination. Point it toward what you want to create together, not just what you want to avoid.

What’s one thing you’d like more of in your relationship?

Close your eyes and imagine your relationship five years from now. What will your daily routine be like? What will you and your partner be doing during free time? How will you have grown together?

If you’re smiling and excited, that’s a great sign.

You’re doing something I call the 5-Year Test. This test is built around one of the best questions for predicting relationship success: not “Are you happy now?” but “Will you be happy in the future?”

Many people make decisions about their relationship based on how they are feeling in the present. According to groundbreaking research from Dr. Edward Lemay and his team at the University of Maryland, this is a mistake.1 Instead, your expectations about future happiness in your relationship are actually a stronger predictor of your commitment than how you feel about today.

The Power of Forecasting

Dr. Lemay and his team dug into this exact topic and discovered something fascinating: across four studies involving over 1,000 participants, people who anticipated being satisfied in their relationship in the future were more committed to the relationship and exhibited more pro-relationship behaviors, regardless of how they felt about the relationship in the moment. Not only that, forecasted satisfaction was a better predictor of relationship health than any other factor measured, including current relationship satisfaction, the quality of alternatives, or the amount of investment in the relationship.

In other words, if you want a healthy relationship, you should be focused on improving your future happiness, rather than fixating on your present. This may sound like a time travel science-fiction movie, but it makes intuitive sense when you consider what commitment really is: a promise to stick with someone through time. If you believe your relationship will be great in the future, you're more likely to stay committed, even during rough patches. Hope for tomorrow trumps frustration today, and it can even outweigh happiness today.

Commitment, which is vital for any relationship, is about the future, not the present. As research shows, people are powerfully motivated by rewards and costs they expect to encounter in the future.2 One couple I interviewed in my research was proof of this. They talked about how throughout the many ups and downs of their lives, they always had a future project lined up that they would collaborate on. They had, literally, one of the highest relationship satisfaction scores I have ever seen, and when I asked them the secret of their success, they said “we always have something we are looking forward to doing together.”

You might be wondering if this couple was just naturally happy, but here's the crucial insight: these forecasts can become self-fulfilling prophecies, just as setting an inspiring vision for a business today can lead to a great company in the future. If you work toward your positive forecasts, you will also improve the present from moment to moment.

Make Your Relationship Predictions Come True

There are practical things you can do to visualize a hopeful vision for your relationship and make it a reality:

1. Create "Future Us” Rituals: The possibilities for this are endless! A few options include weekly sharing of 1 thing that will be good about your relationship in the future, building a relationship vision board in a shared photo album that you revisit periodically, and scheduling a quarterly “dream date” where you have dinner together and talk about your hopes for the future.

2. Close Your Escape Routes: Don’t spend time thinking about your exit plan if the relationship goes south. Instead, create practices where you reinforce your commitment to each other through the ups and downs. Dr. Lemay found that couples who had fewer alternatives actually were more committed, and I saw happy couples in my interviews actively practice this by saying things like “we’re going the distance together.”

3. Keep Struggles in the Present: When facing a current challenge, identify at least one way that it is caused by a temporary circumstance and one external condition amplifying it (for example, “my partner is under an unusual amount of stress and the economy is really struggling”). Research shows that people who view current problems as temporary and external maintain stronger commitment.3

4. Have Something to Look Forward to: Like the couple I interviewed, having something in the future—a shared project, a vacation, friends visiting—can be a powerful way to project happiness in the future, thereby making the present better.

The Bottom Line

While today's happiness certainly matters, your relationship's trajectory hinges on tomorrow's anticipated happiness. The couples who consciously cultivate positive, realistic forecasts about their future together don't just predict relationship success—they create it.

The next time you're evaluating your relationship, ask yourself: "When I imagine us five years from now, what do I see?" If you like what you see, stay the course and build that reality together.

What are you looking forward to?

It turns out that firsts aren’t just a temporary feature of new relationships. Instead, these firsts help form the backbone of our relationships.

I became curious about this concept back in the early days of covid, when I was abruptly working from home with my wife, our dog, and our newborn son. Life started to feel like a treadmill: I was slogging my way through the day and it began to dawn on me that between all the restrictions on activities we could do and the responsibilities of work and parenting, I was sensing distance in our relationship even as we were spending more time together.

It’s a constant refrain in relationship guidance: quality time matters. But what if you have all the time in the world and still don’t feel connected? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone—and more importantly, there's hope. Relationship science has identified a powerful antidote to relationship stagnation that's hiding in plain sight.

Quality Time, Not Quantity Time

There’s a reason why firsts are so important: we are always most captivated by the new, rather than the routine. And as couples grow more familiar and novel experiences happen less often, couples tend to follow a predictable decline. First, you stop noticing each other. Then you stop being curious about each other. Finally, you look across the dinner table and wonder how this exciting person became...furniture.

Psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues discovered that the antidote to this stagnation is creating more novel experiences and engaging in new, exciting activities. Their research shows that when partners regularly try new, exciting experiences as a duo, they don't just have fun—they literally change how they feel about their relationship.1 Another study found this improvement wasn’t due to spending more time together; pleasant activities had limited impact on relationship happiness whereas exciting activities had a significant impact.2

But the benefits go deeper than just feeling good in the moment. Aron's studies found that couples who regularly engage in novel activities together report higher relationship satisfaction, increased closeness, and better communication. They're less likely to experience boredom—a significant predictor of relationship problems—and more likely to see their partner as exciting and interesting.

The key word here is "arousing," but not in the way you might think! Researchers mean physiologically arousing: activities that increase your heart rate, push you out of your comfort zone, or challenge you to learn something new together. It's about stepping outside your shared comfort zone as a team.

Think about the last time you did something totally new with your partner. Were you surprised by something they did, or intrigued by how they engaged in something you’d never seen before? Having these types of experiences regularly can make the relationship feel at least somewhat new, no matter how long you’ve been together.

Try The Monthly Adventure Challenge

Here's a big idea to harness this science in your own relationship: Create a "Monthly Adventure Challenge." Each month, commit to trying one completely new activity together. The rules are simple but important:

1. Make it genuinely novel and challenging. Choose activities neither of you have done before and that require some effort or push your boundaries slightly. If you're both hikers, try salsa dancing. If you love food, try cooking a cuisine you've never attempted. Researchers did this with a group of couples; they provided a list of common activities and having each partner rate each activity from 1 (not exciting) to 5 (very exciting). Then, they instructed couples to only pick activities where both partners rated it 3 or higher.

2. Take turns choosing. Alternate who selects the monthly adventure. This ensures both partners' interests are represented and adds an element of surprise.

3. Document the journey and reflect together. Take photos, keep a journal, or create a shared memory book. Research shows that savoring experiences enhances their positive impact.3 After each adventure, talk about what you enjoyed, what surprised you, and how it felt to experience something new as a team.

Beyond the Big Adventure

If you have arranged your life to spend a significant amount of time together, you’re on the right track: couples cited spending time together as the second most important strategy for maintaining their relationships.4 All you’re missing is a dash of novelty.

Remember, this doesn't require extreme sports or expensive trips. Simple changes can be surprisingly effective: take a different route to work together, try a new board game, attend a lecture on a topic neither of you knows much about, or challenge yourselves to a photography walk where you can only take pictures of things you've never noticed before.

The goal isn't to become adrenaline junkies—it's to regularly inject your relationship with the excitement and discovery that was always present during your early days together. When you actively seek new experiences as a couple, you're not just making memories; you're rewiring your brains to see your relationship—and each other—as sources of excitement and growth.

So let’s get out there and commit to adding some new “firsts” to your list as a couple. Please share your new activity commitment in the poll below.

So were we showing each other gratitude or not?

It’s a tricky question to answer. As it turns out, gratitude is one of the more complicated human emotions because it is social and contingent upon others. People are rarely, if ever, grateful to themselves, so gratitude usually involves at least two people, and often more.

And there are few places where gratitude is more important or nuanced than in a relationship. Since it is Thanksgiving day in the United States, it seems fitting to explore how to make gratitude a foundational element of a relationship.

So how can we make gratitude “work” for us and for those around us?

Why Gratitude Matters

Scientists used to believe gratitude was a way of showing reciprocity in relationships. I scratch your back, and you scratch my back. We’re both happy.

The problem is that this thesis is wrong about both relationships and gratitude.

Especially in close relationships, the more individuals keep score, the less happy they are; showing gratitude should not become obligatory. A leading scientist who has studied gratitude hypothesizes that its purpose is to build and sustain the most important relationships in our lives, rather than a simple scoreboard; she calls this the “find-remind-and-bind” effect of gratitude.1

This theory tells us that gratitude’s role is to:

• Find people who care about us.

• Remind us who those people are.

• Bind us even closer to those people.

It’s not about keeping score. It’s about showing others we care and identifying those who care about us.

Being grateful to others is also shown to benefit us too. People who frequently show gratitude experience greater happiness, have more proactive health behaviors, achieve more, have better relationships, are more resilience in the face of trauma, and have better health.2

But as smart phones and social media have flattened out our relationships, making close friends and distant acquaintances side by side on an endless feed, showing gratitude has gotten harder than ever. To properly give thanks to the people who matter to you, there are a few things to know.

The 3 Actors of Gratitude

It turns out that gratitude involves (at least) 3 different people:

1. The Gratituder: The person who expresses gratitude to someone else.

2. The Receiver: The person to whom the gratitude is expressed.

3. The Witness: Others who observe the gratitude.

It turns out there are distinct benefits for each of the three parties. Each person must take key steps to reap those benefits.

The Gratituder starts the process with awareness: shifting their point of view somewhere new to notice the benefits they are receiving from someone in their life. Then, having observed that kindness, they express thanks to them.

The Receiver of the gratitude reaps the benefit of feeling appreciated and bonding with someone. The key to doing this is something psychologist-philosopher James Pawelski calls “the gratitude dance”. You need to follow the steps of Appreciation and avoid the steps of Deflection to fully benefit from someone’s gratitude towards you:3

The 3 A’s of Appreciation

• Accept: A sincere “thank you” or “wow, I appreciate you saying that.”

• Amplify: Savor the gratitude by slowing down, feeling what it implies, and making eye contact.

• Advance: “That means a lot to me. It highlights how much we both value ____”

The 3 D’s of Deflection

• Deflect: “That’s just what I’m supposed to do.”

• Duplicate: “Well, thank You for doing X”

• Discount: “It wasn’t as big a deal as you think.”

In other words, while it’s natural to say “don’t mention it,” or “it was nothing” when someone thanks you, try instead to look them in the eye and say “Thank you, that means a lot to me and I appreciate you a lot.”

Finally the Witness of the act of gratitude experiences a change too. They reappraise their opinion of the gratituder, perceiving them as warmer and more communal than they did before. This in turn makes them more interested in collaborating with them, potentially laying the groundwork for a new or deeper friendship or relationship.4

Needless to say, gratituders and receivers benefit most if they are in a relationship with each other. Consistent gratitude increases fondness between partners, which is one of the best predictors of relationship stability and longevity5 and is correlated with the quality of sex and romance.6 A little gratitude goes a very long way.

Get All These Benefits, and More, By Practicing Gratitude

I see three fun, underutilized opportunities to integrate gratitude and all of its benefits into our lives:

Rituals: A ritual is different from a routine (anything we do regularly) in that we have infused meaning into the activity. For example, my wife and I have a weekly brunch with our parents, my sister, and our son where we share who at the table we’re grateful for and why. Do your best to integrate expressing and receiving gratitude in a healthy way -- facilitate gratitude, not indebtedness from the gratituder, and appreciation not deflection from the receiver.

A Handful of Gratitude: A friend7 recently shared a 30-second exercise that can be done individually or collectively at any time to help us feel grateful:

• 👍Thumb: Something you are grateful for in the world that is good

• 👆Pointer Finger: Something you can point to in your immediate surroundings

• 🖕Middle Finger: Adversity you faced that helped you to grow

• 💍Ring Finger: A relationship you are grateful for that you haven’t focused on

• 🤙Pinky Finger: Something very small you are grateful for

Find Novel Sources of Gratitude for Your Partner:

Here is a partial list of areas of potential gratitude you can periodically skim to shine your spotlight of awareness somewhere new to unearth additional reasons to be grateful to your significant other:

1. How your partner uses their strengths

2. Habitual things they do so often you forget to notice

3. Good times

4. Romantic times

5. Physical traits

6. Qualities or characteristics

7. Shared values, interests, or goals

8. Strengths your relationship has that other relationships don’t

9. Times they provided you with support

10. Things only they know about you

11. How they help you to calm down when you are stressed

12. A way they support with the household chores

13. Ways you plan together

14. Pride you have in the relationship

15. Benefits from being in a relationship together

16. Tough times you weathered together

17. Something you find interesting about them

18. Something they did that you admired

19. Your physical intimacy

20. Shared accomplishments

So, was our coffee-texting exchange gratitude or not? I think it was, but after reviewing all the facets of gratitude, we can also agree there were additional opportunities to reap the benefits. I hope you are able to put some of this into practice both today and in the future. Happy Thanksgiving!

As I did all that, I ultimately destroyed my relationship in the process.1

It was a brutal paradox: the harder we worked on our relationship, the faster it fell apart. Every new communication technique highlighted something wrong. Every exercise amplified our dysfunction, rather than helping us see what was working.

I thought we were doomed. Then I discovered a study that changed everything I believed about relationships.

A landmark three-year study of 174 couples at UCLA tested a variety of relationship building methods:

• Group 1 completed training in conflict resolution (PREP: Prevention and Relationship Enhancement program)

• Group 2 completed training on developing empathy for and acceptance of their partners (CARE: Compassionate and Accepting Relationships through Empathy)

• Group 3 simply watched rom-coms together and discussed them afterward

• Group 4 was a control group that did nothing at all

Surprisingly, Group 3 improved their relationships just as much as Groups 1 and 2.2 Let that sink in. When Harry Met Sally might do you more good than hours of communication workshops.

Not only that, but while Groups 1, 2 and 3 displayed half the divorce rate of the Group 4 couples (who did nothing), the skills-training groups sometimes benefitted the least in the areas their training was supposed to improve. For example, the Group 1 women who learned conflict resolution skills showed slower declines in hostile behavior than Groups 2 and 3.

When we’re advised to work on our relationship, are we just spending time and money opening up fissures in our relationship? Is there a better way? Let’s talk about it.

Relationship Awareness Matters A Lot

As stated above, watching romantic movies and discussing them appears to be just as effective as formal relationship skills training. How can this be?

The answer lies in a concept known as relationship awareness: a practice of paying attention to your own behavior in your relationship and deciding for yourself if it is constructive or destructive. The movie watching exercise was designed to directly improve relationship awareness: by seeing people in common relationship dynamics and situations on screen, couples were able to draw parallels that helped them understand their own role and behavior. Then, they were able to talk through those factors in a low pressure, conversational setting.

On the other hand, the relationship skill building group ran into a common pitfall. When we fixate on skills exclusively, we can end up focusing a “skills gap” in our partner as the primary issue. In general, even if our partner lacks skill in some area, criticizing, resenting, or—worst of all!—trying to “help” them improve their skills is usually ineffective at best. In contrast, our own behavior is easier for us to influence, so simply being aware of what we are doing can drive us to make changes.

This research suggests that most couples already have the capabilities we require. Rather than skills training, most of us just need a reminder to be aware of our own role and agency in what’s working and not working in our relationship.

Raise Your Relationship Awareness

I’m not urging you to give up on improving your relationship or improving your skills. Instead, I recommend shifting your approach from skills-first to awareness-first.

For example, instead of asking "What skill deficiency is causing this problem?" ask "How can we better notice and appreciate what we're already doing well?" or “what behavior on my part might improve the situation?” Here are three research-backed questions to help you build your own relational awareness:3

1. How am I striving to understand my partner and accept them, even where we are different?

2. Am I able to listen to my partner like a good friend?

3. Am I aware of my own expectations in the relationship and are they reasonable and shared?

This can easily be a powerful weekly or monthly reflection. You can set a simple Google Calendar event with a notification to remind you to reflect on these questions and strengthen your own relationship awareness.

That relationship I mentioned at the beginning? It didn't survive. But it taught me something invaluable: Sometimes the best thing you can do for your relationship is to stop trying so hard to find a solution and instead raise your awareness of your role in the problem.

Next movie night, try this: Instead of scrolling through your phone, watch how the characters navigate their relationship and what similarities you see to your own. Then ask yourself: What am I already doing well, and what would I like to do differently?

Your answers might surprise you.

Relationship science consensus used to state that the more committed someone is to their relationship, the more they will support their partner’s goals. Therefore, a lack of support was considered a sign of low commitment. I believed in this view, so I wondered if my partner’s doubts signaled that my relationship was doomed.

Fortunately, the relationship science has changed, and it turns out my point of view can sometimes be completely wrong. It can actually be a good thing for your partner to be less than fully supportive of your goals. Let me explain why.

When Love Leads to a Lack of Support

What is known as The Manhattan Effect reveals a relationship paradox: sometimes when a partner is highly committed to your relationship, they won’t be supportive of goals they view as threats to your union. In other words, their lack of support might actually signify how invested they are in preserving what you've built together.1

Once my partner and I dug into this issue ourselves, we learned this was indeed the case. While I thought my partner’s lack of support for my venture was due to her lack of investment in the relationship, she was actually highly invested, and worried I was getting pulled away from the partnership we’d worked so hard to build.

Having observed this dynamic, I decided to investigate whether other couples experience this same issue. It turns out, many do. When I interviewed 100 couples where one of them was an entrepreneur, I expected a clear pattern: I assumed the strongest couples would have a life partner who supported the entrepreneur’s business fully. Instead, I talked to many couples where the opposite was true. In some of the strongest relationships, partners actively and regularly pushed back against business demands—not because they didn't believe in the entrepreneur, but because they could see how the venture was pulling their partner away from the relationship.

These partners had reason for concern! Entrepreneurs don't just like their businesses—they can be downright obsessed with them. Brain scans show that when entrepreneurs talk about their ventures, the same neural pathways light up as when parents talk about their children.2 Entrepreneurs work longer hours, have greater stress,3 and yes—do often see their businesses threaten their relationships. As I found in my interviews, a wise partner doesn't just cheer from the sidelines; they help protect what matters most by pushing the entrepreneur to balance their business with their personal life.

Make the Manhattan Effect Work for You

You may someday be in a situation where you feel your partner isn’t fully supporting your business or career path. This is what you should do.

The first step is to notice if this conflict—lack of support for one partner’s goals–is playing out in your relationship. Then, determine which role you are playing: if you are the one feeling unsupported, or the one withholding support. Some researchers have hypothesized that having better awareness of your own role in the relationship is the first step to any relationship solution, so you need to know how you’re contributing to the dynamic.

Once you are aware of the dynamic, there are three promising paths forward:

1. Have an honest conversation about how the goal may compete with your relationship and what boundaries can limit that competition. That might deactivate your partner’s fear and reframe the goal as something that is actually a source of good for both parties.

2. If you are the partner opposing the goal, create time for a stress-reducing conversation to provide emotional support and stress relief without actively coaching, advising, or endorsing their goal. This will help your partner see you as an ally in facing the goal together, without you getting too involved. This is called non-intrusive goal support,4 and it is strongly associated with improved relationship outcomes.

3. If you are the partner feeling unsupported, share why support for this goal is important for you, and specify what kind of support you are looking for, whether it’s guidance, affirmation, or just a listening ear. Then, ask what routines, rituals, or other changes you can create together so that they don’t feel like your ambition is detracting from their happiness and the relationship’s health.

Looking back on that fight with my partner, I realize we were both right. I needed support for something I cared deeply about. She needed to protect something we both cared about even more. Understanding this dynamic didn't just save our relationship—it made us better partners.

The next time your partner isn’t supporting what you want to do, pause before assuming they don’t believe in you. While untangling this dynamic will take work, you may find you have the greatest gift of all: a partner who is truly committed to you and your relationship and is primarily focused on making it last.

I’m Cameron Madill, a social impact entrepreneur and passionate advocate for relationship science. I built an award-winning company that I sold to my employees in 2019, and since then I got a graduate degree in positive psychology from an Ivy League program and worked on original research with one of the top relationship science experts in the world. Today I draw on that training to help couples to build stronger partnerships.

Why subscribe

My commitment is to provide actionable relationship strategies you can put into practice right away. I promise every article I publish will be:

1. Research-based: My content focuses on relationship processes that have been studied and verified—not popular opinions—and every article contains citations to the relevant supporting research.

2. Applicable: Every article clearly states what the implications of the research are and how you can apply them in your relationship, including key tips on what to avoid.

3. Contextual: Lastly, because science is always evolving and we're all unique, I will make sure you understand the relevant context so you can figure out why something might or might not work for your relationship.

On top of that, I believe you’ll quickly find relationship science really works, no matter where in your relationship journey you are, and that it will apply to relationships in every area of your life: personal, professional, and romantic.. An attendee at one of my workshops said this after an all-day session: “We were genuinely blown away. I think in our years of attending conferences, workshops, and listening to speakers, it’s rare that we actually walk away with an abundance of valuable and practical learnings! It feels like we’ve discovered another cheat code for life.”

About Me

I am the founder of PixelSpoke, a multimillion dollar company that I scaled and sold to my team in an innovative employee-ownership model, in addition to helping build multiple non-profits. I am also a husband and father; I've been with my wife, Anna, who is also an entrepreneur, for 10 years and we have a 5-year-old son who is passionate about art, building things, and staying in bed as long as possible.

Over several years of building a business, non-profits, a marriage and a family, I have come to realize that my greatest passion in life is helping people build strong relationships. Strong one-on-one relationships are the key to building a great team, a thriving company, or a close-knit family. This is why I’ve dedicated the next chapter of my life to studying and applying relationship science—drawing from evidence-based approaches like the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, positive psychology, and my master’s research on relationships and passion at the University of Pennsylvania. Through my research with over 600 couples and individuals, I have come to believe that thriving relationships aren’t just good for love, they’re critical to our wellbeing and sustainable success.

I look forward to having you as part of this community. I’m confident you will find our content to be credible, applicable, and relevant as you strengthen your relationship.

Questions or feedback? You can always reach me at cameron@relationshipscienceguy.com.