Work. My relationship with my wife is the most important project in my life, period.

I work hard on important projects. So does my wife.

We sit down and communicate about an hour, most every day.

For years, we asked each other these six questions, and listened to the response:

1. What's the worst thing that happened to you today?

2. What's the best thing that happened to you today?

3. What's the most surprising thing that happened to you today?

4. What's the most interesting thing that happened to you today?

5. What's the worst thing you did today?

6. What's the best thing you did today?

Honest question: Do you have children?

I'm asking, because my wife and I had a similar routine earlier in our marriage – though perhaps less structured than yours. After we had a child, it's been harder to make time for that. If anything, it's more important to have a routine like this after becoming parents – but takes even more commitment to the idea.

A friend of mine proposed a tongue-in-cheek test for parents to assess the health of their relationship. Have you and your spouse had a conversation in the last week about something other than the family (kids, elderly parents, etc.) or work? He meant it mostly as a joke, but there are definitely weeks where I look back and struggle to remember a real adult conversation with my wife about anything non-family, non-work, and lately non-politics.

Anyway, I completely agree with you. Relationships require work, deliberate reflection, etc. You and your spouse will be different people when you're 35 than you were when you met at 25 (or whatever ages apply to you). You will grow and change. You can either grow apart or grow together.

We have a 13 year old who is on the autistic spectrum. We were told early on that he would never speak. Now he's quoting Lord Of The Rings (from the books)

What I am suggesting takes an iron will, but that falls out of a simple idea.

The most important thing in my life in my relationship with my wife.

I think about that every single day. The required willpower comes directly from that basic, foundational statement.

And our son is better for it, even though we have taken time away from him, every day.

How uhh structured.

I'm all about good communication but asking those exact six questions every evening would get old fast. Do the two of you have so little in common that all you have to talk about is your monotonous work day?

There is something to be said for having shared hobbies in a relationship (yes, also individual hobbies) if only to give you something to talk about. We talk politics extensively for one example.

Many humans use mantras or ceremonies for their benefit in structure. My wife and I certainly do.

These are key questions. What's interesting is not the questions, but the answers. And in listening. Listening is itself an investment. What's important to your partner? Find a way to make that important to you.

I can speak those six questions in a few seconds. But I am listening to the answers, and to the associated streams of thought, attentively, for about 30 minutes.

We used the six questions approach for our first seven or so years. In the last 10 years, we actually ask the questions less frequently.

We are apart about 10 or 11 hours per day, 5 days a week. So we each have about 30 minutes to catch up on 10 hours.

But I find the biggest value in the weekends, when we're together most of the day. In that case, I can usually predict will want to talk about. But that doesn't make it boring. That gives me an excellent chance to fine-tune my understanding of her mind and emotions. The gap between what I expect she has been thinking about and what she was actually thinking about is an excellent education.

And she does the same with me.

Recall the baseline assertion: my relationship with my wife is the most important thing in my life.

I listen to people talk for hours at work, which is pretty important. Listening to my wife for 30 minutes is a no brainer for me.

> Do the two of you have so little in common that all you have to talk about is your monotonous work day?

Wow, so many assumptions there:

1) All they do in a given day is work

2) Their work is monotonous

3) These questions result in boring, factual answers (perhaps instead they lead to long, interesting conversations far away from the original topic)

Etc, etc. IMO, it's much more productive to take the time to think about reasons why something would work for somebody else rather than immediately dismiss what they do.

Right. The questions are (were) a gateway. What we talk about is certainly factual. And all too often our days have monotony in them. What's important is hearing how my wife feels about these things in her life, and she hears how I feel about those things in my life.

I like to say that one of my biggest advantages at work is that I have an intelligent, invested and attentive counselor at home. My wife gives me tons of excellent work-related feedback, because she sees things differently than I do. And that's an incredibly valuable thing.

Or, just understand that those are the standard topics and begin conversing. Nobody needs to tick boxes on a form.

Right. In the beginning, for the first few years, it did approach 'tick boxes on a form' from time to time. Note, though, that each partner is free to answer each question in any way they want to. Sometimes, it was "Uh, nothing surprising. What I really want to talk about is...."

Some ceremony led to highly consistent, timely communication. The latter is the goal, the former is just a tool.

My wife and I have been happily married for 40 years and we attribute our success to negotiations. We recognize that we don't always want the same things and we make deals. I know this sounds cold but it reduces our tension to near zero and really works for us.

The secret to a happy wife / life. Keep laughing everyday! its our secret sauce. Don't be so serious. Do new stuff. Make sure you tell your wife you LOVE her as much AS possible. Good Lucky!

Your wife will be quite serious if there's financial strain on the family, or other stressors. And laughing about it will just make you look like an aloof idiot.

ProTips: Don't be a dick. Listen. Talk.

Fox news has a mirror

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/02/09/what-keeps-couples-...

Lol. Couples having more/better sex are happier and communicate more; and they likely have more/better sex because they communicate more and are happier. Great analysis there.

I'm really waiting for the next study on what keeps water so wet.

This kind of dismissive thinking is counter-productive. Our intuitions are often wrong, and hindsight-bias allow us to fool ourselves that our intuition would have been right when we already know the answer. In order to figure out what is actually happening, we need to do studies and experiments rather than just thinking about it, to find out where our intuitions are wrong. When our intuition happens to match the outcome, that is not failure, nor is it a reason to mock the people who did the work. They are advancing our understanding.

My point is that this sort of studies has been done over and over again, and they repeat the same results pretty much all the time. Have you ever heard anyone say that a good relationship is due to partners not talking and not having sex?

Ever since the myth of the "obedient and silent wife" was dispelled in the '60s and '70s, it looks to me as intuition and research in this particular field overlapped fairly consistently. The interesting question would now be "why do people not do this already, even when rational and well-educated?". That would be noteworthy.

I don't know, maybe the point of this research was getting down to the details (which they do, a bit), but the overall structure is the same as always.

The answer to "why do people not do this already, even when rational and well-educated?" is likely because in most families both parents have to work, and are probably tired at the end of the day. Relationships take work and it's sometimes easy to slip into a routine where you let the relationship just coast (especially once you have young children and any free time you used to have is out the window).

Actually scientists aren't really sure what makes water 'wet' :) (at least from a molecular perspective)

It's quite surprising how many things seem to be feedback cycles when it comes to human nature. Happy behavior makes you happier, confident behavior makes you more confident, etc. It kind of gives weight to the "fake it til you make it" philosophy in a lot of ways.

I completely agree. What's more interesting here is that sex is actually _important_ for both partners' health.

Not sure if there was any kind of a research, but generally, it's a known fact - fuck your woman and she'll be happy. Respect her and she'll respect you. Pretty much the same goes vice versa, except some women tend to fuck man's brain. It's better to avoid such people, unless you are a masochist, who doesn't care about its life and the lifetime.

No sex -> no relationships. No mutual respect -> no relationships.

What Keeps Couples Happy are love, Loyalty and forgiveness

How do we get passed this paywall?

Sending a forged referrer header of https://www.google.com seems to work. I'm using the RefControl add-on for Firefox but I imagine there are other options...

Click on the "web" link under the header from the HN Comments page (this pulls up a google search for the title).

Copy&paste "What Keeps Couples Happy Long Term" into your search engine of choice. Follow link from there.

The 'web' link up under the story title is a link to a Google search for the headline.

I still get asked to sign in when coming from Google though. I guess the way to read the article is to sign up/subscribe.

Perhaps there's a cookie? I opened mine in privacy mode. Also, I use DDG instead of Google.

Google the headline in incognito / private browsing mode.

I still get the paywall message.

Works! also safari in private mode, will get you in.

Uh... you could pay.

Seriously. What is so objectionable about respecting their proposal for viewing the content they produced? You don't want to agree? Don't read it.

I have a feeling that if your question was, "how can I subvert this project's open source license?", you would be flamed into oblivion. I'm not sure why a request to violate the WSJ's implicit license agreement is not similarly received...

Do they actually remove ads if I pay?

Who cares? The reduction of "happiness in marriage" to the single factor of sex is narrow-minded and frankly...weird.

An article about sex and marriage getting voted to the top of Hacker News isn't really lending the article any credit ether.

How would I know what it says when I can't read it.