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The post also helped a lot of people. Since writing it, it's generated a staggering amount of thank you emails, and no less than 20 people notified me that it inspired them to end their relationships (or even in a few cases, their marriages).

It was the wake up call these people needed to finally let go and accept that their relationship was gagging them with a s---spoon every day. And they deserved better.

(So I guess I'm a home-wrecker. Sweet.)

But the article also elicited a lot of questions like, "So if these habits ruin a relationship, what habits create a happy and healthy relationship?" and "Where's an article on what makes a relationship great?" and "Mark, how did you get so handsome?"

These are important questions. And they deserve answers.

Granted, I have far more experience screwing up relationships than making them work well, but I still wanted to take a stab at a "healthy relationship" post. I didn't want to just make it a (yet another) "learn to communicate and cuddle and watch sunsets and play with puppies together" type post.

You can find those posts just about everywhere. And honestly, those posts suck. If you love your partner, you shouldn't have to be told to hold hands and watch sunsets together. This stuff should be automatic.

I wanted to write something different. I wanted to write about issues that are important in relationships but don't receive enough airtime. Things like the role of fighting, hurting each other's feelings, dealing with dissatisfaction or feeling the occasional attraction for other people. These are normal, everyday relationship issues that don't get talked about because it's far easier to talk about puppies and sunsets instead.

And so I wrote this article. This is the first article's bizarro twin brother. That article explained that many of our culture's tacitly accepted relationship habits secretly erode intimacy, trust and happiness. This article explains how traits that don't fit our traditional narrative for what love is and what love should be are actually necessary ingredients for lasting relationship success.


1. Letting some conflicts go unresolved



His "thin-slicing" process boasts a staggering 91% success rate in predicting whether newly-wed couples will divorce within 10 years — a staggeringly high result for any psychological research. His method went on to be featured in Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book Blink.

Gottman's seminars also report a 50% higher success rate of saving troubled marriages than traditional marriage counseling. His research papers have won enough academic awards to fill the state of Delaware. And he's written nine books on the subjects of intimate relationships, marital therapy and the science of trust.

Kena Betancur/Stringer/Getty Images


In his research of thousands of happily married couples, some of whom have been married for 40+ years, he found time and again that most successful couples have persistent unresolved issues, unresolved issues that they've sometimes been fighting about for decades. Meanwhile many of the unsuccessful couples insisted on resolving f------ everything because they believed that there should be a void of disagreement between them. Pretty soon there was a void of a relationship too.

People like to fantasize about "true love." But if there is such a thing, it requires us to sometimes accept things we don't like.

Successful couples accept and understand that some conflict is inevitable, that there will always be certain things they don't like about their partners or things they don't agree with, and that this is fine. You shouldn't need to feel the need to change somebody in order to love them. And you shouldn't let some disagreements get in the way of what is otherwise a happy and healthy relationship.

The truth is, trying to resolve a conflict can sometimes create more problems than it fixes. Some battles are simply not worth fighting. And sometimes the most optimal relationship strategy is one of "live and let live."

2. Being willing to hurt each other's feelings



When I tell her this, she usually gets pissed off. And as she marches back into the closet to redo everything and make us 30 minutes late, she spouts a bunch of four-letter words and sometimes even slings a few of them at me.

Men stereotypically lie in this situation to make their girlfriends/wives happy. But I don't. Why? Because honesty in my relationship is more important to me than feeling good all of the time. The last person I should ever have to censor myself with is the woman I love.

Fortunately, I date a woman who agrees. She calls me out on my b------- sometimes, and it's honestly one of the most important traits she offers me as a partner. Sure, my ego gets bruised and I b---- and complain and try to argue, but a few hours later I come sulking back and admit that she was right and holy crap she makes me a better person even though I hated hearing it at the time.




These conversations are paramount to maintaining a healthy relationship that meets both people's needs. With out them, we get lost and lose track of one another.

3. Being willing to end it

Romantic sacrifice is idealized in our culture. Show me almost any romantic movie and I'll show you a desperate and needy character who treats themselves like dog s--- for the sake of being in love with someone.

The truth is our standards for what a "successful relationship" should be are pretty screwed up. If a relationship ends and someone's not dead, then we view it as a failure, regardless of the emotional or practical circumstances present in the person's lives. And that's kind of insane.

Romeo and Juliet was originally written as satire to represent everything that's wrong with young love and how irrational romantic beliefs can make you do stupid s--- like drink poison because your parents don't like some girl's parents. But somehow we look at this story as romantic.



"Shoot myself to love you; if I loved myself I'd be shooting you."

- Marilyn Manson

"Until death do us part" is romantic and everything, but when we worship our relationship as something more important than ourselves, our values, our needs and everything else in our lives, we create a sick dynamic where there's no accountability.

We have no reason to work on ourselves and grow because our partner has to be there no matter what. And our partner has no reason to work on themselves and grow because we're going to be there no matter what. It invites stagnation and stagnation equals misery.

4. Feeling attraction for people outside the relationship

Our cultural scripts for romance includes this sort of mental tyranny, where any mildly emotional or sexual thought not involving your partner amounts to high treason. Being in love is like a cult where you're supposed to prefer drinking Kool Aid laced with cyanide to letting your thoughts wander to whether other religions may be true too.




This triggers a lot of guilt in some people and a lot of irrational jealousy in others. Our cultural scripts tell us that once we're in love, that's supposed to be it, end of story. And if someone flirts with us and we enjoy it, or if we catch ourselves having an occasional errant sexy-time fantasy, there must be something wrong with us or our relationship.

But that's simply not the case. In fact, it's healthier to allow oneself to experience these feelings and then let them go.



People who suppress these urges are the ones who are likely to project them onto their partner and becoming blindingly jealous, attempting to control their partner's every thought and whim, corralling all of their partner's attention and affection onto themselves.

People who suppress these urges are the ones who are likely to wake up one day disgruntled and frustrated with no conscious understanding of why, wondering where all of the days went and remember how in love we used to be?

Looking at attractive people is enjoyable. Speaking to attractive people is enjoyable. Thinking about attractive people is enjoyable. That's not going to change because of our Facebook relationship status. And when you dampen these impulses towards other people, you dampen them towards your partner as well. You're killing a part of yourself and it ultimately only comes back to harm your relationship.


When we commit to a person, we are not committing our thoughts, feelings or perceptions. We can't control our own thoughts, feelings and perceptions the majority of the time, so how could we ever make that commitment?


5. Spending time apart

You see it all the time: the man who meets his girlfriend and stops playing basketball and hanging out with his friends, or the woman who suddenly decides she loves every comic book and video game her boyfriend likes even though she doesn't know how to hold the XBox controller properly. We all have that friend who mysteriously ceased to exist as soon as they got into their relationship. And it's troubling, not just for us but for them.

When we fall in love we develop irrational beliefs and desires. One of these desires is to allow our lives to be consumed by the person we're infatuated with. This feels great. It's intoxicating in much of the same way cocaine is intoxicating (no, really). The problem only arises when this actually happens.



6. Accepting your partner's flaws


I love this observation and believe it applies to not just womanizers, but just about anyone who consistently finds themselves in dysfunctional relationships. They either try to make their partner be perfect by "fixing" them or changing them. Or they delude themselves into thinking that their partner is already perfect.

This is one of those things that is not nearly as complicated as it feels. Let's break it down:

  1. Every person has flaws and imperfections.
  2. You can't ever force a person to change.



This posed a problem for the gods. They didn't want to completely wipe out the human race as they'd have no one to rule over. But at the same time they had to do something to humble and distract humanity.


The artist Alex Grey once said that, "True love is when two people's pathologies complement one another's." Love is, by definition, crazy and irrational. And the best love works when our irrationalities complement one another and our flaws enamor one another.

It may be our perfections that attract one another. But it's our imperfections that decide whether we stay together or not.