Imagine being together with the one you love without negativity. Imagine a rich, loving relationship built on the foundations of kindness, appreciation, compliments, affection, support, honesty, tenderness, and attention. Imagine experiencing these fulfilling qualities on a daily basis.
The key to a great marriage is the quality of the habits you share together. Healthy, positive habits create an extraordinarily happy marriage. Negative habits create chronic dissatisfaction.
Fortunately, healthy habits can be learned. This book will help you learn and integrate them into your daily life. You can read the chapters from start to finish or simply choose one habit at a time from whichever section interests you the most. The four parts of this book include the following:
Part I, “The Fundamentals,” offering a thorough grounding in the essential elements of understanding extraordinary love and the nature of habits.
Part II, “Connection-Building Habits,” offering two chapters of habits that are useful on a daily basis to help you connect emotionally and physically.
Part III, “Communication-Building Habits,” offering two chapters of habits to help you talk to each other when you’re out on a date and when you’re experiencing conflict (which is inevitable, by the way).
Part IV, “Intimacy-Building Habits,” offering three chapters of habits that focus on the senses, heart, and spirit as gateways to taking your relationship to a new dimension, both deeper and higher.
We know that these habits work for couples because they are based on cutting-edge marriage counseling techniques, mindfulness science, energy medicine, positive psychology, neuroscience, attachment theory, spiritual principles, and common sense.
Each of the 75 happiness habits is triggered by an ordinary “prompt” in your life, such as “when you’re eating dinner” or “when you’re watching TV together.” You’ll find that the habits take almost no time to absorb into full and busy lifestyles. Adopting even a handful of them will make a huge impact on your marriage.
Each habit is also illustrated with an anecdote, either personal or clinical. All client names and identifying characteristics have been changed in order to protect privacy. Many of the stories are composites based on Ashley’s twenty-five years of clinical experience. Any specific case or situation that you may recognize is purely coincidental.
This book is generally written in the first person based on my (Ashley’s) long career as a therapist, but it is very much a mutual collaboration. Daniel is not only a vigilant editor and contributor but has also developed, tested, and continues to live the habits with me. This book simply wouldn’t have been possible without both of us.
Daniel and I have been fortunate to experience a wonderfully rich and healing love together. Our marriage sustains and enriches us both individually and jointly. However, we know that we can’t take our relationship for granted. Even a wondrous love will wilt away if it is riddled with habits of neglect or abuse. Our marriage is only as strong as the happiness habits that we cultivate every day.
If you long for a deeper connection with your mate—if you crave more intimacy on a daily basis—then these habits are for you. Read. Learn. Practice. You deserve to be deliriously happy in your marriage. And with these tools, you can be.