Help Make Your Marriage Great By Being Grateful For Your Spouse

Happy Couples Give Their Spouses Credit For Their Relationship Success

The feeling of gratitude that my research interviewees expressed was much more fundamental than your everyday positive mental attitude. These folks lived in a state of awe that their spouses were in their lives—that they had chosen them in the first place!—and with the daily awareness that a huge part of their happiness was due to these wonderful people to whom they were joined.

Even when these couples were dealing with real problems—money, kids, sex, and a host of other things that can drain a marriage—each partner still believed that they personally hit the jackpot. I would state this powerful little secret like this: Highly happy couples give their spouses most of the credit for their relationship success—and they live in regular, conscious gratitude as a result.

The Roman philosopher Cicero wrote, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” The marital experience of highly happy couples seemed to bear this out. Their conscious gratitude for their mates seemed to have the effect of tempering other concerns and making them much happier in their marriages.