Arthur C. Brooks says happy marriages rest on companionate friendship, not passion. Passionate love fades after three to five years, and couples who don't become genuine friends see satisfaction drop fast. Oxytocin, the same chemical that bonds you to children and parents, reinforces that deep friendship.
What is the secret that you found to a happy relationship or marriage?
The secret to a happy marriage is deep friendship. Psychologists talk about romantic love in two phases: passionate and companionate. Companionate love is the goal after 3 to 5 years in a relationship. And one of the reasons that couples that are super in love and then a year later hate each other is because they never got to friendship. They never culminated. They never consummated their relationship in terms of the real consummation, which is the friendship. And so that's the goal is how that works. And there's a whole neurochemical process of bonding to each other in love. And the last phase of which is a deep level of oxytocin release, which is the neuropeptide in the brain of bonding. And that's the basis of your deep friendship. I mean, it's the deep friendship that you have at a level even with your children, with your parents, and certainly with your partner and with your closest friends. And that's what you need at the deepest level with the person who knows you the best.
