7 SECRETS Of Successful Relationships (Proven by Experts!)

We go into our dating lives worried that if we say the wrong thing once, if we make too much of a situation or, you know, create a fight, that it's like we have this anxious thought, like, oh, it's all over. I've messed it all up. Okay, so we are talking today about what creates successful relationships, and we have, for each of these episodes, we've been putting a poll up. on Instagram @TheMatthewHussey for anyone who doesn't follow me currently. What did we put in our poll for this episode?

So we started out with a question which said, which behavior do you see in other people's relationship that you believe makes them succeed? The options were, they have the same values, they have great chemistry, and they are in each other's leagues. What do you guys think got the most votes? Great chemistry in each other's leagues or have the same values?

I'm gonna say that, 'cause this was what makes a relationship work long term. I'm gonna say people said values.

I'm gonna say values. Okay.

'Cause chemistry, I would say chemistry gets you off the ground. But I think values is what people would say is most important.

You are absolutely correct, the both of you. We then did a follow-up question and we asked people, if you picked option one, which is values, what are the most important shared values that you see in those successful relationships. Values around money, values around honesty, values around family, and values around ambition. What do you think got the most votes?

I think it's between honesty and family.

I...

Ambition, yes, but I don't think it's like the most important one. It feels like honesty a lot of people would say, I think.

I'm gonna go honesty number one. maybe money number two.

Really?

So the answer is honesty got the most votes by far with 71%.

Whoa.

Family was the second one with 20%.

Okay.

We then had ambition at six percent and money at three percent. Wow. Which is really interesting. That makes sense, though. I agree. Honesty is the most important of all those. specific values.

That to me speaks to an enormous amount of, an enormous amount of experience people have around betrayal and people having, whether they've lied, they've cheated, they've gone behind their back on something, but people feel betrayed at the end of a relationship and that the Betrayal led to DisHonesty.

Yeah. And people sharing their feelings, communicating well, saying what they think, I think all those things, those are the things that people find the toughest day to day.

You can also probably compromise on things around ambition, family, and money. You can kind of meet in the middle, agree to disagree, but you probably can't do that with honesty.

Do you think that men and women would have voted the same way on this?

Family, honesty, money. What was the last one?

Well, family, honesty, money, ambition. But honesty, I'm wondering if it was an all male audience. And of course, we have a lot of men in our audience, but I'm wondering if it was all men, they would still be voting the highest for honesty as the reason.

I think so.

I think so. I think if we had put in there something like physical compatibility or sexual compatibility, that would have gone like that would have kind of skewed the numbers, especially if men were voting. Because I think men really value kind of sexual compatibility.

I think that would still have been high for women.

But you're screwed without honesty. That's the point, right? You could have enough ambition, enough money. Honesty is kind of one of those things where you feel like, oh, I could always have more.

Yeah.

I could always have more honest in my relationship.

Wait, did, did you have some data around a research around successful relationships because this is very anecdotal. This is obviously taken. I mean, it's, you know, quite a few thousand people actually voted in this poll. I think it was something like 20, 000 people. But we have a study from the Gottman Institute. Right. So it'd just be interesting to see those numbers.

Yeah. Well, I've been just looking at some different things by the Gottman Institute because they are fascinating. It's John and Julie Gottman, a wonderful couple. They are famous for doing these kind of long relationship studies on different couples over time. And a lot of people will be aware of some of their fascinating work. But one of the big things they talk about in communication that we've talked about before is responding, how responsive you are to your partner and specifically responding to what they call their bids for connection. And they even had some data that said, Successful couples turn toward their partner 86% of the time. So a bid for connection can be literally your partner saying, Look at this funny meme. I had a really hard day. They lean in for a hug. Or they say, Do you want to grab lunch together later? Any of those are forms of bids for connection. And they say, in terms of success, one of the most important things is how often you turn towards your partner. Literally they go make it a goal like how much can you say yes if your partner is making a bid in that moment? Which is, I mean 86% is a lot, right? Like your partner makes bids, you ought to respond 86% of the time.

It's a lot when you consider how many memes Audrey shows me.

I mean how lucky are you that I send you such funny memes?

And I know you've spoken about how Audrey enjoys talking in your relationship, maybe more than you do. And it says, people in the most successful relationships spend five more hours a week being together and talking.

That is just the data don't lie, babe. The data don't lie.

The other thing I think, Stephen, the other thing I think is really fascinating is they talked about this idea of love mapping, where basically it's like getting a sense of your partner's internal world. like the quality of your questions. And so they said things even just saying, what do you need today? How do you feel about your new job? How are you feeling about the fact you're gonna be an auntie or a grandmother? Like you're basically mapping their mind and giving them this open space to kind of, you're basically giving them the floor to share what's been going on. And they call it love mapping. You're like mapping their internal world.

Now, Stephen, I'm curious on your opinion as to women who hear that and say, I feel like if I asked my guy those questions, I would get very short responses. I wouldn't get very open, vulnerable responses. It might even be met with a level of sort of annoyance at having to sort of talk about things in a way that I'm not used to. You know, this isn't every man, of course, but there's a significant portion of men who are not very verbal when it comes to what's going on in their mind. So if you ask a guy a very feeling related question, like, how do you feel about your new role? You might initially be disappointed with the level of response. I'm curious if you Have any thoughts around that and how what should someone do if their partner isn't very receptive to that style of questioning?

Yeah, I think you can explore with them. I think it depends on the setting. It can kind of help sometimes if you're doing something else at the same time and then bring up these things so it doesn't feel like an interrogation and it just feels casual.

But you're going for a walk in the park and while you're walking and sort of taking in nature, and doing an activity, you use that time while their brain isn't occupied by a hundred other things. And when it doesn't have the intensity of sitting on the sofa and just staring into each other's eyes, taking that opportunity to get someone to talk.

Yeah, and even being like, oh, do you think any parts of it are going to be difficult? What are you most excited about? Like, give something that gives them a chance even to have a concrete answer. Like, what are you most looking forward to in your new job? what thing do you want to do when you go on that trip or when you go home? What's the exciting thing you're gonna do? And I think the more you, you know, questions are kind of gifts. I think a lot of people actually don't get a chance to express themselves as much as they're like. And men can definitely feel that as well. They can feel like, I don't get to say that because, frankly, I'm never feel it's permitted for me to talk about that. So I think some people are more grateful for it than you think, and Yeah, I think we've got to do our own exploring a bit, our own curiosity.

I also think it's about knowing who you're speaking to. If you know that you're speaking to somebody who's not really connected to their emotions and what you're trying to get is, are they feeling nervous about the restructuring at work? You can just be like, how was your day today? Did anything happen? How's that restructuring going? You know, how's that? You know, you can kind of just ask questions and almost open up the floor for the conversation to be had rather than like, you know, are you feeling anxious about the restructuring? Do you, are you having any negative emotions you want to talk about, which I think would be a bit like overwhelming for someone who's not comfortable talking about their feelings. So I think you can go into it as well in a way that is suitable for the different personalities you're speaking to.

Like, what's it like? is, you know, how does it feel to be in the middle of that? Or that sounds kind of tough. Does it feel tough? Like, what does it feel like for you? Like, it's sort of setting them up with neutral questions that allow them to take it in any direction they want.

Yeah, and then the point I am imagining in this is that what you're doing is you're giving, to your point, Stephen, you're giving your partner the opportunity to speak about something, which sometimes I think you don't feel like you have permission to speak or you don't want to talk about something because you're scared it's going to be boring or it's going to be indulgent. And to almost say to your partner, I'm thinking of you and your experience and what's going on in your world. And I'm sort of being generous with my time to take the time to ask you about it. Even if you don't have the best answer for it, even just knowing that your partner cares enough to remember to ask you, I think is really meaningful.

Yeah.

You do something which is lovely, where you will ask me, you know, is there, what do you need today? Like what's something, what's a way that I could support you today?

That's one of the ones they mention as a mapping. It can just be that they said, what do you need today? Yeah, they said that can be a really, really powerful one. The other thing they said is we've talked about this before, but this golden ratio of positive to negative interactions, they say is you want five positive interactions for every one negative. And in bad couples, you have 0.8 positive interactions for every one negative interaction. So basically you want this ratio of five to one. And those positives can be anything from a moment of appreciation, shared laughter, doing something nice together, having a good meal, whatever, for every one moment of, you know, something that niggles you.

It's like cheat meals. The 80-20 rule, you know, eat well 80% of the time. and then on the weekends.

Yes, it's true.

You couldn't, you, but there's something to that, you know, I, I've been sort of taking care of myself in the last few months, and I've been pretty consistent with it in terms of, you know, working out and doing Jiu Jitsu and eating well. And one of the things I'm reminded of, which I always find really encouraging when it comes to, to trying to be healthy, is that you actually don't need to be nearly as perfect as you think you do when you're scared about being healthier. You know what I mean? When you're overwhelming yourself with the idea of eating well and the idea of working out and all of the discomfort that those things bring up for many of us, myself included, that I'm actually always pleasantly surprised with if I'm consistent I actually can mess up a lot more than I think, and still my trajectory is good. And there's something comparable there with relationships that I think a lot of people, especially anxious people, go into relationships feeling like they have to be perfect, feeling like they can't put a foot wrong. We go into our dating lives worried that if we say the wrong thing once, if we make too much of a situation or, you know, create a fight, that it's like we have this anxious thought, like, oh, it's all over. I've messed it all up. I should never have said that. I should never have done that. I've had that thought before where I'm like, I should. That text, I should never have sent that text. I've screwed it all up now. I've done it. But actually, what's encouraging is that you can have those moments where things go wrong. You can have those moments where you have an unnecessary argument or where you, you know, say the wrong thing. You just have to make sure that the trajectory of the relationship continues in a really positive direction. And the way you do that is by having, what was it? Five positives to every one negative interaction.

And the key insight here is frequency matters. like, in a way, it's the frequency of affectionate. It's not good enough the, oh, once a month we have grand affection day and we have sex and we go out and it's all sweet. You know, it's like, you know, it's like the thing of like, oh, we have amazing sex once every five weeks. It's like, no, actually, the frequent, the frequent affection is much more important than the grand gesture. And that's kind of one of the key insights. And even if you're, if your partner shares something they did and you Like, that's the moment, like, show you're proud of them. Oh, that's amazing. You did that. What happened? Tell me about it. What did they say? You know, those are the moments to, like, amplify frequently when your partner is around.

I would also add to that, like.