Growing up, I had great examples of what a healthy relationship should look like. My grandparents, my wife's grandparents and both sets of our parents were together right to the very end. What a pleasure to grow up in that environment of love and care.

Was it always a dream world? Of course not, relationships can be really hard and take lots of commitment and hard work. They don't say through thick and thin for nothing. Building the correct sustainable habits with your partner will help you to have a happy relationship.

Building great relationship habits

What does it take to be happy in a relationship? If you’re working to improve your marriage.

Seven habits of happy couples

1. Sleep

Go to bed at the same time!

Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps. And when their skin touches, it still causes each of them to tingle and — unless one or both are completely exhausted — to feel sexually excited.

2. Cultivate common interests

After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

There are so many healthy habits that you can make that will be great for your relationships, why not build the habit of exercise together.

3. Physical touch

Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand-in-hand or side-by-side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work. Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

4. Trust and forgiveness

If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Express gratitude

Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong.

If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

If you always looking for things that your partner does right, you will always have something to be grateful for. The habit of gratitude goes along way in developing healthy relationships. Everyday, start by writing three things down that you are grateful for, do it together while you have your breakfast.

6. Communication

Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning.

This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

Then say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel

This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

7. Be proud to be seen with your partner

Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. So, break your bad bad habits and build great new ones with TheLifeHabit FREEDOM principles.