How to be a Happy Couple

By Christopher Smith

Sometimes relationships can be beautiful and simple, and sometimes complicated and difficult. There is, however, a system by which you can have a happy relationship, almost guaranteed. The system is mostly about you though - who you are as a person, and where's you're going with your life. This book was written to help people like yourself who wish to have more from not only their relationships, but also more from life. Read the book with your partner, apply what you learn, and very importantly, talk. Communicate. That's the only real way to happiness as a couple.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Smith
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393513407

Christopher Smith

Christopher Smith has been the film critic for a major Northeast daily for 14 years. Smith also reviewed eight years for regional NBC outlets and also two years nationally on E! Entertainment Daily. He is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association.He has written three best-selling books: "Fifth Avenue," "Bullied" and "Revenge."

Book preview

Dedication

To my beloved wife and friend Julie, the most wonderful woman I know.

Jason, thanks for suggesting that I should stop wondering and start writing.

Ashley, thanks for all the hard work, editing and research – I now know how to spell individuals.

Courtney & Jake, thanks for the feedback, and Jake, thanks for your friendship and encouraging words.

Legal Disclaimer

This work is by no means a statement of claims by the author but is rather a series of observations. There is no guarantee of any kind whatsoever, and neither the author, his agents or publishers can be held liable for any emotional or physical trauma experienced as a direct or indirect result of reading this book.

All references to one gender automatically refer to and include the other gender. No gender or race is viewed as superior to another, although marked differences exist between the genders and different races, and allusions to these differences are in no way to be viewed as discriminatory. This book is aimed at helping people of all nations, languages and cultures, and all genders, of all ages.

Regarding the Language Used in this Book

We all come from different backgrounds, and the spoken English can vary significantly from one country to another, and for that reason, please don't pass over a single word that you don't understand.

Whilst reading, try keeping a dictionary close at hand - most phones nowadays have a dictionary app, and Google seems to know the meaning of every word on the planet, so please make use of that. The reason why I'm asking you to do this is that, if you don't understand the word, you might not fully grasp the sentence. If you don't understand the sentence, you might miss the point of the paragraph, or even the whole chapter, so please use your dictionary.

Personal Message

FOREWORD

Take a coin and flip it up in the air. Call heads or tails before it lands, and when it does, you will know the chances of success the average person has at building a happy and stable marriage or long-term relationship.

This is the sad situation faced by many couples today, with divorce rates in most developed countries being around 50% or more, and the breakups of unmarried couples often being even higher, due to the fact that unmarried couples are statistically more likely to break up than their married counterparts.

The aim of this book, therefore, is to try and give couples a starting point for building a stronger, more secure relationship, as well as providing practical suggestions to help this process along. You have the right to have a happy, stable relationship, and when you do have it, it’s a form of wealth.

Money isn't the only currency on Earth, and riches and success don't necessarily have to be measured in digits.

When looking at wealth, one should look at, not only the Financial aspect, but also at Spirituality, Relationships and Health. Many financially wealthy people have been in situations where they would trade all their material wealth if they could get a loved one back, or restore their health. This in itself proves that there are more facets to wealth that just money.

I have a very happy marriage. In that regard, I can say that I am truly wealthy, and my wealth has increased over the past twenty-five years. My life has been filled with so many wonderful things, the kind of things money really cannot buy, the kind of good things that are so much better than any of the venally good things that money does buy.

Now, for the record, I am financially relatively wealthy too (finally!) and between being dead broke and having an abundance of money, I will always choose the latter. Being broke is just not fun and creates many more problems than having financial wealth. Being broke is not noble and, having been there myself, broke people have a tendency to develop coping mechanisms, such as telling themselves that they don't really want to be rich, or that it's somehow noble to be poor... well, it simply isn't.

To such people I say: Excuses and success don’t live in the same room. Stop making excuses. The average Briton spends about 27 hours per week watching telly. If you spent half that time studying, you'd get your degree in about six years, and if you sacrificed all your TV time in order to study, you'd be there in about four years.

The average American, on the other hand, spends so much time watching TV they could finish a (US) three-year degree in just two years, yet the average American does not have a degree.

So whose fault is it really if you’re broke or struggling financially? Speaking for myself, the times that I came close to financial ruin were invariably my own doing, or more correctly, lack of doing.

Back to love and relationships, the correlation between money and love is, rather unexpectedly, quite strong: Financially broke or poor people often give all sorts of excuses as to why it isn’t their fault instead of taking responsibility for their lives and taking action to improve their lot in life. Again: Excuses and success don’t live in the same room.

Likewise, people who are emotionally broke, with poor relationships and an unhealthy state of mind, sometimes give bizarre excuses or fake reasons for being that way; they look outwards for things to blame rather than looking inwards for solutions.

At the end of the day, the happiest people are almost invariably the ones who have an abundance of love and good relationships in their lives, an abundance of financial resources, great health and strong spirituality and intellect.

If one were to take a square piece of card and write:

Financial, in the one corner

Spiritual/ Intellectual in the opposite corner

Health in another corner, and

Relationships in the final corner

...it would look a bit like this:

The point in the centre where the two lines cross, could be regarded as being completely deficient, and 10 is an ideal state.

By way of example, let’s look at two imaginary people in contraposition – a billionaire and a monk.

The diagram below is that of the monk. He belongs to some religious order and has taken a vow of poverty, a vow of celibacy and a vow of silence. He is quite old, but still works in the garden every day and eats the produce that they themselves grow right there at the monastery. He spends five or six hours every evening doing reading of various secular and religious books, prayer and meditation.

The shaded area represents his total wealth:

Rather deficient, wouldn’t you say?

The next example is that of a billionaire who recently had a serious heart attack. He gets on well enough with other people, but his children are estranged and he recently divorced his fourth wife, due to his never being home. He does give sizeable amounts to charity and goes to church on Remembrance Sunday, but other than that he never stops for any introspection.

The billionaire’s overall wealth is also markedly deficient, but in a completely different way to that of the monk’s.

How would you rate the following two people?

Person 3

She is vain and narcissistic and spends an inordinate amount of time dressing and grooming. She is good at