Hi everyone and welcome back to savvy psychologist. I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and you know

the drill. I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic

ear, and zero judgment. And as you can probably hear this week, I am getting over a cold.

I feel fine, but my voice insists on doing its best impression of a frog in the meantime. So hang in there with me and here we go.

So this week let's talk about how to make a relationship last, because Ma'uage may have brought

you together, but after the clergyman with the speech impediment instructs you to treasure your love.

What next? Well, whether you're married, cohabitating, or simply in it for the long haul, any

committed relationship needs a few tools to make it through the years.

So this week here are seven science-backed secrets to make your long-term relationship feel more

like a Bruno Mars Mary You Flash mob and less like the theme song

from Married with Children. So let's start out with secret number one which is be your own person.

Okay so before sharing your life with another adult,

it's important to have spent some time adulting yourself.

You don't have to have your life cross-indexed coded, but it is important to have separated in a healthy way from your family of origin.

So if your alarm clock is a phone call from mom, or you don't yet know how to do your own laundry

invest the time to get your life on solid footing before merging it with another

humans. Secret number two is be a team. Now some problems seem

unsolvable a fundamental difference in parenting styles, incurable slobitude, or

opposite values around money.

But the least constructive approach to sticky problems is to blame each other and fight it out.

So instead try an approach called unified detachment. Unified detachment is a fundamental shift in perspective

that joins you and your partner together against the problem. So rather than approaching a problem as

...