Well hello and welcome back to the Love Life podcast with your host, which is I, Mr.

Stephen Hussey. And we are doing another one of our delightful solo episodes today, where it's

just going to be me talking through one of my very highly shared recent blog posts on the site.

And this one is based on some really interesting research. So I think it's going to help lots of you

think about, you know, when we get into relationships, the kind of thing you can do that actually sets

it up for success because I find repeatedly the biggest enemy in relationships is our own toxic

habits or maybe the people we choose that can be a toxic habit as well, right choosing toxic people.

But there's so much about I'm obsessed with the little behaviors that couples show towards each

other. And I think you can learn a lot from seeing the couples that succeed and the ones that fail

and knowing what the differences are in the small little ways they behave. So let's dive into it.

So I'm just going to read from the article as I usually do with these and then kind of give you

ad lib and commentary as we go through. So here we go. Have you ever played the game where you

guess which one of your friends in relationships are going to stay together? It's not a habit to be

proud of, but most of us have found ourselves perhaps without friends or partners, idly criticizing

the couples around us. We say she always gives him shit when she's tired. You can tell it really

annoys him or he's totally unromantic and never does anything thoughtful or you can tell that she

resents his mum when she's always trying to muscle in and help with the new baby. And maybe

these flaws we identify are real. Often though they tend to reflect our own prejudices and pet peeves

as much as anything else. We think to ourselves, I would hate to be with someone like that. How can

they stand it? This is why most of us are pretty bad fortune tellers when it comes to love.

Yet there is a researcher who claims he can predict future relationship success. John M. Gottman,

the executive director of the Relationship Research Institute, claims that just three hours

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