3 Secrets For A Love That Lasts Beyond The ‘Spark,’ By A Psychologist

Pair sitting in a restaurant and holding hands.

Picture two couples who start out equally in love. A few years down the line, one couple still laughs together over small jokes and feels deeply connected. Meanwhile, the other couple barely remembers the last time they had a meaningful conversation, and an unspoken distance seems to have grown between them, though neither can pinpoint how or when exactly it began.

While this is a hypothetical contrast, it’s something you’ve probably witnessed around you or perhaps even experienced in your own relationships. On the surface, both couples may start with the same spark. But what makes all the difference is how couples grow together.

Certainly, this does sound much simpler in theory. In practice, relationships are constantly tested by shifting circumstances from time to time. It could be stress from work, changes in priorities, health challenges or even the slow drift of routine.

As life goes on, you are bound to go through transitions individually and as a couple. Maybe your job becomes overwhelming, family responsibilities increase or health issues arise for either partner.

Sometimes, it’s just one area of life that shifts and other times it could be that several challenges arrive all at once, which can create a weight that strains even the strongest connection.

It can feel like the spark from the beginning has faded. Partners start seeing each other in more realistic ways. It is natural for things to look and feel different than they did in the early days, to which many couples respond by trying to recreate those early sparks. They assume that reliving the honeymoon phase will restore closeness.

However, the truth is that relationships aren’t meant to stay stuck in the honeymoon stage. They’re meant to evolve. Instead, you need to learn how to meet each stage of life as it comes, together, and build new ways of existing with one another as your lives become more deeply intertwined.

The couples who last aren’t the ones who cling to the “magic,” so to speak. You need to rather discover new ways of sustaining connection and resilience as your relationship changes.

Here are three secrets of couples that last.

1. Having Adaptability To Change As A Couple

Even the strongest couples face moments when life doesn’t go as planned. But a major determining factor in a relationship that would last is how they adapt together and the way they experience different changes in life as a couple.

A 2021 study published in PNAS examined how individual traits, behaviors and stress influence relationship satisfaction over time. The researchers pooled data from 10 long-term studies involving over 1,100 married couples.

They looked at spouses’ personality traits (like neuroticism and attachment styles) and observed how couples interacted during problem-solving discussions. They also tracked both partners’ stress levels and marital satisfaction over several years.

Researchers found that a partner’s personality and emotional tendencies shape how they behave toward each other, and these behaviors, in turn, influence changes in relationship satisfaction.

More importantly, the study points out that the couple’s stress levels moderated these effects. Which means that the same behaviors could have different impacts depending on how stressed the partners were.

So, relationship satisfaction is determined by a dynamic interplay between each partner’s traits, their behaviors and the stress they experience together.

As a couple, noticing how stress affects your interactions can help you adjust your behavior accordingly. This makes you and your partner more likely to maintain satisfaction and connection over time.

Additionally, a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Psychology explored how anticipating change in oneself and in one’s partner impacts romantic relationships. Researchers examined this across two studies and found that couples who expected both partners to change in similar ways, or both to remain largely the same, reported higher relationship satisfaction and stability.

Couples who anticipate congruent change, meaning couples who recognize that both partners will grow or evolve in tandem, get to experience a stronger trajectory of growth in their relationship over time.

With these findings in context, adaptability in a relationship is fundamentally about growing together in sync while adjusting to life’s challenges and supporting each other through change.

The idea is to embrace change as a shared journey. This can eventually help you strengthen your bond and ensure your relationship continues to thrive over time.

2. Maintaining Healthy Interdependence

A relationship can easily slip into unhealthy dynamics if one partner carries all the weight or both partners become so enmeshed that they lose sight of their individual identities.

While closeness is essential, it’s important to remember a balance is much more necessary. Too much dependence can create an imbalance, and too much independence can lead to distance.

There is a common ground to build a healthy balance for a strong relationship, and that is interdependence.

A July 2025 study published in Clinical Psychology Review explored how couples cope with serious challenges. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 61 samples from 57 studies looking at couples where one partner had a chronic illness. They examined the concept of dyadic coping, which is how partners support each other or work together when dealing with stress. They also examined its impact on relationship satisfaction.

They found that when either partner engaged in supportive coping, it not only improved their own relationship satisfaction but also boosted their partner’s. So, to put it simply, how one person responded to stress had a measurable impact on both sides of the relationship. These effects also held true across different illnesses, cultures and relationship lengths.

This shows that mutual support and seeing challenges as something faced together (“a we-disease”) are strongly linked with higher satisfaction and healthier relationship dynamics.

Essentially, healthy relationships require both partners to build a rhythm where support flows naturally back and forth, sometimes in big ways and sometimes in the smallest gestures.

Interdependence just means knowing that your strength and theirs are deeply connected. Couples who last aren’t the ones who avoid stress but the ones who lean into it together. So that way, when life throws challenges at you, treat them not as “mine” or “yours,” but as “ours.”

3. Having An Aligned Growth Mindset

The spark and excitement at the beginning of a relationship often make it feel like two people are destined for each other. But as time passes, challenges are bound to arise. That initial rush is not enough to sustain the bond.

What matters then are the underlying beliefs partners hold about how relationships work. You would be surprised to know the impact your beliefs can have on shaping the way you perceive your relationship and on influencing the effort you bring to it.

In a large two-year 2024 study, researchers followed over 900 couples and explored the role of relationship beliefs and how they impact satisfaction in relationships.

The results showed that, initially, couples with destiny beliefs (beliefs that relationships are fated, effortless and its outcomes are beyond one’s control) often feel intense happiness, as if everything is “meant to be.” However, when challenges appear, this initial satisfaction tends to drop more quickly. This happens because these couples may see problems as signs the relationship isn’t right.

Couples with growth beliefs understand that relationships require effort and can improve over time. While they may not start at the same peak of excitement, their satisfaction remains more stable. Due to this, they’re better able to navigate challenges without losing connection.

In short, growth beliefs help couples ride the ups and downs of a relationship and this turns obstacles into opportunities to strengthen the bond.

For a relationship to last, it is important to not rely on fate. Both partners should embrace a growth mindset together. This builds more resilience in them as they start seeing every challenge as an opportunity to deepen their bond, rather than as a threat. This shared vision turns ups and downs into steppingstones for a stronger future.

The common thread across it all is intentionality. The couples who thrive make an effort to actively create a bond that grows stronger with each challenge of life. In the end, lasting love is less about finding the “right” person and more about continuously becoming the right partners for each other, together.

Is your relationship genuinely thriving? Take this science-backed test to find out: Relationship Flourishing Scale

Forbes