The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

I’d begun to worry that an accumulation of minor irritations and sharp words was making us less outwardly loving. Our marriage wasn’t in trouble. We showed our affection openly and often. We were indulgent with each other. We handled conflict pretty well. We didn’t practice the behaviors that the marriage expert John Gottman calls the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” for their destructive role in relationships: stonewalling, defensiveness, criticism, and contempt. Well, sometimes we indulged in stonewalling, defensiveness, and criticism, but never contempt, the worst behavior of all. But we—I—had fallen into some bad habits that I wanted to change. Working on my marriage was an obvious goal for my happiness project, because a good marriage is one of the factors most strongly associated with happiness. Partly this reflects the fact that happy people find it easier to get and stay married than unhappy people do, because happy people make better dates and easier spouses. But marriage itself also brings happiness, because it provides the support and companionship