Building Love That Lasts

Is there a secret to healthy relationships? Your guides, James Pawelski and Suzann Pileggi Pawelski, suggest that we work harder at falling in love than staying in love. Jump into this innovative course and crack the code to healthy relationships, backed with wisdom from ancient Greek philosophy and science from contemporary positive psychology.

What does Aristotle have to teach us about building healthy relationships? Turns out, plenty. Learn concepts from Aristotelian love by exploring the fundamental human wants that make love tick, then compare it to what history and culture tell us about soulmates through popular movies such as Jerry Maguire.

In this lesson, James and Suzie weave together ancient wisdom and positive psychology, using science to help us cultivate research-based habits to strengthen our connections. Explore the superpowers we each have and figure out which ones you most often use in your relationships.

Passion is what makes love go round, right? Yes, but there are different types: Learn about obsessive versus harmonious passion and get the tools you need to build healthy habits. Then use them to heal from anxious or avoidant attachment styles so you can control the passion instead of letting it control you.

In relationships, we all naturally seek pleasure. But maybe we should focus on pleasure's cousin, positivity, instead. Discover the differences between seeking one vs. the other, and see all the ways that the pursuit of positivity can open you up to the world, and by extension, to your partner.

Picking up from the previous lesson, you will begin to understand how to apply positivity to your relationships. Your experts discuss the top 10 positive emotions and give you concrete ways to prioritize and utilize them to organize your life to help you connect more deeply with others.

Shakespeare makes a powerful observation in Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Savoring is the art of attending to, appreciating, and enhancing positive experiences, allowing couples to flourish and feel deeply cared for—making it the perfect companion to positive emotions.

How do you make new relationship patterns stick? If you're feeling doubtful about implementing all of these newfound techniques in your relationship, this next part will motivate and enable you. Your experts dive into what it takes to build good habits and break bad habits with your partner.

What do your character traits have to do with building love that lasts? In this lesson, you will learn how to identify the unique strengths you and your partner each have and will practice enabling and facilitating them in each other to build character and develop a more sustainable and satisfying love.

Gratitude is one of the most important strengths associated with individual and relational well-being. And how you practice it matters. You will experience this for yourself as you explore different ways for initiating and responding to gratitude and then practice the ones that are most effective for healthy relationships.

The easiest and most natural thing to do when dealing with a partner or loved one is to go on autopilot and react, but that is one of the least effective ways of interacting with others. Intentional responding is much better, and your experts give you three effective tools you can use: compassion, meditation, and active constructive responding.

All the wisdom you have gained does nothing if you don't put your knowledge into action. Follow your experts as they discuss three important things to keep in mind as you apply what you have learned: pay attention to the emotional bids in your relationship, cultivate the mindset that stress can enhance your connection, and abide by the Diamond Rule.