My husband and I have been a couple for nearly forty years. In my younger days before we met, I had doubts that any relationship could last this long. Mine typically ended after painful experiences. My current husband and I were both married before, and our first marriages were riddled with mistakes.

Fortunately, we each grew from those mistakes, and avoided many of the same pitfalls as we built our lives together.

Trial and error overshadowed my earlier alliances, but I discovered what worked for me and what didn’t, and enjoyed the differences in my second marriage.

Here are some lessons that I learned. Perhaps you, or someone close to you, can use these to avoid the pain that I felt while learning them, and experience the joy that I finally found in a loving, lasting relationship.

1. Be friends. Good friends enjoy each other’s company, play together, help one another, offer comfort and build each other up.
2. Be lovers. Sex needs to be on your agenda forever. Regardless of your busy lives and conflicting demands, prioritize this time together and set up an agreeable schedule. If you feel desire fading away, work to reawaken it before you feel like strangers. But don’t place pressure on your partner. Be there for each other without being demanding. If you have physical or emotional health issues, explore ways you can pleasure one another while maintaining physical closeness. And above all, be loving.  
3. Have your own money. There may be times in a relationship when this is not always possible, but don’t let that continue indefinitely. You each need the satisfaction of earning your own money, and the freedom of spending it without asking for permission. But always pay the bills first.
4. Don’t run yourselves into debt. Nothing ends relationships faster than financial problems. When money is tight, you each need to sacrifice for both of you to survive. Too many people waste money on possessions they don’t need and jeopardize their finances to pay for them. Don’t make it tougher by taking on debt unless it will educate you and improve your circumstances, or create financial security.  
5. Drop old baggage. Forget about your parent’s marriage, your previous marriage, or your partner from the past. That relationship isn’t this one. Make sure you discuss any assumptions you each have about being a couple, then throw out the old junk and build a new, healthy relationship.
6. Ignore imperfections. Everyone has something you don’t like about them including your partner. Accept that no one is perfect and leave those flaws alone as long as they aren’t serious. Focus on the characteristics you love and overlook the ones you don’t. 
7. Respect each other. When in public or among friends, don’t put each other down, criticize, belittle, or embarrass your partner.  If you have an argument, have it privately without demeaning one another and keep it fair.  Your goal is to resolve your differences, not to win. 
8. Assume trust. This can be difficult, and who hasn’t been burned before this? But to commit to one another, you need a trusting heart and mind. If one day that trust is broken, deal with it then, but don’t destroy your love by imagining what hasn’t happened.
9. Support each other’s dreams. They may not all blossom, but encouraging each other to grow and become your best selves will not cause your partner to outgrow you; rather it will strengthen the bond between you by lifting each other up. Plus you will always have something interesting to discuss at the end of the day. 
10. Work as a team. Here is a powerful exercise that taught my husband and me this in our early days as a couple. The two of you step into a single canoe and begin paddling down a river through small, then larger rapids. You are each responsible for either steering the canoe or pushing it away from the rocks, and you must coordinate these activities as the current rushes you forward. You may find yourselves panicking as you scream at one another and blame each other for mishaps. Eventually you must stop this and focus on working together to be successful. Once you do, it’s magic.