Things I See In Good Relationships

Here are some things I've noticed in the romantic relationships I find most admirable, personally. Of course, you might care about about different things in relationships than I do.

It's biased towards people who have been together for longer, but sneaking in some things from relationships that are still fairly new. So I don't know how some of these relationships will work out.

(And who knows which relationships might have worked out but didn't because the partners gave up on them? – causal inference is as hard as love is).

• They still ask each other questions, even when they're in groups. Most couples I know seem to stop doing this eventually: if they're hanging out with a third party, they'll both ask the third party questions, but they won't direct any questions to each other. I didn't really notice this till I hung out with a favourite couple who have been together for decades and noticed them do it, and now I see it (or don't-see-it) everywhere.
  
• At least one of them said "this is the person I'm going to marry" after their ~first date together. Of course this is partly selection bias – if someone has said this and hadn't gotten married afterwards, I wouldn't be hearing the story years later – but I still think it's over-represented among the best long-term couples I know. It's possible that it's partly endogenous – holding this belief might cause you to stay together through the hard parts, and it eventually becomes true as a result – but (of course) I secretly believe that is cosmic and poetic and far more deep than that.
  
• They seem very calm together, especially early on. This one is cheating!, because I don't really know what these early-on couples will be like many years from now, but it's kind of striking when you meet a couple who have just got together and they seem very relaxed and easy around each other, like they've known each other for years.
  
• They find each other funny. Even more than the others, this seems like I might be sneaking my personal preferences into a blogpost that (despite my protestations) will inevitably seem like an attempt at identifying universals. But... I just really like it when couples make each other laugh, and it seems to embody a whole bunch of other good traits in one.

The following was originally a preamble to this blogpost, but I've been told my preambles are way too long + I should get to the point better, so here it is as a post-amble instead:

I personally don't think anyone should brag about their relationship till they're 90 years old together; at minimum, surely until they've been together for a couple of decades and still going strong.

I realise this is partly just a quirk of my personality – maybe it's fine, overall, to brag about things and later recant – but I find it so incredibly off-putting: I see people posting or talking about how great their relationships are (and how you can be more like them), and then within a year or two they are no longer in those relationships, and I just don't understand.

To me the appropriate emotional response to finding yourself in a good relationship is 1% pride at whatever hard work you did (and keep doing) to make your partner's life better, and 99% awed amazement that the universe has bestowed this ridiculous gift on you, plus appropriate reverence and humility in the face of the unknowable future. (This is also, I think, the right response to all other good fortunes, including finding yourself alive in the universe to begin with, but that's another story).

And of course, this applies (although differently) to looking at other people's relationships from the outside and saying they are Good. There's so much we don't know about how couples live together, and who will still be glad of it 30 years from now.