5 secrets to keeping a long-term relationship fresh and vibrant

What is the most important thing in your life? After giving it some thought, you'll probably agree that the most important thing in life is the feeling of love inside and around you. If you feel the flow of love in your life, you have a springboard to miracles under your feet with every step. If you don't feel the flow of love, you could be a billionaire and feel like a pauper. Without love, you could be a movie star and not be able to look at your face in the mirror.

We know this firsthand because several thousand couples have come through our office doors over the past 20 years. All of them were seeking to restore the flow of love between them. A few of them were billionaires and movie stars you'd recognize. All of them had problems you'd recognize. They are the same problems we've faced in our own marriage. They are the exact problems that you and everyone else will face in a committed relationship. On the surface, the problems revolve around specific issues:

How can you end blame and criticism?

How can you stop arguing about money?

How can you keep passion and romance alive over time?

How can you agree on how to parent the kids?

Beneath those specific issues, though, are bigger questions that everyone must answer:

How can you thrive in a long-term relationship as a creative individual and as an intimate partner?

How can you use the inevitable challenges of a long-term relationship as a springboard to greater closeness and creative vitality?

How can you ignite passion and vitality--and keep it glowing forever?

These were the questions we had to answer in our own marriage, and they were the questions that inspired much of our work in the decade after our book, Conscious Loving, was published. Since 1990, we have worked with many people in long-term relationships: 2,000 couples in private sessions, groups, and seminars. These relationships ranged from 7 to 52 years in length, with an average length of 12 years, were mostly heterosexual, and were racially and ethnically diverse. We were interested in discovering what saps the vitality from long-term relationships and what can make the vitality surge again. We were especially interested in finding out what people could do to prevent vitality from decreasing in the first place. Here is the essence of what we learned.