Together

Keeping a relationship going: the small everyday things researchers keep finding

Big gestures get the attention, but a lot of relationship research points at something quieter: how partners handle ordinary moments. Here's what several lines of study suggest, and how much weight each one can bear.

When things go right

Psychologist Shelly Gable and colleagues looked at what happens when one partner shares good news. Across four studies, telling others about good things was linked to more positive mood and well-being that day, beyond the good event itself. The boost was bigger when the listener responded actively and constructively, rather than passively or dismissively. And couples whose partners usually met good news with enthusiasm reported more intimacy and satisfaction.1

In everyday terms, the difference is between "That's wonderful, tell me how it happened" and a distracted "nice" or a quick change of subject.

A follow-up study videotaped 79 dating couples taking turns talking about recent good and bad events. Two months later, how partners had responded to good news was more closely tied to how the relationship was doing, including whether couples had broken up, than how they'd responded to bad news.2

Worth knowing: these studies mostly show associations, and the samples were modest. They suggest that responding warmly to good news matters, but they can't prove it causes relationships to last.

Everyday thanks

Sara Algoe and colleagues asked cohabiting couples to record their daily experiences. When one partner did something thoughtful, the other tended to feel grateful, and that gratitude predicted both partners feeling more connected and satisfied the next day, including the partner who had done the kind thing.3 The authors describe everyday gratitude as a kind of booster for relationships.

This was a daily-diary study rather than an experiment, so it shows a pattern over days, not proof that saying thank you will change a relationship on its own.

Doing new things together

Psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues proposed that couples feel closer when they share activities that are new and a little exciting. In surveys, couples who did more "exciting" things together reported more satisfaction, partly because they were less bored. In three lab experiments, couples who did a seven-minute novel, energetic task together showed bigger gains in relationship quality than couples given a more mundane task.4

Later work by other researchers found that self-expanding activities with a partner were linked to more desire and, through that, more satisfaction, with benefits that lasted over time.5 But not every attempt has worked. In two recent studies, couples who shared novel experiences in virtual reality didn't report more growth or satisfaction than comparison couples, though they did report less boredom.6 Novelty seems to help in some forms and settings, and the brief lab tasks behind the original results are a long way from real life.

Bids for attention, and what's actually been published

You may have heard of "bids" from the work of John Gottman. The Gottman Institute describes a bid as any attempt to get a partner's attention, affection or connection, from a smile to a request for help, and "turning toward" as noticing and responding to it.7

The same institute reports that, in a study of newlyweds followed for six years, couples who stayed married turned toward bids 86% of the time and those who divorced only 33%.7 Those figures are widely shared, but the article that states them doesn't point to a peer-reviewed paper, and we weren't able to verify them in a journal. Treat them as illustrative, not established.

What we could find in the peer-reviewed literature is more modest. One study observed 49 newlywed couples over dinner and during a disagreement, and found that everyday playfulness and enthusiasm were connected to more humor and affection during conflict. The authors themselves called the evidence preliminary and noted it was correlational.8

It's also worth knowing that some bigger claims associated with this line of research haven't held up well. Other researchers showed that equations "predicting" divorce can look very accurate on the data they were built from, then lose much of that accuracy when tested on new couples.9 And when one team tried to replicate the major findings of a well-known 1998 Gottman study in 85 couples from at-risk backgrounds, those findings didn't replicate.10

What ties these together

The common thread is responsiveness in small moments: noticing good news, noticing kindness, making room for something new, noticing when your partner reaches for you. None of these findings is a guarantee, many come from correlational studies with modest samples, and effects in any one couple will vary. But they point in a consistent, gentle direction, and none of them costs much to try.

That's the thinking behind how BrainMatch works for couples: one small thing at a time, not a program to complete. A warm reply to good news, a thank-you, a small new plan: that's the scale we mean. If one doesn't fit your week, skip it; the relationship is yours, not ours.

This article is general information, not relationship or therapeutic advice. BrainMatch isn't built on or validated by these studies. We simply want to share what's known, including how much isn't.

Sources

  1. Gable, S. L., Reis, H. T., Impett, E. A., & Asher, E. R. (2004). What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 228–245. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228
  2. Gable, S. L., Gonzaga, G. C., & Strachman, A. (2006). Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 904–917. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.904
  3. Algoe, S. B., Gable, S. L., & Maisel, N. C. (2010). It's the little things: Everyday gratitude as a booster shot for romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01273.x
  4. Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.273
  5. Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J., & Impett, E. A. (2019). Broadening your horizons: Self-expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(2), 237–258. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000148
  6. Balzarini, R. N., Sharma, A., & Muise, A. (2025). Virtually connected: Do shared novel activities in virtual reality enhance self-expansion and relationship quality? Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 67. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11761567/
  7. Brittle, Z. (2015). Turn towards instead of away. The Gottman Institute blog (a popular, not peer-reviewed, source). https://www.gottman.com/blog/turn-toward-instead-of-away/
  8. Driver, J. L., & Gottman, J. M. (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43(3), 301–314. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2004.00024.x
  9. Heyman, R. E., & Smith Slep, A. M. (2001). The hazards of predicting divorce without crossvalidation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(2), 473–479. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00473.x
  10. Kim, H. K., Capaldi, D. M., & Crosby, L. (2007). Generalizability of Gottman and colleagues' affective process models of couples' relationship outcomes. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69(1), 55–72. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1828692/