Affair-Proof Your Marriage Tips from Kate Wachs PhD., author of the book “Relationships For Dummies.” Give Double. Offer each other at least twice as much praise and affection as you do criticism. It ensures a feeling of emotional support. Pay Attention. You need to focus on each other at 3 important times each day – early morning, after work and before bed. Talk to each other, ask questions, take your emotional temperature and you’ll both feel cherished. Reach out to each other. Remember when you first started dating and you held hands all the time. Why don’t you still do that? Hugs, kisses, eye contact, playfulness, phone calls during the day – all those things keep you feeling connected If you want to predict whether or not your marriage will last, polish up your math skills. Because in the world of relationships, the important numbers to learn are: five to one. That’s the ratio of positive interactions to negative ones that are needed to avoid divorce. It’s not that you can’t argue, but the marriages that survive, manage to deliver positive emotional messages even when they’re fighting. That’s the word from Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist who’s developed a mathematical model for relationships……He calls long-term happily married couples the “Masters of Marriage”. When they talk about something important, they may be arguing, but they’re also teasing and giving signs of affection. Gottman has been observing couples for decades and he came up with his mathematical model by calculating the facial expressions, blood pressure, and other physical reactions of happy couples to unhappy couples. And he says that marriages fall into the danger zone when the ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions dips below five to one. He’s also found that a crucial factor in these interactions is the ability of one spouse to influence the other. Good couples routinely influence each other’s moods in a positive direction. But a big predictor of divorce is a man’s refusal to listen to his wife’s suggestions……Or vice versa. So if you want to make sure your marriage stays healthy, just make sure you have plenty of positives to outweigh the negatives. To go further, you can check out Gottman’s formula at www.PsychologyToday.com