Besides loving and trusting your spouse, supporting his or her personal goals and dreams may be key to maintaining a happy marriage, new study findings show.

Although the research, by Dr. James E. Maddux, of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, looked at heterosexual couples, he believes the same hold true for gay and lesbian couples too.

"People feel happiest in relationships where they feel the other person helps them achieve their own personal goals," Maddux says.

"It's so easy to be blinded by physical attractiveness," Maddux added. Yet, individuals should evaluate what the other person is trying to accomplish in his or her own life and determine whether those goals are compatible with what they are trying to accomplish, he said.

His findings are based on a study of 117 married couples. Each couple member was asked first to list and rank 10 personal goals, such as obtaining a college degree, and then to identify the extent to which their marital relationship helped or harmed their pursuit of those goals. They also completed a relationship assessment, in which higher scores indicated increased marital satisfaction.

Overall, individuals who perceived themselves as having high levels of support from their spouses in their personal pursuits reported greater satisfaction with their relationship than their less-supported peers.

Maddux and co-author Dr. Marc Kaplan published their study in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

Further, those who agreed that they and their spouse were able to successfully work together to achieve shared goals, such as buying a home or having children, were also likely to report increased marital satisfaction, the findings indicate.

"When people are at the beginning of a potential romantic or close relationship they (should) think very closely about their own aspirations and whether the person will be supportive," Maddux said.

©365Gay.com Ltd® 2004

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