What do you do...?

How do you find ways to step back and rebuild loving feelings and admiration for someone when your relationship is challenged? Have you found tips or tricks that worked for you? I'm asking because this is such a common theme in so many of the threads here - people have lost sight of what they once loved about their partners - and I know from my own experiences that this can be hard to recover sometimes. I have learned to "preserve the fog" in my own relationship, which is something I read about before I started dating my husband. An article talked about a study that showed that the happiest, enduring couples still believed much of their rosy view that they had when they first met their partner... that they had NOT let arguments change their basic perceptions of what their partners were like. So when my husband and I have an argument, I might find myself tempted to "rewrite" my beliefs about him, but these days I look for what I saw in the argument that supports the good things I know about him instead. As we move into our fourth year, it remains the strongest, closest relationship I've ever had and we both have a series of failed relationships behind us so I think this is a real bonus. How do other successful couples overcome those challenges that hit relationships?

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629979