Les Parrott - Making Happy: The Art and Science of a Happy Marriage

THE ART AND SCIENCE
OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE

#1 New York Times Best-Selling Authors

Copyright 2014 by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott

Published by Worthy Publishing, a division of Worthy Media, Inc., 134 Franklin Road, Suite 200, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027.

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Helping People Experience the Heart of God

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, niv Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations noted msg are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations noted nasb are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked hcsb are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible, Holman csb, and hcsb are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers. Scripture quotations marked nlt are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-61795-120-6 (hardcover w/ jacket)

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Printed in the United States of America
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To Corey and Mia Hays.

One of the happiest couples we know.

And a couple who has brought

unending happiness into our family.

Do you know what you can do to instantly make your relationship 25 percent happierstarting today?

Do you know how to counter the inevitable effects of taking each other for granted?

Are you using happiness to build a firewall of protection around your relationship?

Do you know the easy way to ensure that your partner is happier today than yesterday?

Are you avoiding the most common mistake couples make in pursuing happiness together?

Did you think marriage would make you happyinstead of you making your marriage happy?

Are you ready to deepen your relationship by being happy in love?

reveals the answer to these questions and more!

The highest happiness on earth is the happiness of marriage.
William Lyon Phelps

Knowledge of what is possible
is the beginning of happiness.

George Santayana

You may not know his name, but Jason McElwain made a lot of people happy. As a struggling autistic high school student in Rochester, New York, he was a long way from making the cut for the schools basketball team. But his heart was in the sport, so the coach let him help out as team manager. Jason took the job seriously and his fellow classmates respected him for it. He even wore a white shirt and black tie to every game as he sat on the end of bench, fetching towels and water for the players.

In his senior year the coach did something unexpected. He put Jason into the game with four minutes and nineteen seconds left on the clock. The crowd in that high school gym went wild, cheering Jasons name.

Jason took his first shotmissing the hoop by about six feet. But one minute later he got the ball again and made a three-pointer that set the gym on fire.

Jason wasnt done. He kept shooting and kept hitting. He scored twenty points in four minutes during his one and only game. He made six three-pointersa school record.

In the news clip, Coach Johnson got choked up retelling Jasons story. In twenty-five years of coaching Ive never experienced the emotional high of that game, he said. I just started to cry. And hes not the only one. The clip spread like wildfire through social media with more than three million hits and comments like:

Oh no, Im crying at work!

Amazing. Im Facebooking this now.

Just what I needed. Thanks!

Teary joy wells up in almost everyone who sees the elated home crowd storming the court after Jasons final three-pointer and lifting him on their shoulders. Why? Because you cant help but to get an emotional lift yourself. The happy pandemonium in the gym is contagious. You want to share it with others.

Weve shown the clip to students in our university classes, many who have seen it before, and they literally cheer and applaud the screen. When asked to describe their feelings we hear words like awe, delight, thrill, surprise. But mostly we hear happy.

The human spirit hungers to be borne aloft. We want a nudge toward happiness. Our God-given capacity for uplift is what makes us euphorically human. And according to a growing mountain of scientific research, happiness is not only critical to our relationships and well-being, it doesnt depend on the uncommon McElwain brand of exhilaration hitting our e-mails in-box.

Lifting our spirits, thankfully, isnt contingent upon finding YouTube miracles like Jasons basketball experience, Susan Boyles surprisingly stunning solo on Britains Got Talent, or Sully Sullenbergers phenomenal airline landing on the Hudson River. And our happinessthe kind that endurescertainly doesnt depend on getting a job promotion or winning the lottery. In fact, most of the things we think will make us happier dont. Humans, it turns out, are extraordinarily bad at predicting their own happiness (more on that later).

One of the most pervasive happiness myths is the notion that when we find our perfect partnerwhen we say I dowell have a lock on happiness. And we will, for a time. No doubt about it: marriage makes us happy. The problem is that marriageeven when initially perfectly satisfyingwill not make us intensely happy for as long as we believe it will. Studies reveal that the happiness boost from marriage lasts an average of only two years.

Unfortunately, when those two years are up and fulfilling our goal to find the ideal partner hasnt made us as happy as we expected, we often feel there must be something wrong with us or we must be the only ones to feel this way. But were not. Its the common course of love. And if left unattended, if were not deliberately making happy together, our relationship suffers. If we turn the right dials to boost our happiness factor in love, however, our relationship soars.