A long-lasting happy marriage is about knowing your partner being supportive and  nice. And accepting that some issues are unsolvable.

Most marital counselling includes 'active listening' which is  validating and affirming your spouse's feedback.

But Susan Boon, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta  disagrees. She says happy marriages don't do that. Instead she refers to a book, Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work, by John Gottman, MD, psychologist and founder of The Gottman Institute in Seattle.

In his book, Gottman says martial therapy  is unrealistic.

'You're asking people to do Olympic-style gymnastics when they can hardly crawl,  many people will fail at those techniques.'

In an article on WebMD, Boons says be nice to your partner and make small gestures and often.

"The little things matter, what a happy marriage is based on is deep friendship, knowing each other well, having mutual respect, knowing when it makes sense to try to work out an issue, when it is not solvable. Many kinds of issues simply aren't solvable."



Boon says couples need to stay in touch with  how to manage frustration in the heat of an arguement.

 "It can be humor; it can be whatever helps diffuse the escalating heat. In happy marriages, couples naturally do this. They deflect the anger, and get back on an even keel."

A long-lasting, happy marriage is about knowing your partner, being supportive, and being nice. Research shows that, "for every one negative thing you do, there must be five positive things that balance it out," says Boon. "Make sure to balance the negatives with positives. Your marriage has to be heavily in favor of the positives."

"Conflict is common, and a healthy dose of conflict is OK," says Terri Orbuch, PhD, a research scientist with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

In her research, Orbuch has studied one group of couples for the past 16 years.

"How you deal with it, that's what matters in a happy marriage," she tells WebMD. "You have to fight fair. Stay calm. You cannot be at problem-solving best when you're angry. Come back to the situation when you're not, and you can have a whole new perspective."

Experts offer some  simple tips on having a happy marriage:

Consider your spouse's point of view."Studies show that every single action has a different meaning depending on if you are male, female, your race, your background.

That is important to remember in conflict resolution."Consider your spouse's point of view, if you want a truly happy marriage. "I'm a true believer in this," says Orbuch. "

Take a break.

"If you're going back and forth, if you find blood pressure going up, take minutes or seconds," she says. "Don't take hours. If you take too long, it festers in the other person, they've had time analyze it; you're dismissing their feelings opinions, dismissing them."