While I was visiting friends out of town last week, I got an email from my husband titled “Definition of bliss”. In it, he told me how he’d spent his whole day driving to pick up our youngest son from school, driving with him to yet another city to pick up our daughter and her boyfriend, having a leisurely lunch with the bunch of them, and then doing the whole drive in reverse. He felt deeply blessed for the connection. While I was reading the email to my friends in the kitchen, as we collected our morning coffee, my girlfriend reached out to grab a mug and a little note fell off the shelf. Her beloved had apparently hidden tiny love notes around the house and they kept popping up unexpectedly. This confluence of events got us wondering—what are the hallmarks of joyful relationships?

My friends feel I have some standing to talk about this. This past December, my husband and I celebrated our 26th anniversary—and we still light up when we talk about each other. Through all the ups and downs, the struggles and strife, the challenges of raising three children, the disappointments and the achievements, we’ve come through stronger. So on this day set aside for the celebration of love (heaven forbid we should extend that to the rest of the year ;), I’d like to share with you some of the commitments I believe help to foster deeper connection.

1. Always choose in

I’d like to give credit where it’s due: this phrase was coined by a friend of mine. That said, I’ve always felt it perfectly encapsulates the first and most essential ingredient of relationship success. In my experience, the relationships that work the best are never up for grabs (I’m obviously excluding abusive or unhealthy relationships from this). The partners do not consider splitting up a viable option. That means that when shit hits the fan—and it always does—neither partner resorts to threats of abandonment. Confrontations cannot rock the foundations of the relationship.

When you adopt that as the cornerstone of connection, the nature of conflict shifts. Because you’re always choosing in, your first and best option in the face of difficulty will always be to come to some type of amicable, mutually-beneficial resolution. You’re in this for the long haul. You’ve committed to being together. You knew it wouldn’t all be rainbows and fairy dust. But here we are, together. So it’s incumbent on us to get past our challenges and reunite again in the middle, together.

2. Lighten up

You know those people who seem to always be in a dour mood? No matter what’s going on, they can find the misery in the moment? The ones that always have something to complain about and can pinpoint with scientific accuracy exactly what’s wrong with the weather, their boss, their spouse, and traffic? Tell me—do you want to be hitched to someone like that? Ya, me neither.

I’m not saying relationship success requires you to put on a happy face when things are going sideways. But I am saying that it’s really important to reserve your anguish for the situations that really merit it. Burned food, late arrivals, broken crockery, lost possessions, and even occasional drunken stumbling simply don’t qualify. Instead, these—and pretty much any other occasion you can possibly identify that doesn’t involve health issues or death—should inspire mirth, maybe even laughter. My husband and I actively look for opportunities to laugh. We crack jokes. We rib each other. We tell tale tales. And we often end up laughing so hard that we cry. Seriously—you can’t take life so seriously. When you’re light, you light up the people around you, and that virtuous circle solidifies connection.

3. Idolize, at least a little

So, I’ve been with my husband for almost 30 years, and I still kinda think he can do everything. Empirically, I know it’s not strictly true (sorry, baby, JK—you rock!). But somewhere in my heart or gut or soul, I have unwavering faith in his essential greatness. And I know he extends the same sort of unreasoning and unreasonable faith to me. By putting each other up on this pedestal, we both stand prepared to celebrate each other’s successes with excessive exuberance. We rally each other. We support blindly. Joyously, it’s a habit of living we’ve extended to our children too. No matter what they’re pursuing, we rejoice in their path, fully believing that they’re on the road necessary for their self-discovery or self-realization—even if it’s a road we don’t at all understand.

Inside a relationship, this type of commitment means you hold the space for the people you love to reach their own highest destinies. And they hold the same space for you. The tide lifts all of our ships.

4. Practice gratitude

I could probably come up with a list of 50 practices couples could adopt to strengthen connection. Creating healthy rituals is important. Open communication. Clarifying the rules of engagement in an argument. Adopting pattern interrupts so you avoid saying cruel things unthinkingly. It goes on and on.

But the real truth is, those are all just window dressing. As important as they are, they simply won’t apply to every relationship in every situation. But I believe choosing in, lightening up, idolizing, and practicing gratitude are universal. Regardless of the rituals you choose, these four essential elements underpin relationship success. I am so happy and grateful to love and be loved. Happy Valentine’s Day!