Are you looking for ways to improve your relationship with your spouse? Here are a few healthy habits of happy couples, according to the Times of India.

#1 Go to bed at the same time
Remember the early days of your relationship when you couldn’t wait to get into bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.

#2 Cultivate common interests
After the passion simmers, it is common to realise that you have few interests in common. Try to home in on those common interests and do things together and enjoy each other's company at the same time. Don’t underestimate the importance of couple activities, however few they are.

If common interests are absent, happy couples take time to develop them. But be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

#3 Walk hand in hand or side by side
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

#4 Make trust and forgiveness a default mode
Whenever there is a misunderstanding or when two cannot agree on an issue, do you bear grudges and build up ammunition against each other?

Refrain from doing that as it only makes solving problems difficult.

If a disagreement or an argument cannot be resolved, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving and reset the relationship from there, instead of keeping count of faults.

#5 Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look out for and focus on. Happy couples accentuate the positive and affirm that in each other.

#6 Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected).

Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch” can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world. One is reassured of love and belonging.

#7 Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

#8 Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

#9 Do a “weather” check during the day
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having a lousy day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

#10 Be proud to be seen with your partner
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact - hand on hand or hand on shoulder or back. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

The worst thing to do is to forget to introduce your partner when you bump into a friend or colleague when you're out about town. This sends the wrong signal to your partner that he is not your significant other and you are embarrassed to show him or her off to others.

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples.

A habit is a discrete behaviour that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. All it takes is 21 days of daily repetition of a new behaviour so that it becomes a habit. So select one of the behaviours in the list above to work on proactively for 21 days to cultivate a habit that will make you happier as a couple.

And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologise to your partner, ask their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.