I don't usually talk about relationships, especially on the internet, but I've found that framing things in a positive light, labeling events with the best intentions, and striving to live by a higher law yields amazing results. Choosing to love your spouse, recounting the stories of past events with your spouse's actions coming from a place of love, makes for long-lasting, wonderful relationships. This doesn't mean lying about what happened, but don't assume or paint someone in a negative light, in your head or in conversations.
This self-talk about a spouse can also apply to how you talk to yourself about your own actions and choices. Be your own best friend. Don't let yourself get into a habit of treating yourself as if you're from a lesser caste or deserving of verbal and emotional abuse. Write down positive affirmations to read and see frequently, such as on a phone's lock screen, a new tab page of a browser, or on a bathroom mirror or a sticky note below your monitor or on a fridge or cupboard door.
Modeling these behaviors and encouraging positive labeling and framing for your children is especially important. When teaching them emotional intelligence, helping them label their larger-than-life emotions is crucial, but how you label your children and the positive and negative messages you leave in the air to them or to others will shape how their inner voice develops. Be kind with your words and focus on the positive aspects of your kids and tell them about it. Brag about their good traits. What you "water" will grow... if you focus and talk about their negative behaviors/traits or their positive behaviors or traits, the ones that you focus on will likely grow.
And lastly, as you're seeking positivity in your life and relationships, be conscious about who you surround yourself with and look up to. If your personal board of directors has individuals, whether fictional, real, celebrities, or personal people whose ideas and behaviors you espouse, choose positive role models.
Below is some discussion of when habitual interactions in a relationship sour and when they take a decided turn for the worse. I didn't want to forget these parts of it, so I wrote this post.
I was at a party one time and there was a marriage counselor there that had been working for 20 something years in couples counseling. I asked her what the number one sign was that the couple wasn't going to make it. Without hesitating, she said "If one person shows contempt for the others feelings, it's over!" ifnotmewh0
This is the answer, well, one of them. John Gottman calls contempt, defensiveness*, being critical, and stonewalling the "4 horsemen of relationships". In other words, they are the signs that things are deeply not ok between the two people involved.
Looking at past relationships, contempt is the big one. Once that entered the picture from either side, it was all downhill from there.