The secret to a lasting relationship? It might be your big ‘we-ness’
You know your attachment style, your love language, and you can spot all the red flags.
But when it comes to predicting if your relationship will truly stand the test of time, there’s one element you might have overlooked.
According to Professor Tegan Cruwys from the ANU School of Medicine and Psychology, it’s the strength of your collective identity: your we-ness.
“In couples therapy, there’s been a growing realisation that a good partnership is about the concept of we-ness,” she explains.
“The relationship becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s less about you and I and more about we and us.”
In her research, Professor Cruwys saw an overlap between this idea of we-ness and social identity, which is how people shift from seeing themselves as separate individuals to being part of a group, such as a family, a club, or a broader community.
It turns out, romantic relationships follow the same psychological pattern.
“When two individuals start to see themselves as a team, they’re no longer seeing themselves as Mary and Alex, they see themselves as a unit: Mary-and-Alex.
“That’s the same psychological process as when we see ourselves as a social identity like a Canberran or a Swiftie.”
Professor Cruwys started digging into this idea, not in the therapist’s office, but in data. She ran a study with a large group of people who had been in a romantic relationship for one year or longer, applying tools from both clinical and social psychology.
Her goal was to see if we-ness could be used as a measure to predict whether a couple would stay together or break-up, the ‘holy grail’ of couples therapy.
And yes, it could.
“Having that sense of we-ness was the strongest predictor of relationship satisfaction, of well-being, and the likelihood of staying together - even more than just liking your partner,” she reveals.
That’s right: when it comes to staying the distance, we-ness is more important than actually liking your partner (a relief to anyone who’s ever been irrationally irritated by their partner’s breathing habits).
“Once that sense of ‘team identity’ is in place,” Professor Cruwys says, “individual annoyances, like snoring, become less important. You care more about the team succeeding.”
This isn’t to say liking your partner doesn’t matter: “Obviously we-ness and liking are related.” But when the relationship feels like a team effort, the focus shifts from ‘why are you like this?’ to ‘how do we work with this?’ It’s a subtle but transformative reframing.
So how do you take the measure of the we-ness in your relationship? Professor Cruwys says to ask yourself some questions.
“Is this relationship an important part of your identity? Do you feel a sense of solidarity with your partner? Do you have a lot in common?” she offers.
“Think about whether your relationship is positive, compatible with the rest of your life, distinctive, and enduring. That’s the same qualities which make membership of any group more appealing.”
The good news is that you can enlarge your we-ness. While it’s not something that can be faked or forced, it can be fostered.
“Therapy can help couples think of themselves in collective terms,” she says, “but it has to be done carefully. Sometimes there are very good reasons people don’t want to be in a team with their partner.”
Still, for couples who do want to make it work, small changes can create big ripples. One place to start is the five-to-one rule.
Relationships expert Dr John Gottman famously found that happy couples tend to have five positive interactions for every one negative one. When that ratio drops, becoming closer to two-to-one, then the writing is on the wall.
Instead of trying to eliminate all conflict, Professor Cruwys suggests simply increasing the number of good moments.
“Say thank you for emptying the dishwasher. Plan a nice dinner. Acknowledge the good things when they happen.”
And when it comes to getting into the team spirit, then, sure, matchy-matchy outfits could help.
“That’s actually something we use in social psychology experiments,” Cruwys says. “Matching t-shirts, team slogans, even making up logos. It helps people start to see themselves as a group.”
Of course, it only works if it’s genuine. You can’t paper over deeper problems with novelty hoodies. “But shared rituals or symbols can help people feel more connected.”
And what about those famously grumpy couples who seem to outlast everyone else? Could mutual irritation somehow be a unifying force?
Cruwys laughs. “I mean, kind of! In couples with strong team identities, one person’s weakness becomes a shared problem. It becomes a completely different way of handling difficulties: less adversarial, more collaborative. Like, ‘your snoring is our problem now.’”
It’s an unexpectedly tender way to look at love: not as a perfect harmony of personalities, but as a pact. A decision to be on the same side, in the long game of love.