Understand the Five A’s To Prosper in Your Partnership

5 simple practices to start using in everyday life.

As a freelance writer, I am often tinkering around updating my portfolio, only to find that articles I wrote in the past are no longer online. Alas, the transient nature of media and the internet! I loved my time writing for the Chopra Global blog, and it no longer exists. So over the next few weeks, I’ll be bringing those stories back to life here. Today’s is one of them. As I am checking off the final days in my Marriage and Family Therapy master’s program, this one felt particularly relevant to share!

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Working on your relationship isn’t something you only need to do in times of strain and tension. In fact, it’s the everyday conscious effort and maintenance that makes all the difference. As marital stability expert John Gottman has written, “Successful long-term relationships are created through small words, small gestures, and small acts.”

Not all of us intuitively know what those small acts should be– especially if we are trying to take our relationships to a new level and are exploring uncharted territory. If you’re left wondering what these small steps look like in practice, there’s a helpful framework you can draw support from: the five A’s.

Renowned relationships expert and teacher David Richo is a psychotherapist who approaches love and relationships through the lens of mindfulness. He is also the man behind the five A’s, which are five elements that contribute to successful, fulfilling relationships

As laid out by Richo, the five A’s are attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing. If successful relationships are built through small acts and gestures, the Five A’s are the categories in which these gestures should belong.

Some may come naturally to us, while others may be harder for us to access due to blocks or wounds that we picked up in our family of origin or past romantic relationships. However, one of the best things about the five A’s is that they can always be cultivated.

Like all good tools we utilize on the spiritual path, the five A’s work in more ways than one. Richo writes in his seminal book, How To Be an Adult in Relationship, “We stand to gain so much when we show the five A’s. They are given to others, but all of them make us more loving when we give them. They are, therefore, the components of building the virtue of love in ourselves. To love is to become loving.”

Building the virtue of love in ourselves builds compassion by way of extension. It allows us to see beyond our own needs and neurosis and develop greater respect and care for our partner as an individual. Practiced with commitment over time, this brings about a great sense of prosperity and trust in relationships.

Put the five A’s into action

We’re all human. There’s nothing deficient about us if we can’t give our partners attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing every minute of every day. That’s why we can practice the five A’s the same way we practice meditation and mindfulness. Just as we return to the breath to ground ourselves in our bodies and the moment, we can return to the five A’s in moments of pause to ground ourselves in our loving nature.

Here are practices that connect with each key element: