TED Talks Daily - The 6 essential ingredients of loving relationships | Sara Nasserzadeh

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

How do you build a lifetime of love? After analyzing 450 couples across more than 40 countries, relational psychotherapist Sara Nasserzadeh discovered six essential ingredients for successful relationships (hint: it's not just about sexual chemistry). Learn more about "emergent love" — a new, evidence-based model for fostering the love you desire.Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. It's in the news more and more these days, people getting into relationships with chatbots. I imagine we all have an opinion about AI intimacy, but regardless of what you think, it raises crucial questions about what love is and the very nature of human connection. In this talk, drawing on research done with thousands of couples, social psychologists, Sarah Nasr Zaday offers a new blueprint for love. She shares the six ingredients she has found are needed for thriving human relationships.

Let me tell you about Claire. Claire is 42, a sharp executive. On paper, her marriage is perfect, and in my office, she whispered, I feel nothing. And then she asked me, am I asking for too much? Max is 38.

a founder who's lived happily with Ali for the past four years, and yet he found himself in my office asking me, do you think she's the one? We all carry stories about how love should be, feel, and look like. I see this through the lens of my work as a relational psychotherapist, psychosexual therapists, and a social psychologist. In the past 20 years,

I've helped more than thousands of people, thousands of people across the world to help them make sense of their relationships from the most intimate spaces to the most public ones. Today, I want you lovelies to look at me as your relationship architect, because I'm here to offer you a blueprint that is evidence-informed and is going to introduce you to a whole new model of love so that you can develop the loving relationships your desire without second-guessing yourself, the other person,

or the relationship. I hope you're ready. So my colleague and I studied 450 couples who've been together anywhere from one to 40 years. And these couples showed us six essential ingredients. And after we analyzed 180,000 data points about them, we came up with these six ingredients, but also, surprisingly, we found out

about the whole new model of love that I call emergent love, because it can only exist when the six ingredients that are essential for thriving relationships are present. Imagine it as a warm and cozy fire that can only be alive when all the essential elements are there to keep it going. Now, when I walk you through these six ingredients, you might say, oh, they sound familiar, but there's a twist, because our thriving couples embody them.

and define them differently. Number one is attraction. For thriving couples, attraction is way beyond sexual chemistry. It's only one of the reasons that they come together. And in this way, attraction is a renewable energy because it wants you to be around a person and explore new ways of being with them and re-knowing them. On the other hand, sexual chemistry is a fleeting biological desire.

that can fizzle out when the initial infatuation phase is over. I'll tell you what. When the novelty part of the relationship is over, if you want to chase the chemistry is as if you are tickling yourself. It just doesn't work, and then we are convinced that we fell out of love with our loved one or we chose wrong. There's also a daily practice that we observed in thriving couples,

that they didn't name it, but in social psychology, we have a term for it. It's called reciprocal liking. What it is basically is, if I think that you like me, I like you back. It's more likely that I like you back. Now, these daily signals need to change as we change over time. Really think about it. Between diaper duty and deadlines, where is that signal that says, I like you?

I'm into this version of you now. Number two is respect. Respect literally means to look again. So basically it's the opposite of taking anyone, including yourself, for granted. And obedience, walking on eggshells, is not respect. They are fear. Thriving couples have basic etiquette.

They say hello in the mornings. They say good night before they call it a night. They don't interrupt, they don't walk away with conversation, and they don't cover up sarcasm as humor. I often hear I'm not respected by my partner, and I ask, are you respectable? And there's a pause. I say, look, do you leave by your own principles,

or are you the first person walking all over them? Do you communicate your boundaries as invitations so the other person knows how to be around you, lovingly, firmly and on top? or as passive-aggressive ultimatums? And do you equally have regards for the other person's boundaries? Thriving couples are both, respectable and respectful.

Number three is trust. We found that trust has two main pillars. One of them is consistency and one of them is reliability. So you have to really be able to have both. Now, thriving couples know that you know that. when couples know that trust is built and rebuilt based on little promises kept over time, not grand and expensive and expensive apologies.

Think of it this way, that you need to show up for one another, no matter how big or small the stakes are. You can't leave the other person hanging. Think about that unpaid bill. Think about the second drink, you chock down and you don't even remember it. Think about the private story that was shared public. Think about the harmless DMs and likes.

Number four is compassion, not empathy. If empathy is feeling with the other, compassion is feeling for the other without losing your own ground. Our couples told us that over-empetizing and over-identifying can kill your relationship. can really drain your relationship. Yes, there are moments that you would like to commiserate with each other or feel those juicy sensations when you have erotic empathy with one another.

But for daily lives, everyday life, compassion is the default for these couples. Picture this. I come home, upset. You match my intensity to the level that you lose it with me. If we are both bleeding, who gets the band-aid? So thriving couples can be there for the other without making the scenario about themselves.

Next one is shared vision. You need to know where you are going individually and as a couple. At least know where you don't want to end up. Otherwise, your resources will be scattered and resentment will be inevitable. Driving couples have plans for their days, weeks, and years ahead. They name a destination, and then they prioritize their resources of time, energy, attention, and money,

and they commit to them. So their daily choices are strategies, not talk of war. They also negotiate often what movies to watch tonight. They compromise sometimes. This holiday at my parents, the other one, at yours. They sacrifice rarely. For example, let's have this relationship long. for two years until your degree is over.

They make a time-bound, specific, rewarded, not expected. Last but not least is the loving behaviors. Loving behaviors show us you don't fall out of love. You fall out of loving. So one thing that we learned is loving, thriving relationships is not unconditional or a given. When was the last time that you went out of? out of your way for your partner.

Do you give each other the benefit of the doubt? Thriving couples are tender with their touch, with their word, with their presence, and they make them exclusive and specific to each other, even if other people are in the mix. So for example, if they say, honey, their dog and partner and mom and neighbor, everybody don't show up all at the same time. There you have it, Lovelace. I offered you an evidence-informed blueprint to build

thriving relationships, so love has a chance to emerge. You build what fits your life. And tonight we talked about coupledom. But trust me, I've seen it over and over again, if you master these six ingredients, you will rise in all of your relationships, because the way we do one relationship is the way we do them all. And if you're going to take one thing out of our time together tonight,

let it be this. everyone can and deserves to be in the loving relationships they desire. Thank you. That was Sarah Nasrzadeh at TED Next 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team,

Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonicaa Sungmar Nivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faisi Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balozo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.