Imagine you’ve just won the lottery and are now the newest member of the “multimillionaires’ club.” Your sudden good fortune has lit up everything in your world in a scintillating reflection of your uncontainable jubilance. Boasting ear-to-ear smiles, your effervescent mood spills sunshine on everyone in your vicinity, uplifting them as the infectious joy of your new prosperity explodes outward, spontaneously and abundantly. You eagerly embrace the new, bright future awaiting you, its arms wide open in boundless possibilities (end of the imaginary romp through fantasyland).

Now, consider a spin-off proposition to this fantasy that applies to all our relationships, especially our closest ones.

The bigger, more dependable portion of our love for our intimate partners may derive from a counterintuitive source unrelated to our partner’s positive traits and qualities. Love’s primary wellspring may lie within us, under our own purview. It’s “organic,” self-generated by how well we manage ourselves in relation to our partners.

To illustrate, during those buoyant, heady moments when things are looking up and we are managing ourselves well, we’re “happier campers.” Now, as a favorable outcropping, our partners are easier to love and get along with, despite their momentary moodiness, poor temperament, or whether they are at odds with us.

This warm glow of self-generated well-being, however transitory or tepid, contours our immediate perceptions of our partner, positively biasing our view of them. Like an editor........

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