By Sam Mittelsteadt

The Secret of a Happy Relationship looks like a board game: There are two boxes with multicolored pebbles inside, and if you don’t read the instructions first you’ll probably wonder if your set is missing the board you’re supposed to put them on.

But the creators of The Secret, instead, consider it a lifestyle game—there are no dice to roll or cards to turn over to guide your progress, and there’s no winner.

"The relationship is considered the winner," said Gabrielle Raumberger of California, who designed the game for creator Aurelia Haslboeck.
The colored stones inside the boxes represent emotions—pink for love, black for anger, blue for sadness, orange for joy and so on. When one player feels an emotion about the person, he puts a corresponding stone into a round container but doesn’t necessarily share that emotion with the other person.

"Once you commit to doing it, the excuse of not having time becomes an illusion," Raumberger said. "It takes what, three seconds?"

Once a week, players get together and open their containers to reveal their stones to each other. Out of every 20 stones, players usually recall the reasons for about three, Raumberger said.

"If you don’t remember it, chances are it didn’t belong in your daily communication anyway, because it’s something you needed to deal with on your own," she said.

"A better relationship comes from a little bit of distance. Some emotions don’t belong to your partner. It’s something you’ve carried in from somewhere else. If you’re cut off on a freeway and walk in and your partner says, ‘Hi, how are you? You’ll say, ‘Shut up.’

"By waiting the seven days, you'll still communicate the positive stuff, which is important, but also clear out the negative stuff so you don't have grudges that build up."

The idea for the game came from a tale Haslboeck’s grandmother told her about a princess whose parents asked potential suitors the secret of a happy relationship. The prince with the right answer—communication—won her hand.

Haslboeck was so taken with the tale, she created miniature kits with stones to give to her sister and friends when they got married.

"When the third one got the kit, they said, ‘If you don’t put this out, I will,’"Raumberger said.
"I’m not a fairy tale type of personality, though, so I suggested coming out with variations in price and style," said the designer, who was nominated for a Grammy in 1991 for CD package design. "The novelty wears off and a game becomes a box you put on the shelf. I wanted it to look pretty enough to leave out on a coffee table."

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