New York, July 23 (IANS): If you want to know the secret behind a loving and long-lasting relationship, then first cultivate humility. Humility creates a capacity for greater forgiveness when partners behave rudely, says a new study.

"Cultivating humility can be tough especially because the people who need it the most might not realise they are lacking in it," said Daryl Van Tongeren, study co-author from Hope College in Holland, Michigan in a Chicago Tribune report.

To understand this, Van Tongeren and team analysed how humility creates a circle of trust and support in couple. They found that when people enter into a relationship, they have to overcome their selfish mode of operating, which has served them well in single life.

Ideally, if both people act selflessly, the relationship will flourish.

"But if one partner acts selflessly and the other partner exploits them by acting selfishly, the humble partner loses out," said Van Tongeren in the study published in the journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice.