At the budding blush of a relationship, lovers usually describe their partners in the most glowing terms.

Couples in the early stages of a romance, when it's flush with lust and passion, tend to overlook shortcomings.

But even later on, well into a more realistic committed relationship, partners may ignore or deny the shortfalls in a romance.

Scientists have often wondered how to best predict which relationships will last and what ones will buckle and fold.

In the past, researchers have asked lovers to evaluate their romantic relationships and then watched to see what happens, but self-evaluating one's love affairs hasn't been the best scientific predictor of a romance's decline. Why?

Researchers theorize people in love are often unwilling or unable to explicitly admit or recognize the kinks in a relationship to an outsider. However, a recent study reported in Psychological Science found that when lovers were given an implicit test of one's attitude about a lover — in other words a study in which the subjects are unaware they are evaluating their romances — the test was far more accurate in identifying those relationship likely to survive or fail.

In a series of tests, the lover was given a word association exercise, pairing their partner with either positive or negative words. The good news? The scientists found that most of the subjects associated their partners with positive words and that those couples were most likely to remain a couple a year later.

Scientists also found a strong likelihood of a later breakup with a partner who associated negative words with their lover, which may sound like bad news. But, researchers argue that therapists can use that red flag to better intervene and save a relationship.