For the past few years, the popular and professional psychology press have been filled with discussions of "positive psychology" and the science of happiness.

These discussions start out typically by making a distinction between pleasure — which is transient and superficial but satisfying in the immediate term — and happiness, which is more substantive and more enduring but less of a primitive rush.

It is not uncommon for people to mistake that quick, high amplitude pleasure rush for happiness. It does feel good. As with any chemical rush, they often set out to find and replicate that rush experience. And as with any such rush, the search is often disappointing, with each subsequent "success" less satisfying and less enduring.

Happiness, on the other hand, has a more enduring quality that does not degrade over time or repetition. Research into the nature of happiness has consistently found that happiness is founded on doing something "meaningful." "Meaningful," it turns out, generally involves being engaged with or for other people.

Pleasure may be accomplished all by yourself and all for yourself. Happiness mostly needs to be with and/or for others. All-about-you may get you an immediate pleasure experience, but it won't get you to the more substantive and enduring construct we call happiness. Happiness is the one that is sustaining and supportive in the long run.

There's the wonderful paradox — to make yourself happy, you can't be all about only you. To make yourself happy, you have to be about something more than just you.

So what does this mean in relationship terms?

In the most basic way, it means that if you're in a relationship so that the other person will make YOU happy, you are ultimately going to be dissatisfied and unhappy.

The pleasure that you experience in the short term will have no lasting foundation. Not to mention that no partner will be indefinitely satisfied to be only a means to your (pleasure) ends.

To be happy will require being oriented toward building a meaningful relationship in which both partners can get their needs met and in which both partners can find satisfaction. It's not as simple as a balance sheet. Achieving happiness requires wanting your relationship to be a good one, a meaningful coming together of two whole people whose goals reach beyond simple pleasure.

Different relationships can have different ways to find meaning. For many people, raising healthy, happy, competent children who contribute in some way to the world is the way they most particularly find meaning. For others, meaning is found in creating a loving, safe and growthful marriage.

For many other people their relationship is enriched by some meaningful cause or goal, like environmental activism, world peace or animal rights.

Each person, each relationship, must find meaning in their own way; and we won't all agree on what's meaningful. To find happiness is to be engaged in something that YOU find meaningful.

Whatever meaning matters to you, it's engagement in something meaningful that is the royal road to happiness. In relationships, the most direct connection to something meaningful is to be engaged in a loving, supportive and generous way with your partner.

If you let yourself get diverted by a focus on your own individual pleasure, you can miss out on something infinitely more valuable and lasting. It turns out that giving of yourself in service of another is the most direct way to reach your own happiness.

Whether or not you're in a personal relationship, the principles still apply. If you don't have a partner relationship in which to find meaning, look beyond yourself to someone or something to whom or to which you can make a contribution. Find some way to engage meaningfully. Give of yourself.

What you get back is your own happiness.

Dr. Benna Sherman is a licensed psychologist in private practice. Questions of general interest may be sent to her at 479 Jumpers Hole Road, Suite 304B, Severna Park, MD 21146, or emailed to bzsherman@comcast.net. Visit http://www.drbennasherman.com or follow on Twitter @drbenna.

Copyright © 2015, Capital Gazette