The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert, John Gottman, Nan Silver (100%)

Ten years later the researchers determined that, compared with the couples who remained happily married, those who ended up unhappy or divorced had secreted 34 percent higher levels of adrenaline while arguing as newlyweds. These researchers also found that another stress hormone, ACTH, was twice as high in the newlywed wives who ended up in troubled marriages or divorced ten years later compared with the happily married women. In other words, these researchers were able to predict the fate of newlywed couples ten years later just by measuring hormone levels in their blood during their first year of marriage!
Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. But in their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones. Rather than creating a climate of disagreement and resistance, they embrace each other’s needs.
I often think that if fitness buffs spent just 10 percent of their weekly workout time—say, twenty minutes a day—working on their marriage instead of their bodies, they would get three times the health benefits they derive from exercise class or the treadmill.
Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that communication—and more specifically, learning to resolve your conflicts—is the royal road to romance and an enduring, happy marriage.
The problem is that therapy that focuses solely on active listening and conflict resolution doesn’t work. A Munich-based marital therapy study conducted by Kurt Hahlweg and associates found that even after employing active-listening techniques the typical couple was still distressed. Those few couples who did benefit relapsed within a year.
But she is not a therapist listening to a patient whine about a third party. The person her husband is trashing behind all of those “I” statements is her! There are some people who can be magnanimous in the face of such criticism
Active listening asks couples to perform Olympic-level emotional gymnastics even if their relationship can barely walk.
I’m not suggesting that validation, active listening, and “I statements” are useless. They can be enormously helpful when attempting to resolve conflicts. In fact, I often recommend them to couples in a modified format with specific guidelines, as you’ll see later in the book.
The notion that you can save your relationship just by learning to communicate more sensitively is probably the most widely held misconception about happy marriages
If you find yourself keeping score about some issue with your spouse, that suggests it’s an area of tension in your marriage.
At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but through small gestures day in and day out.
If all of this sounds humdrum and unromantic, it’s anything but. In small but important ways, Olivia and Nathaniel are maintaining the friendship that is the foundation of their love. As a result, they have a marriage that is far more passionate than do couples who punctuate their lives together with romantic vacations and lavish anniversary gifts but have fallen out of touch in their daily lives. Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.
Thanks to homeostasis, no matter how much or how little you diet, your body has a strong tendency to hover at that weight. Only by resetting your body’s metabolism (say, by exercising regularly) can dieting really help you lose pounds for good. In a marriage, positivity and negativity operate similarly. Once your marriage gets “set” at a high degree of positivity, it will take far more negativity to harm your relationship than if your “set point” were lower. And if your relationship becomes overwhelmingly negative, it will be more difficult to repair.
Betrayal is, fundamentally, any act or life choice that doesn’t prioritize the commitment and put the partner “before all others.”
We say they are using a repair attempt. This term refers to any statement or action—silly or otherwise—that prevents negativity from escalating out of control.
In the strongest marriages, husband and wife share a deep sense of meaning. They don’t just “get along”—they also support each other’s hopes and aspirations and build a sense of purpose into their lives together.
most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other’s mind—but it can’t be done. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, or values. By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage. Instead, they need to understand the bottom-line difference that is causing the conflict—and to learn how to live with it by honoring and respecting each other.
When a discussion leads off this way—with criticism and/or sarcasm, which is a form of contempt—it has begun with a “harsh start-up.”
Like many complaints, it has three parts: (1) Here’s how I feel (“I’m really angry”); (2) About a very specific situation (“you didn’t sweep last night”); (3) And here’s what I need/want/prefer (“Could you do it now?”). In contrast, a criticism is global and expresses negative feelings or opinions about the other’s character or personality:
Defensiveness in all its guises just escalates the conflict, which is why it’s so deadly.
Eventually he gets up and leaves the room. Rather than confronting his wife, he disengages. By turning away from her, he is avoiding a fight, but he is also avoiding his marriage. He has become a stonewaller.
Usually people stonewall as a protection against feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed, a sensation we call flooding.
Second, the physical sensations of feeling flooded—the increased heart rate, sweating, and so on—make it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving discussion. When your body goes into overdrive during an argument, it is responding to a very primitive alarm system we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors. All those distressful reactions, like a pounding heart and sweating, occur because on a fundamental level your body perceives your current situation as dangerous.
with your mate, the consequences are disastrous. Your ability to process information is reduced, meaning it’s harder to pay attention to what your partner is saying. Creative problem solving and your sense of humor go out the window. You’re left with the most reflexive, least intellectually sophisticated responses in your repertoire: to fight (act critical, contemptuous, or defensive) or flee (stonewall). Any chance of resolving the issue is gone. Most likely, the discussion will just worsen the situation.
In 85 percent of heterosexual marriages, the stonewaller is the husband. This is not because of some lack on the man’s part. The reason lies in our evolutionary heritage.
To this day, the male cardiovascular system remains more reactive than that of the female and slower to recover from stress.
Frequently feeling flooded leads almost inevitably to emotional distancing, which in turn leads to feeling lonely. Without help, the couple will end up divorced or living in a dead marriage in which they maintain separate, parallel lives in the same home.
Sadly, most marriages at this stage get the wrong kind of help. Well-meaning therapists will deluge the couple with advice about negotiating their differences and improving their communication.
In contrast, emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other’s world. I call this having a richly detailed love map
What happened to Maggie happens to many new parents—the experience of having a child is so profound that your whole notion of who you are and what you value gets reshuffled.
Too often when a new baby comes, the husband gets left behind.
Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance.
The simple reason is that fondness and admiration are antidotes for contempt. If you maintain a sense of respect for your spouse, you are less likely to act disgusted with him or her when you disagree.
but real-life romance is fueled by far more humdrum scenes. It is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life.
Then say to your partner, “I want to respond to you positively, so can you please tell me what you need right now from me? I really want to know.”
I have worked with couples who find that the de-stressing exercise above actually adds to their stress because one or both of them feel very uncomfortable listening to the other express negative emotions, even when they aren’t the target. This is a form of turning away. I can’t emphasize enough how beneficial it will be to your relationship to give your partner the gift of being there when he or she is upset.
men who allowed their wives to influence them had happier relationships and were less likely to eventually divorce than men who resisted their wives’ influence.
Although a wife would sometimes express anger or other negative emotion toward her husband, she rarely responded to him by increasing the negativity. Usually she either tried to tone it down or matched it.
Once a couple move in together or get engaged, the groom-to-be is suddenly immersed in what is probably an alien world. In
Too often couples feel mired in conflict or distance themselves from each other as a protective device.
you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you’ll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty, or fifty years.” Marriages are successful to the degree that the problems you choose are ones you can cope with.
Avoiding conflict over a perpetual problem leads to emotional disengagement.
Negative emotions are important. Although it is stressful to listen to your partner’s negative feelings, remember that successful relationships live by the motto “When you are in pain, the world stops and I listen.”
Negative emotions hold important information about how to love each other better.
No one is right. There is no absolute reality in marital conflict, only two subjective ones. This is true whether the disagreement is solvable or perpetual.
Acceptance is crucial. It is virtually impossible for people to heed advice unless they believe the other person understands, respects, and accepts them for who they are. When people feel criticized, disliked, or unappreciated, they are unable to change. Instead, they feel under siege, and they dig in.
Children thrive when we express understanding and respect for their emotions (“That doggie scared you,” “You’re crying because you’re sad right now,” “You sound very angry; let’s talk about it”) rather than belittle or punish them for their feelings (“It’s silly to be afraid of such a little dog,” “Big boys don’t cry,” “Go to your room till you calm down”). When you let children know that all their emotions, including the negative ones, are okay to have, you are also communicating that they themselves are acceptable even when sad, crabby or scared. This helps children feel positive about themselves, which makes growth and change possible. The same is true for adults.
My fifth principle entails the following steps: 1. Soften your start-up. 2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts. 3. Soothe yourself and each other. 4. Compromise. 5. Process any grievances so that they don’t linger.
More often marriages end because, to avoid constant skirmishes, husband and wife distance themselves so much that their friendship and sense of connection are lost.
The best soft start-up has four parts: (1) “I share some responsibility for this …” (2) Here’s how I feel … (3) about a specific situation and … (4) here’s what I need … (positive need, not what you don’t need).
One reason couples miss each other’s repair attempts is that these messages don’t always arrive sugarcoated. If your spouse yells, “You’re getting off the topic!” or grumbles, “Can we take a break?” that’s a repair attempt despite the negative delivery. If you listen to his or her tone rather than the words, you could miss the real message, which is “Stop! This is getting out of hand.”
In less stable marriages, however, conflict discussions can lead to the opposite reaction—they can trigger flooding. When this occurs, you feel overwhelmed both emotionally and physically. Most likely you think thoughts of righteous indignation (“I don’t have to take this anymore”) or innocent victimhood (“Why is she always picking on me?”). Meanwhile, your body is in distress. Usually your heart is pounding, you’re sweating, you’re holding your breath.
have found that in the vast majority of cases, when one spouse does not “get” the other’s repair attempt, it’s because the listener is flooded and therefore can’t really hear what the spouse is saying.
If you find yourself sitting with your arms folded and shaking your head no (or just thinking it) when your spouse is trying to talk out a problem, your discussion will never get anywhere.
Often compromise is just a matter of talking out your differences and preferences in a systematic way.
As with most difficulties, the best approach to coping with gridlock is to avoid it in the first place. Fortunately, the more adept you become at following the other six principles, the less likely you are to gridlock over intractable differences. As you come to know and trust each other, you will find that disagreements that once would have overwhelmed you are more easily handled,
To navigate your way out of gridlock, you have to first understand that no matter how seemingly insignificant the issue, gridlock is a sign that you each have dreams for your life that the other isn’t aware of, hasn’t acknowledged, or doesn’t respect.
A crucial goal of any marriage, therefore, is to create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about his or her convictions. The more you speak candidly and respectfully with each other, the more likely there is to be a blending of your sense of meaning.

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The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert, John Gottman, Nan Silver (100%) #17