by John M. Gottman and Nan Silver. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999.
Over the years, I’ve read a few marriage-type books. Many of them have some great information in them. However, this one stands out to be as being the most practical and most likely to actually have a positive impact on your marriage. I’d highly recommend that you read through this with your future spouse before getting married and do a lot of the exercises in it. It focuses on the foundational things that really make a marriage great.
The Truth About Happy Marriages
6 – If we would spend 20 minutes a day on our marriage, we would get three times the health benefits of exercising. A good marriage means reduced stress, healthier immune system
8 – 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.
We’ve also felt this. There can be times when we logically and mentally know how to navigate our way through a conflict, but it doesn’t help the conflict at all in the end and we don’t end up feeling much closer.
10 – Active listening was meant for individual psychotherapy. Teaching couples how to listen and communicate better resulted in only a 35% success rate. “Active listening asks couples to perform Olympic-level emotional gymnastics when their relationship can barely walk.”
15 – Avoiding conflict won’t ruin your marriage, as long as both partners are practicing the same style.
17 – “The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. For men, the determining factor is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship.”
19 – “Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.”
This is completely true, through and through. When our marriage is at its best, it is because we are acting as friends. When it is at its worst, we are ignoring each other and not friendly or pleasant to the other.
20 – They are well-versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams.
21 – Once your marriage gets set at a certain degree of positivity, it will take far more negativity to harm your relationship than if your set point were lower.
23 – Almost everybody messes up during marital conflict. “What matters is whether the repairs are successful.”
Most marital arguments cannot be resolved.
How I Predict Divorce
1st sign – a harsh startup to a conflict
2nd sign – the four horsemen
- Criticism
- Contempt
- Defensiveness
- Stonewalling
3rd sign – flooding
4th sign – body language
5th sign – failed repair attempts “The failure of repair attempts is an accurate marker of an unhappy future.”
6th sign – bad memories, not being able to remember the good times
Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Map
Get to know more about your spouse. Know their friends, enemies, stresses, worries, likes, dislikes, ambitions, hopes, aspirations.
Principle 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration
64 – “94% of the time that couples who put a positive spin on their marriage’s history are likely to have a happy future as well. When happy memories are distorted, it’s a sign that the marriage needs help.”
Remind yourself often of your spouse’s positive qualities to prevent a happy marriage from deteriorating.
67 – If your fondness and admiration are being chipped away, the route to bringing them back always begins with realizing how valuable they are. They are crucial to long-term happiness of a relationship because they prevent contempt from becoming an overwhelming presence in your life.
Principle 3 – Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away
82 – Couples often ignore each other’s emotional needs out of mindlessness, not malice.
83 – Happily married couples noticed almost all of the positive things the researchers observed their partners do for them. However, unhappily married couples underestimate their partner’s living intentions by 50%.
96 – A more profound friendship will be a powerful shield against conflict.
Principle 4 – Let Your Partner Influence You
108 – As boys get older…they rarely play with girls, so they miss out on the chance to learn from them. Although 35% of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls, by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually 0 percent. From then till puberty the sexes will have little or nothing to do with each other.
…Once a couple move in together or get engaged, the groom-to-be is suddenly immersed in what is probably an alien world.
Two kinds of marital conflict
Perpetual problems and solvable problems.
131 – Despite what many therapist will tell you, you don’t have to resolve your major marital conflicts for your marriage to survive.
Dan Wile in After the Honeymoon: “When choosing a long-term partner…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.”
The key is avoiding gridlock with perpetual problems.
Marriages are successful to the degree that the problems you choose are ones you can cope with.
149 – The basis for coping effectively with either kind of problem is the same: communicating basic acceptance of your partner’s personality.
You will not accept advice from someone unless you feel that they understand you.
No one is ever right in perpetual problems. There is no absolute reality in marital conflict, only two subjective realities.
Principle 5: Solve your Solvable Problems
158
- Soften your startup
- Learn to make and receive repair attempts
- Soothe yourself and each other
- Compromise
- Be tolerant of each other’s faults
161 – discussions invariably end on the same note they begin.
Principle 6: Overcome Gridlock
Respect each other’s dreams
224 – “Couples who are demanding of their marriage are more likely to have deeply satisfying unions than those who lower their expectations.”
Principle 7: Create Shared Meaning
Create Family rituals
- Triumphs
- Bad luck
- Guests
- Birthdays, holidays, special events
- Visiting family