The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

John M. Gottman has conducted over forty years of research, working with countless couples. He is so well versed in relationships that he can tell in roughly five minutes if a couple will divorce. In his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he pairs with Nan Silver to dispense what he has learned about what makes a marriage work. Read on to learn the four biggest indicators of divorce, what the heck a love map is (and why it matters for your relationship), how to manage conflict, power issues in relationships, and how to deal with tricky relationship issues (like sex, money, and the dreaded inlaws).

About the Author

John Gottman is a psychological researcher and clinician who has done a lot of work on divorce prediction and marriage stability. He is an award-winning speaker, author, Professor of Emeritus in psychology at the University of Washington He and his wife created and manage a relationship company institute called The Gottman Institute. He is known as one of the 10 most influential therapists of the past quarter-century. He is the author of over 200 published academic articles and author or co-author of more than 40 books including The New York Times Bestseller, The Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work.

His research shows how couples making up is more important to how couples fought. Marriages become stable over time if couples learn to get along quickly after a fight.

He has developed multiple models, scales, and formulas to predict the stability of marriage and divorce in couples.

He believes that four negative behaviors that predict divorce are criticism of the other, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Happy couples handle conflicts in more positive ways.

He spends a good amount of time on developing therapy aimed at increasing respect, affection, and closeness, and solving conflict. The Gottman Method seeks happy and stable couples.

Critics have criticized him for describing his work as accurately predicting divorce. Rather they say he makes predictions based on statistical models.

Topics

Sex & Relationships

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Book Summary Preview

Have you ever heard someone say that avoiding conflict can destroy marriages? Believe it or not, it doesn’t matter if you talk about everything or avoid conflict completely with your spouse as long as both partners are satisfied with the approach. Shocking, right? How about this one? Have you ever heard: a healthy relationship includes lots of reciprocity? Well, it is also false! Reciprocity doesn’t mean a relationship is healthy. In fact, relationships, where people do things for their partner because they feel happy in the relationship, are significantly more successful than those where couples keep tabs on who’s doing what for who. With so many rumors flying around, it can be hard to find solid advice for building a healthy relationship. Luckily, in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, John M. Gottman and Nan Silver discuss the seven principles that make relationships healthy. Learn about these 7 principles below, plus: the four biggest indicators of divorce, what the heck a love map is (and why it matters for your relationship), and how to deal with tricky relationship issues (like sex, money, and the dreaded inlaws).

John M. Gottman is well versed in relationships. He has conducted over forty years of research, working with countless couples to better understand what makes relationships work, and what makes them fall apart. He is so well versed in relationships that he can tell in roughly five minutes whether a couple will be successful (with a 91% success rate at predicting divorce). How does he know if a couple is headed for the rocks? They do these four things. First, they criticize. In the context of an unhealthy relationship, criticism can look like one partner asking the other, “What’s wrong with you” instead of addressing the situation at hand. They also engage in contempt. Contempt in relationships is usually fueled by long-standing negative thoughts that partners feel for each other. Couples who engage in contempt do things like roll their eyes when their partner is talking, mock them, or make hostile jokes. The author warns that contempt can be worse than all of the other horsemen, and is a surefire sign that a couple is in serious trouble. The third is defensiveness: when a person in the relationship is questioned, instead of accepting blame or explaining themselves, they tend to blame the other partner right-back or refuse to examine their part in the conflict. The fourth is stonewalling. This is when a person in the couple completely shuts down during conflicts and shuts out their partner. These four horsemen can end marriages. Oh, speaking of divorce, there are a few stages couples normally go through before that happens. First, they believe their marital problems are horrible. Second, partners feel that discussing issues with each other is pointless. Third, both people in the marriage will begin living lives that are parallel, with no intersection. Finally, for most, loneliness will begin to set in. Yikes! Now that we’ve gone over the bad, let's get into the...