Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

¶ … Marriage Work is a New York Times best-selling book by John Gottman, a psychotherapist, researcher, and award-winning author. The book focuses on the stability of marriages, outlining how couples can build lasting, harmonious relationships. Gottman's in-depth research on relationships focuses on the key behavioral predictors of divorce, which he calls "The Four Horsemen": Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. He notes that relationship counseling often focuses on improved communication, and couples who fair best are those that have strong coping skills such as self-soothing abilities. He also stresses that couples with a "high negative sentiment" in their relationships typically can not build better rapport through communication alone, and should, thus, focus on building positive sentiment, shared experiences, and resolving basic, solvable problems (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

Overview

As the title suggests, Gottman's book outlines seven key tools to build positive rapport and minimize the negative issues that often place couples at odds. Instead of asking couples to discuss their anger or resentments, Gottman encourages couples to overcome "gridlock" by solving concrete problems and "turning towards each other," to refocus on the aspects that they respect and enjoy in each other. Gottman also urges couples to control "flooding," a term he uses to describe highly emotional conflicts. He makes a very convincing argument that relationships with frequent episodes of "flooding" often leave partners feeling overwhelmed by resentments and discord. The seven key tools presented in Gottman's book include the following:

Enhance Your Love Maps?: Discuss key points in your marriage including accomplishments, shared memories, and future goals.

Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration: A sincere level of respect and admiration can help partners accept and cope with inevitable personal flaws. Focusing on these special qualities will help reduce negativity and resentments.

Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away?: Make a sincere effort to accept your partner's bids for attention. Small daily efforts to display affection and humor help solidify positive rapport.

Let Your Partner Influence You: The most fulfilling marriages are those in which partners share equal responsibility and decision-making is a team process.

Solve Your Solvable Problems: Resolving conflict involves five steps: soften how you initiate communication, learn to make and receive "repair attempts," soothe or calm yourself and each other, and compromise and be tolerant of each other's faults.

Overcome Gridlock: Moving past "gridlock" doesn't mean solving the problem, but rather moving from conflict to dialogue.

Create Shared Meaning?: Create dialogue in which you can speak openly and respectfully about your values and dreams (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

The book also provides exercises that couples can complete together, giving them more insight on each of these seven points. For example, he offers a lengthy quiz in which couples review their household responsibilities and carefully assess which responsibilities are shared. This offers couples the opportunity to restructure the workload, but it also allows partners to develop more of an appreciation for what each individual is offering in the relationship in terms of day-to-day work and task completion (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

Gottman's book offers married couples a guide to work through key issues, starting with a review of the couple's shared history. This process helps couples reflect, offering them an opportunity to revisit important factors that may have brought them together in the first place. Couples can also use the exercises to identify what role Gottman's "Four Horsemen" are playing in their communication patterns. For example, if a relationship has excessive patterns of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling, couples are likely to indentify the patterns and may replace them with alternative behaviors. A partner who tends to be overly critical may begin to see that her husband's defensive reactions are directly linked to her criticism, and as she makes efforts to control her own comments she'll likely see that her husband's behavior also shifts (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

Using This Book As A Couple

Gottman's book is an excellent resource for couples struggling with general issues such as household responsibilities or decision-making. For instance, if a couple generally has a strong sense of friendship and positive rapport they can use exercises in this book to overcome minor difficulties or clashes and build a sense of closeness. Gottman's concept of gridlock and coping skills are very useful for what he describes as "solvable" problems because these issues are concrete and couples can reach a point of compromise. For example, a married couple may use this book if they are having a pattern of disagreements regarding household duties. Responsibilities such as cleaning, paying bills, or budgeting are very concrete and spouses can use tools from the book to negotiate fair and reasonable agreements. Likewise couples that have a sense they are growing apart due to busy schedules may enjoy using this book to reconnect in a positive manner. It is not uncommon for married couples to go through periods in which they grow as individuals, and staying in communication with a partner by actively working on the relationship can keep spouses from losing touch or "growing apart" (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

Couples working through more abstract problems, such as sexual issues or serious marital dissatisfaction may not find this book helpful. Likewise, Gottman's principles of renewing or revisiting positive experiences and shared meaning may not be as workable if the central issue between the couple is more serious, such as issues of infidelity, dishonesty, or sexual incompatibility. These issues often make it very difficult for couples to engage in productive dialogue due to feelings of contempt, resentment, or distance in the relationship (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).