Making Marriage Work

I highly recommend this book for any married or want-to-be married person and all mental health professionals. It is practical, insightful, and scientifically proven. I love that Gottman has done enough research to give a step by step approach to making marriage work. Not many things in life can be mastered using a recipe, and marriage is no exception. But it sure helps! Read this review for more information about John Gottman's approach.

Reviewed by Loren SteinCONSUMER HEALTH INTERACTIVE
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
By John Gottman, Nan SilverThree Rivers PressPaperback 288 pp $12.95

As many people know all too well, marriage is a risky business -- the immutable 50 percent divorce rate attests to that. What's more, creating a happy marriage is a deeply mysterious process. How do you merge two distinct individuals into a thriving partnership? How do you survive the inevitable crises that accompany that journey? "A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day," says French writer Andri Maurois. Actress Mae West, on the other hand, put it this way: "Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution."
John Gottman, PhD, currently the reigning dean of marital experts, would no doubt side with Maurois. In his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he offers an innovative strategy for strengthening good marriages and repairing troubled ones. A professor of psychology at the University of Washington and founder of the Gottman Institute, Gottman is best known for his cutting-edge research on marriage conducted in his Family Research Laboratory -- nicknamed the Love Lab. (His wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD, is cofounder and director of the institute.)

Using a video camera and sensors that monitor body sensations, Gottman has spent more than two decades studying in painstaking detail the emotions, behaviors, interactions, and physical responses of some 700 couples. He has tracked these brave volunteers from all stages of married life for up to 14 years. What sets Gottman apart from other marriage gurus is his decision to study the dynamics of happy marriages, because he believes these couples are the true experts.

Gottman's output is prodigious. A practicing therapist, workshop leader, and research scientist, he has co-authored 40 books and close to two hundred articles on marriage and parenting, starting with his 1979 manual, A Couple's Guide to Communication. The results of Gottman's long-term research form the conclusions of Seven Principles, an insightful, practical, and often surprising guide to navigating the rocky shoals of married life.

Gottman begins the book with a bold and unsettling assertion: He can predict in five minutes -- with 91 percent accuracy -- whether a couple will eventually divorce. How can he do this? Years of observing the healthy and unhealthy ways couples argue. Specifically, he watches out for certain corrosive interactions that, left unchecked, will kill a relationship. He calls these the "Four Horsemen": criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

The author offers up some other startling findings: Communication, and more specifically, conflict resolution, is not the key to a happy marriage. Anger is not necessarily destructive; couples in good marriages also argue and fight. Traditional marriage therapies, including active listening, where spouses mirror back each other's feelings, are often ineffective and for the most part useless, he says. Affairs are not the cause for most breakups. And men and women do not have different needs in marriage. Indeed, what is most important to both sexes, Gottman says, is the quality of the couple's friendship.

"At the heart of my program is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship," he writes. "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 in the little ways, day in and day out."

Gottman's research found that the positive emotional climate created through countless mundane and loving interactions helps protect couples from sliding into overwhelming negativity when times get tough. A positive equilibrium or "set point" is created that makes it harder for couples to lose their way. As a result, happily married couples relate to each other during disputes very differently than unhappy couples.

Interestingly, one important indication of a strong friendship -- and a healthy marriage -- is the willingness of spouses to accept each other's "repair attempts" during fights: small peace offerings that prevent arguments from spiraling out of control. Anger and conflict is a given, Gottman says; what counts most is whether the repairs are successful.

Another useful insight is that men have less physiological capacity for conflict than their wives; they are more easily overwhelmed by marital stress and find it harder to recover afterwards. Also, beware of "harsh startups," Gottman says. Typically, it is the wife who brings up a sticky marital issue. If she makes the mistake of criticizing or attacking her husband right out of the gate, the damage to the conversation is usually irreparable.

Gottman describes young newlyweds Dara and Oliver, who argue over how to more fairly divide housework. Dara dives into the discussion with criticism and accusations: Oliver doesn't help out, and knowing him, he never will. Although she talks in a quiet voice, her words are loaded: The problem isn't the behavior, it's him. Oliver tries a repair attempt by cracking a joke; Dara sits stonily. He offers suggestions, but Dara counters with blame and sarcasm -- a form of contempt, Gottman says -- and Oliver becomes even more defensive. Gottman watched the couple argue for several minutes, and it came as no surprise to him that four years later they were ready to divorce.

"Discussions invariably end up on the same note they begin," writes Gottman. When a spouse's negativity becomes overwhelming or unrelenting, the reaction is "flooding" in his or her mate -- a pounding heart and other physical signs of distress -- leading to emotional shutdown and distancing. Repeated harsh startups and flooding are precursors to marital disaster, he says.
The premise of Gottman's book is that happy marriages share seven unmistakable traits (hence the title), and that unhappy couples fall short in at least one, if not more, of these areas. For example, in "emotionally intelligent" marriages, couples work together and appreciate the best in each other. They have a deep understanding of each other's psyches and worlds. Men share power and accept the influence of their wives. And couples learn to cope with two kinds of problems that are part and parcel of every marriage: solvable conflicts and the perpetual problems, fueled by hidden issues, that can cause emotional gridlock. Unsolvable problems represent 69 percent of marital conflicts, Gottman says.

Trying to change your partner's mind is ultimately a waste of time, says Gottman; instead, explore, accept, and even honor each other's personal dreams and fundamental differences. In the strongest marriages, couples move on from pointless quarreling and do the real work of building a deep sense of shared meaning and purpose into their lives together.

Using in-depth quizzes and exercises, the book helps readers detect the weak spots in their marriage that need attention. Gottman also illustrates and breathes life into his ideas through the use of couples' profiles and passages of their dialogue captured on videotape.

When Katherine and Jeff sat down in Gottman's Love Lab to try to discuss whether to have their baby baptized, the couple was clearly deadlocked and their marriage in serious danger. As an agnostic, Jeff did not want his baby to be baptized or to have any formal religious instruction. It came as a shock to him when Katherine's Catholicism became more central to her after she became pregnant. After sharing what religion symbolized to each of them, its place in their personal history, and their hidden dreams for their child, anger was replaced with compassion. They were then able to talk about how to raise their child in a way that respected both their visions.

The book's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. One might argue, however, that Gottman's research on marriage is not exactly science. Can a formula really be devised that assures marital bliss? Also, the use of "seven" in the title unfortunately smacks of a tried-and-true marketing ploy -- no self-help book these days seems to sell without a number in the title (witness the similarly titled Relationship Rescue: A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting With Your Partner by Phillip C. McGraw, Hyperion).

Seven Principles gives readers the opportunity to learn life-altering lessons from a master therapist and researcher who has devoted his life's work to revealing the secrets of couples who have created loving, fulfilling, and long-lasting marriages. Even Mae West, if she were game, might learn a thing or two.

-- Loren Stein is a freelance writer in Palo Alto, California specializing in health and legal issues and a regular contributor to Consumer Health Interactive. She has written for WebMD, Hippocrates, and the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications.