The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert

by John M. Gottman

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.

Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.

I call this connection attunement. The more highly skilled at achieving it that partners become, the more resilient their friendship and the more solid and promising their future. Some couples are naturals at attunement. But others (most of us!) need to work at it somewhat.

Betrayal is, fundamentally, any act or life choice that doesn’t prioritize the commitment and put the partner “before all others.” Nonsexual betrayals can devastate a relationship as thoroughly as a sexual affair. Some common forms of deceit include being emotionally distant, siding with a parent against one’s mate, disrespecting the partner, and breaking significant promises.

The key is learning how to better attune to each other and make friendship a top priority.

The success or failure of a couple’s repair attempts is one of the primary factors in whether their marriage is likely to flourish or flounder.

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.

Very often a marriage’s failure to do this is what causes husband and wife to find themselves in endless, useless rounds of argument or to feel isolated and lonely in their marriage.

Once you understand this, you will be ready to accept one of the most surprising truths about marriage: 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. Only then will they be able to build shared meaning and a sense of purpose into their marriage.

Horseman 1: Criticism. You will always have some complaints about the person you live with. But there’s a world of difference between complaint and criticism. A complaint focuses on a specific behavior or event.

Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner. You’re more likely to have such thoughts if your differences are not resolved.

Belligerence, a close cousin of contempt, is just as deadly to a relationship. It is a form of aggressive anger because it contains a threat or provocation.

Horseman 4: Stonewalling. In marriages where discussions begin with a harsh start-up, where criticism and contempt lead to defensiveness and vice versa, eventually one partner tunes out. This trumpets the arrival of the fourth horseman.

But when the four horsemen take up permanent residence, when either partner begins to feel flooded routinely, the relationship is in serious trouble. Frequently feeling flooded leads almost inevitably to emotional distancing, which in turn leads to feeling lonely.

Some people leave a marriage literally, by divorcing. Others do so by staying together but leading parallel lives. Whatever the route, there are four final stages that signal the death knell of a relationship. 1. The couple see their marital problems as severe. 2. Talking things over seems useless. Partners try to solve problems on their own. 3. The couple lead parallel lives. 4. Loneliness sets in.

Bolstering your friendship is so critical in large part because it fuels the romance, passion, and great sex that we all hope marriage will provide.

There are few greater gifts a couple can give each other than the joy that comes from feeling known and understood.

Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance. Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner’s personality flaws, they still feel that the person they married is worthy of honor and respect.

94 percent of the time, couples who put a positive spin on their marriage’s history and their partner’s character are likely to have a happy future as well. When happy memories are distorted, it’s a sign that the marriage needs help.

Sometimes, and especially if a relationship is going through a rocky period, a spouse may not recognize when the partner is making a bid for connection because it comes out sounding negative. The partner then reacts to the negativity and misses the hidden plea.

Instant access and interaction with the outside world certainly offer enormous social benefits. It has become far easier to connect, and reconnect, with friends and kin and for isolated, lonely people to reach out for support and understanding from like-minded others. However, there are downsides to all this connection. The ease with which other people can contact us at all hours of the day and night can take a toll on the intimate communication that fuels both romantic love and family life.

Sometimes couples unconsciously use devices as self-distraction during marital conflict. For example, a spouse who is anxious about communication or ready to stonewall may use these diversions to shut down interaction. Instead of leaving the room or changing the subject when a delicate marital issue arises, he or she may just shift attention to the ever-present cell phone or tablet.

Couples often ignore each other’s emotional needs out of mindlessness, not malice.

After years of studying couples in the lab and working with them directly, it has become clear to me that happy couples live by the credo “When you are in pain, the world stops and I listen.” Of course, when your partner’s negativity is directed at you, it’s especially hard to listen.

But in a discussion about what your partner is feeling, “Why?” will almost always sound like criticism.

When someone is upset, they want to know that their experience matters to you, so they don’t feel alone.

Use your partner’s metaphors. Sometimes people speak in metaphors, sort of like poetry. If you pick up on this when your partner is upset, and reflect it back as part of your response, you convey that you are fully aware of what he or she is experiencing.

Ask what’s missing. When someone is sad, usually it’s because they feel that they have lost someone or something. At times, what’s missing will be obvious, such as when a parent dies. But on many occasions, it may not be so clear why your partner is feeling “at a loss.” Asking can help him or her open up about the sadness.

Don’t try to cheer up your partner. When someone is sad, it’s a common response to attempt to make them smile, laugh, or otherwise erase their blues. But unless your partner asks for assistance in shaking the mood, it’s usually more helpful to listen to sadness rather than trying to relieve it.

Your partner’s anger is not about you. And even if it were, becoming defensive wouldn’t help.

Don’t ever tell your partner to “calm down.” Your partner is likely to interpret this advice as a sign that you don’t feel the anger is justified, or that expressing anger for whatever reason is not acceptable to you.

Search out the goal and obstacle. Behind most anger is the feeling of being blocked from reaching a goal.

A common pitfall while listening to your partner express fear or worry is to minimize it as a way of reassuring. Phrases like “Don’t be silly” and “There’s nothing at all to be afraid of” may be well-intentioned, but they can come across as ridicule.

Once your marriage gets set at a more positive level, it will be harder to knock it off course.

Very often couples turn away from each other not out of malice but out of mindlessness. They become distracted and start taking each other for granted. In such cases, realizing the importance of the little moments and paying more attention to them is usually sufficient to solve the problem.

There’s a wide spectrum of “normal” needs in this area—some people have a greater and more frequent desire for connection, others for independence. A marriage can work even if people fall on opposite ends of this spectrum—as long as they are able to understand the reasons for their feelings and respect their differences.

Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner there is an 81 percent chance that his marriage will self-destruct.

But we did find that the happiest, most stable marriages in the long run were those in which the husband did not resist sharing power and decision making with the wife. When the couple disagreed, these husbands actively searched for common ground rather than insisting on getting their way.

All spiritual views of life are consistent with loving and esteeming your spouse. And that’s what accepting influence is all about. After all, do you really want to make decisions that leave your wife feeling disrespected? Is that really consistent with religious beliefs? It is not.

In many cases, I suspect that men who resist letting their wives influence them are not even aware of this tendency. There are men who consider themselves feminists who interact with their wives in ways that belie that label.

The wives of men who accept their influence are far less likely to be harsh with their husbands when broaching a difficult marital topic. This increases the odds their marriage will thrive.

Accepting influence doesn’t mean never expressing negative emotions toward your partner. Marriages can survive plenty of flashes of anger, complaints, even criticisms. Trying to suppress negative feelings in your spouse’s presence wouldn’t be good for your marriage or your blood pressure. The problem comes when even mild dissatisfaction on the wife’s part is met by a barrage from her husband that, instead of toning down or at the most matching her degree of negativity (yelling back, complaining, etc.), goes beyond it.

In landmark research, Eleanor Maccoby at Stanford University found that while about 35 percent of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls, like Naomi and Eric, by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually zero. From then till puberty, the sexes will have little or nothing to do with each other. This is a worldwide phenomenon.

She has found that even at very young ages (one and a half years), boys will accept influence only from other boys when they play, whereas girls accept influence equally from girls or boys. At around ages five to seven, girls become fed up with this state of affairs and stop wanting to play with boys. From that age until puberty, our culture (and virtually all others) offers no formal structure for ensuring that boys and girls continue to interact.

More than 80 percent of the time, it’s the wife who brings up sticky marital issues, while the husband tries to avoid discussing them. This isn’t a symptom of a troubled marriage—it’s true in most happy marriages as well.

Although you may feel your situation is unique, we have found that all marital conflicts, ranging from mundane annoyances to all-out wars, really fall into one of two categories: either they can be resolved, or they are perpetual, which means they will be a part of your lives forever in some form or another.

Despite what many therapists will tell you, you don’t have to resolve your major marital conflicts for your marriage to thrive.

These couples intuitively understand that some difficulties are inevitable, much the way chronic physical ailments are unavoidable as you get older.

In unstable marriages, perpetual problems like these eventually kill the relationship. Instead of coping with the problem effectively, the couple get gridlocked over it. They have the same conversation about it over and over again.

Avoiding conflict over a perpetual problem leads to emotional disengagement. The couple’s trust in each other and the relationship declines as they become increasingly trapped in the negativity—the Roach Motel for Lovers. As the gridlock worsens, they each come to feel that the other is just plain selfish and cares only about him- or herself. They may still live together but are on the course toward leading parallel lives and inevitable loneliness—the death knell for any marriage.