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

by John M. Gottman

If you’re not sure whether you’re gridlocked over a perpetual problem or are coping well with it, this checklist will help. The characteristics of a gridlocked problem are: • The conflict makes you feel rejected by your partner. • You keep talking about it but make no headway. • You become entrenched in your positions and are unwilling to budge. • When you discuss the subject, you end up feeling more frustrated and hurt. • Your conversations about the problem are devoid of humor, amusement, or affection. • You become even more “unbudgeable” over time, which leads you to vilify each other during these conversations. • This vilification makes you all the more rooted in your positions and polarized, more extreme in your views, and all the less willing to compromise. • Eventually you disengage from each other emotionally.