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

by John M. Gottman

Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. But in their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones.

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. 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 through small gestures day in and day out.

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

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 truth is that most of us are guilty of faithlessness from time to time. But when either spouse consistently shortchanges the marriage, danger follows. In fact, the Love Lab research indicates that betrayal lies at the heart of every failed relationship.

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. And again, what determines the success of their repair attempts is the strength of their marital friendship.

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.

There are deeper, hidden issues that fuel these superficial conflicts and make them far more intense and hurtful than they would otherwise be. 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.

The First Sign: Harsh Start-Up

The research shows that if your discussion begins with a harsh start-up, it will inevitably end on a negative note, even if there are a lot of attempts to “make nice” in between. Statistics tell the story: 96 percent of the time you can predict the outcome of a conversation based on the first three minutes of the fifteen-minute interaction! A harsh start-up simply dooms you to failure. So if you begin a discussion that way, you might as well pull the plug, take a breather, and start over.

The Second Sign: The Four Horsemen

Usually these four horsemen clip-clop into the heart of a marriage in the following order: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.

A complaint focuses on a specific behavior or event.

In contrast, a criticism is global and expresses negative feelings or opinions about the other’s character or personality:

In whatever form, contempt is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust. It’s virtually impossible to resolve a problem when your partner is getting the message you’re disgusted with him or her. Inevitably, contempt leads to more conflict rather than to reconciliation.

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.

Although it’s understandable that Cynthia would defend herself, research shows that this approach rarely has the desired effect. The attacking spouse does not back down or apologize. This is because defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner. You’re saying, in effect, “The problem isn’t me, it’s you.”

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.

Although both husbands and wives can stonewall, research indicates that this behavior is far more common among men in all kinds of marriages, for reasons we’ll see later.

The Third Sign: Flooding

Usually people stonewall as a protection against feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed, a sensation we call flooding. It occurs when your spouse’s negativity is so intense and sudden that it leaves you shell-shocked. You feel so defenseless against this sniper attack that you learn to do anything to avoid a replay. The more often you feel flooded by your spouse’s criticism or contempt, the more hypervigilant you are for cues that your spouse is about to “blow” again.

The Fourth Sign: Body Language

Recurring episodes of flooding lead to divorce for two reasons. First, they signal that at least one partner feels severe emotional distress when dealing with the other. Second, the physical sensations of feeling flooded—the increased heart rate, sweating, and so on—make it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving discussion. When your body goes into overdrive during an argument, it is responding to a very primitive alarm system we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors. All those distressful reactions, like a pounding heart and sweating, occur because on a fundamental level your body perceives your current situation as dangerous.

from an evolutionary standpoint not much time has passed since we were cave dwellers. So the human body has not refined its fear reactions—it responds the same way, whether you’re facing a saber-toothed tiger or a contemptuous spouse demanding to know why you can never remember to put the toilet seat back down.

Their answers suggest that men have a greater tendency to have negative thoughts that maintain their distress, while women are more likely to think soothing thoughts that help them calm down and be conciliatory. Men, generally, either think about how righteous and indignant they feel (“I’m going to get even,” “I don’t have to take this”), which tends to lead to contempt or belligerence, or think about themselves as an innocent victim of their wife’s wrath or complaint (“Why is she always blaming me?”), which leads to defensiveness.

Frequently feeling flooded leads almost inevitably to emotional distancing, which in turn leads to feeling lonely.

The Fifth Sign: Failed Repair Attempts

In unhappy marriages, a feedback loop develops between the four horsemen and the failure of repair attempts. The more contemptuous and defensive the couple are with each other, the more flooding occurs, and the harder it is to hear and respond to a repair. And since the repair is not heard, the contempt and defensiveness just get heightened, making flooding more pronounced, which makes it more difficult to hear the next repair attempt, until finally one partner withdraws.

The Sixth Sign: Bad Memories

I have found over and over that couples who are deeply entrenched in a negative view of their spouse and their marriage often rewrite their past.

You can see the seeds of trouble in (1) what partners actually say to each other (the prevalence of harsh start-up, the four horsemen, and the unwillingness to accept influence), (2) the failure of their repair attempts, (3) physiological reactions (flooding), or (4) pervasive negative thoughts about their marriage.

So whatever the current state of your marriage, it will benefit enormously if you support, reinvigorate, or, if necessary, resuscitate your friendship. The first step in this process is to take a look at how much you really (still) know about each other, the topic of my first principle.