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

by John M. Gottman

Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Maps

Principle 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration

Principle 3: Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away

Principle 4: Let Your Partner Influence You

Principle 5: Solve Your Solvable Problems

Principle 6: Overcome Gridlock

Principle 7: Create Shared Meaning

One of the strengths of The Seven Principles approach is its versatility in addressing all stages of a relationship. This book is for you if you’re single and looking to “road test” your relationship before making a permanent commitment. It is also for you if you’ve already committed and want to bolster and protect what you have. If you and your partner are facing dramatic life changes or challenges, The Seven Principles will help you keep connected. Following the guidance in the pages ahead may also rescue a marriage that is already in deep danger. Of course, no relationship guide can salvage every marriage, nor is it true that every match “should” be saved. Sometimes negativity and betrayal so consume a relationship that it has really already died by the time the couple seek support. But the right form of assistance can repair far more relationships and offer a greater degree of hope than the divorce statistics would suggest. Anyone who works with or studies couples is left humbled and awed by the tenacity, resourcefulness, and grit of people who love each other and are determined to make their marriages work. We wrote this book to be a fitting companion for their journey.

Much has changed in the fifteen-plus years since the arrival of the first edition of The Seven Principles, but one fact has held constant: a romantic and sexual long-term committed relationship with another human remains the greatest gift life can offer. We hope this new edition of The Seven Principles safeguards and strengthens your relationship—and helps you add purpose and meaning to the life you build together.

Our goal was nothing more ambitious than to uncover the truth about marriage—to finally answer the questions that have puzzled people for so long: Why is marriage so tough at times? Why do some lifelong relationships click, while others just tick away like a time bomb? And how can you prevent a marriage from going bad—or rescue one that is already in trouble?

Thanks to decades of research, these questions can finally be answered. In fact, I can predict with great precision whether a couple will stay happily together or lose their way after listening to them interact for as little as fifteen minutes! Over seven separate studies, my accuracy rate in making such predictions has averaged 91 percent. In other words, in 91 percent of the cases where I predicted that a couple’s marriage would eventually either fail or succeed, time proved me right. I don’t think my success in foretelling divorce earns me any bragging rights because it isn’t due to some superhuman perception or intuition. Instead, it rests solely on the science: the decades of data my colleagues and I accumulated.

I can predict whether a couple will divorce after watching and listening to them for just fifteen minutes.

People who stay married live four to eight years longer than people who don’t.

I often think that if fitness buffs spent just 10 percent of their weekly workout time—say, twenty minutes a day—working on their marriage instead of their bodies, they would get three times the health benefits they derive from exercise class or the treadmill.

It soon became apparent that these happy marriages were never perfect unions. Some couples who said they were very satisfied with each other still had significant differences in temperament, interests, and family values. Conflict was not infrequent. They argued, just as the unhappy couples did, over money, jobs, kids, housekeeping, sex, and in-laws. The mystery was how they so adroitly navigated their way through these difficulties and kept their marriages happy and stable. It took studying hundreds of couples to uncover the secrets of these emotionally intelligent marriages. No two marriages are the same, but the more closely my research team and I looked at happy marriages, the more evident it became that they were alike in seven telltale ways. Happily married couples may not be aware that they follow these Seven Principles, but they all do. Unhappy marriages always came up short in at least one of these seven areas—and usually in many of them. By mastering these Seven Principles, you can ensure that your own marriage will thrive.

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.

Betrayal is, fundamentally, any act or life choice that doesn’t prioritize the commitment and put the partner “before all others.”

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.

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.

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

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. They cherish each other, which is critical to keeping their Sound Relationship House intact and preventing betrayal. If fondness and admiration are completely missing, reviving the relationship is impossible.

Hollywood has distorted our notions of romance and what makes passion sizzle. Watching Humphrey Bogart gather teary-eyed Ingrid Bergman into his arms may make your heart pound, but real-life romance is fueled by far more humdrum scenes. It is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life. In marriage, couples are always making what I call “bids” for each other’s attention, affection, humor, or support. Bids can be as minor as asking for a backrub or as significant as seeking help in carrying the burden when an aging parent is ill. The partner responds to each bid either by turning toward the spouse or turning away. A tendency to turn toward your partner is the basis of trust, emotional connection, passion, and a satisfying sex life. Comical as it may sound, romance is strengthened in the supermarket aisle when your partner asks, “Are we out of butter?” and you answer, “I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,” instead of shrugging apathetically. It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take a few seconds out of your schedule to send him an encouraging text. In all of these instances, partners are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away.

In some cases, constantly checking e-mails, postings, tweets, and text messages can lead to a sort of addiction in which distraction itself becomes a habit. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr documents research that indicates self-distraction has become a permanent, unconscious habit for many people.

The old cliché of the husband who hides behind the newspaper has been replaced by the spouse of either gender who is tapping out texts, scanning social media, or engrossed in one of those irresistible cell-phone games.

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

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.

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

By studying intently what these couples did do, I have come up with a new model for resolving conflict in a loving relationship. My fifth principle entails the following steps: 1. Soften your start-up. 2. Learn to make and receive repair attempts. 3. Soothe yourself and each other. 4. Compromise. 5. Process any grievances so that they don’t linger. Most of these steps take very little training because we all pretty much have these skills already; we just get out of the habit of using them in our most intimate relationship. To a certain degree, my fifth principle comes down to having good manners. It means treating your spouse with the same respect you offer to company. If a guest leaves an umbrella, we say, “Here. You forgot your umbrella.” We would never think of saying, “What’s wrong with you? You are constantly forgetting things. Be a little more thoughtful, for God’s sake! What am I, your slave to go picking up after you?” We are sensitive to the guest’s feelings, even if things don’t go so well. When a guest spills wine, we say, “No problem. Would you like another glass?” not, “You just ruined my best tablecloth. I can’t depend on you to do anything right. I will never invite you to my home again.”

Your future together can be bright even if your disagreements tend to be very negative. The secret is learning the right kind of damage control.

Couples who are demanding of their marriage are more likely to have deeply satisfying unions than those who lower their expectations.

Remember, working briefly on your marriage every day will do more for your health and longevity than working out at a health club.

The story of Aaron and Courtney reflects what goes wrong 85 percent of the time in marriages. If you consider yourself inadequate, you are always on the lookout for what is not there in yourself and your partner. And let’s face it: anyone you marry will be lacking in certain desirable qualities. The problem is that we tend to focus on what’s missing in our mate and overlook the fine qualities that are there—we take those for granted. If you recognize yourself in the description of the self-critic, the best thing you can do for yourself and your marriage is to work on accepting yourself with all of your flaws. As I look back on my own life, I realize that forgiving myself for all of my imperfections has made an immense difference in my role as a husband and father.