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

by John M. Gottman

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.