Fight Right Quotes

“Your job here is to make your partner feel safe enough to tell you what’s behind their position on the issue: their belief, dream, or story.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Conflict is connection. It’s how we figure out who we are, what we want, who our partners are and who they are becoming, and what they want. It’s how we bridge our differences and find our similarities, our points of connection. The problem is, we haven’t been taught how to do it right.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Repair, both during and after fights, is powerful. It’s one of the main things that separate the masters of love from the disasters.[”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“It’s not your job to improve your partner. That’s solely your partner’s job. Your job is to be the best version of yourself that you can be. And if you are kinder even during conflicts, your partner will likely cooperate more too. It’s a win/win.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Intimacy inevitably creates conflict.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Validation does not mean you agree. It just means you can empathize with any part of your partner’s experience.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Remember that there are two realities. We’ve said this a number of times, but we say it again here…because it can be hard. You’re listening to your partner describe something that you do not remember that way or that you didn’t experience. But your work in this processing exercise is not to relitigate events. The “truth” is irrelevant here—it’s simply not accessible. Perception is everything, and there are always two points of view.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“When we come together to process, we have to work from the common assumption that both realities are valid and that each subjective reality holds some truth. The goal is not to agree on a set of facts about “what happened.” It’s to understand your partner’s experience so you can empathize with them and understand where they were coming”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Conflict is messy. We are messy. We’re human, and we’re each carrying our own heavy baggage—from life, from childhood, from previous relationships. We have triggers that get set off. Big emotions that grab us by the throat, or the heart, or the gut—wherever you feel it when you get flooded.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“when you can’t be moved or influenced, you lose all power in the relationship. If you’re someone who always says “no” to whatever your partner wants or proposes, you become an obstacle. You’re a dead end for them.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Try to suspend judgment—your job is not to evaluate or analyze your partner’s story but just to hear it. Don’t try to arrive at a solution. It is much too soon for that. You first need to end the opposition of dreams and become one another’s friend”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“During a fight, you don’t have to solve the whole conflict. In fact, you shouldn’t try. Instead, solve the moment.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“I was drawn to him because of his spontaneity” turns into “Why can’t you make a plan and stick to it?” “I fell for her outgoing personality and great sense of humor” turns into “Do you really have to talk to every single person at the party? And were you flirting with that guy?”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Validation is not the same thing as agreement.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“they listened closely, asked questions if there was anything they didn’t understand, and then summarized the speaker’s viewpoint back to the speaker to ensure that they had understood the issue.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Rapoport found that once one party brought up an issue, there was a critical role for the person on the receiving end too. And that was to listen without bringing up their own point of view. And in the Love Lab, the masters of love did exactly that.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Myth #10: To be “allowed” to have needs, we have to justify or explain them. So much of dysfunctional conflict has to do with this deeply ingrained belief that we’re not entitled to our needs. Many of us have grown up in a culture where “need” is a dirty word. We’re supposed to be independent, stand on our own two feet, and not need anything from anyone, including our partner. If we do have a need, the only way we can justify it is to prove how bad our partner has been to us, thus opening up this need in us—it’s their fault that we have a need.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Conflict is a natural part of every human relationship. And it’s a necessary part of every human relationship. We tend to equate low levels of conflict with happiness, but that just isn’t true. The absence of conflict doesn’t indicate a strong relationship—in fact, it can lead to exactly the opposite.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“...if you are kinder even during conflicts, your partner will likely cooperate more too. It's a win/win.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“When parents have very different MHC genes, their offspring will have an edge in fighting off viruses and diseases. It gives them more of a shield. In other words, mating with someone genetically different from you is a deeply entrenched, biological human survival mechanism.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“We really need to understand each other’s experience and the impact we’ve had on each other before we can say “I’m sorry” and have it mean anything.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Life circumstances come up that put us under intense pressure. Nobody’s perfect; we all have flaws. What commitment really means is that you are able to realize that while your partner isn’t perfect (and okay, maybe they’re a little bit crazy about this issue or that one), ultimately, nobody can replace them.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“In couples where commitment has dipped, we see two major warning signs: (1) they complain to other people about their partner instead of going to their partner with important issues; and (2) they minimize what they have and maximize what’s missing. They’re always looking around and thinking, “I could do better.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“In the arena of love, we arrive at the Nash Equilibrium not by trying to “win” for ourselves but by thinking for two. This is one of the core habits of really successful couples—instead of thinking, What’s best for me in this situation? they’re thinking, What’s best for us?”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Moving forward: If you catch yourself feeling defensive, rigid, or unwilling to share decision-making with your partner in the future, ask yourself: What would I lose by giving my partner more influence here? What might I gain?”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“You don’t want to have the kind of relationship in which you win and are influential in the relationship but wind up crushing your partner’s dream. You want the kind of relationship in which each of you supports the other’s dreams. If your dreams connect, so much the better.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“We call it kitchen sinking because we don’t just address the one issue; we pile in a whole bunch of other stuff that’s been bothering us. We figure, Hey, as long as we’re having a fight, I have a couple more bones to pick! A lot of times we do this because we want to feel “justified” in our anger, and the current, instigating problem feels “too small.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“there is no such thing as “constructive criticism.” Criticism is always destructive.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“Harsh start-ups tend to share a couple of key traits: We begin with criticism. We describe the other person instead of ourselves. We pile on other resentments we’ve been hoarding—we call this kitchen sinking.”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection

“What to Watch Out For… Avoiders: emotional drift and distance; too much focus on positivity to the point that the issue is not addressed Validators: rising negativity; don’t get so focused on a solution you forget about positivity, humor, and connection Volatiles: don’t let your humor go dark, sarcastic, or critical”
― Julie Schwartz Gottman, Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection