The Love Prescription Quotes

“Tiny little doses, every day, is what it takes to make a healthy relationship. Why? Because that’s exactly what a relationship is—not one big thing, but a million tiny things, every day, for a lifetime.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“First, a couple needs to stay curious about each other.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“How people reacted to their partner’s bids for connection was in fact the biggest predictor of happiness and relationship stability. These fleeting little moments, it turned out, spelled the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between lasting love and divorce.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“The couples who got divorced had only turned toward their partner’s bids 33 percent of the time. The couples who stayed together had turned toward 86 percent of the time.[1] It was an enormous difference—a statistical gap you rarely see in scientific studies. We’d found a major point of intervention. If we could help couples understand the importance of these little moments that might seem like nothing, just slipping by under the radar, we could really help people turn things around. How people reacted to their partner’s bids for connection was in fact the biggest predictor of happiness and relationship stability. These fleeting little moments, it turned out, spelled the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between lasting love and divorce.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“love is a practice. More than a feeling, it’s an action. It’s something you do, not something that just happens to you. And you need to give—and get—a daily dose to maintain a healthy, thriving relationship.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“And third, the couple turns toward each other instead of turning away.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“Second, the couple needs to share fondness and admiration.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“Pretty quickly, a pattern emerged surrounding what we started calling bids for connection. One person would make a bid, initiating a moment of connection—it could be physical or verbal, overt or subtle—and the researcher controlling the camera would zoom in close on their partner’s faces. Partners responded to bids for connection in one of three ways: 1. By turning toward: They gave a positive or affirmative response, acknowledging the other person and engaging with their attempt to connect. (Even a “hmm?” can count as turning toward.) 2. By turning away: They gave no response, either actively ignoring or just not noticing their partner’s attempt to connect. 3. By turning against: They responded irritably or angrily to actively shut down their partner’s attempt to connect.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“When you look at your partner today, and every day, you can focus on their flaws, or you can focus on the qualities that make them indispensable to you, wonderful to you, attractive to you. It’s a choice. It’s an active thing you do to fan the flames of long-term love. If you’ve ever lit a fire, you know exactly what we mean—just like a fire, a relationship needs tending. You don’t just leave it alone and hope for the best. You tend it. You add scraps of kindling. You give it a breath of air. That’s what admiration is—an action we do. That we need to remind ourselves to do it doesn’t cheapen it or make it any less genuine. This is how the masters of love do it.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“centuries”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“What’s on your mind today? What are you looking forward to? What are you anxious about?”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“A thriving relationship requires a thriving culture of appreciation between partners, where we’re as good at noticing all the things our partners are doing right as we are at noticing what they’re doing wrong.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“This is your goal today, and for the rest of this week: Become a topographer. A love-map creator. Think of it as your job: You’re going to go into this landscape that you think you know and really look around. What has changed? Where are the blind spots in your knowledge of your partner’s inner world?”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“The more thorough your mapping of each other’s inner landscape is, the more comprehensively you’ll understand not only your partner’s ideas about the future, but also their past and how it’s shaped them.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“THE TEN-MINUTE CHECK-IN This is great to do at the beginning of the day, but you can do this at any time that works for you. The rules are simple—pick a time to check in with your partner when you have ten minutes to listen and not rush off anywhere. It can be in the morning, over coffee and before you start work, or in the evening after you’ve put the kids to bed. Ask them this simple question: Is There Anything You Need from Me Today?”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“the more turning toward there is in a relationship, the better couples are at managing their conflicts.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“In the lab (and in real life!), no couples “turn toward” 100 percent of the time. But whether you turn toward a lot or a little really matters . . .”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“What’s a bid for connection? Well, it can look like a casual remark. It can be as simple as one person sitting down next to the other one. It can be as subtle as a sigh. It’s an invitation to connect. And how we respond to these tiny bids for connection can actually make or break a relationship! This was one of our first and most foundational discoveries in the Love Lab.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“Life gets in the way. In a study of thirty dual-career couples, the Sloan Center for Working Families at UCLA discovered that relationships often become just endless to-do lists; conversation becomes constrained to errands and planning.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“We call this meeting the “State of the Union” because your job is to talk only about what’s gone right in your relationship.”
― John M. Gottman, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy