The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman is a practical book to help improve your marriage. It's a quick, easy read and you can get your spouse involved in reading each chapter and doing the activities with you.
Gottman makes a great case for marriage and exposes some myths about marriage as well.
People who stay married live four years longer than people who don't.
Half of all divorces will occur in the first seven years of marriage.
About 60% of all conflicts that occur in a marriage will remain unresolvable. Yes, happily married people still argue!
Men are more easily physiologically overwhelmed by marital conflict than are their wives.
In his sample, 94% of the time that couples put a positive spin on their marriage's history, they were likely to have a happy future as well.
Gottman is sometimes known as the divorce predictor. He has averaged 91% accuracy in determining whether a couple will stay together or divorce in three separate studies after watching a couple interact for only 5 minutes. He uses a lot of the observational data he gathered from the Seattle Love Lab- a house where couples would come and live and be observed by his team of researchers.
I've been successfully married for 15 years. I would agree that 60% of the conflicts remain unresolveable but it feels GREAT to read that statistic. It takes the pressure to make us mesh completely in every way- off. So many marriages would be saved if we could all learn how to live with the unresolved things (assuming those things aren't addiction, abuse or adultery) or unrealistic expectations of ourselves and/or our partners.
ReplyDeleteI read a lot of Gottman's research in my undergrad and his work is great stuff. I haven't read his book but want to. Thanks for a highlight of it.
ReplyDeleteI read another book he wrote, and it was fabulous. I'm excited to check this one out
ReplyDeleteI've read this book, and I highly recommend it. One of the biggest things I took away from it is how misleading the whole "50% of marriages end in divorce" statistic is. I was constantly reading little snippets to my husband, and we took some of the quizzes together too. very interesting read.
ReplyDeletei've never heard of this book but it sounds llike a good read...thanks for sharing!
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