Verified Document

Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work Book Review

¶ … Marriage Work is a New York Times best-selling book by John Gottman, a psychotherapist, researcher, and award-winning author. The book focuses on the stability of marriages, outlining how couples can build lasting, harmonious relationships. Gottman's in-depth research on relationships focuses on the key behavioral predictors of divorce, which he calls "The Four Horsemen": Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. He notes that relationship counseling often focuses on improved communication, and couples who fair best are those that have strong coping skills such as self-soothing abilities. He also stresses that couples with a "high negative sentiment" in their relationships typically can not build better rapport through communication alone, and should, thus, focus on building positive sentiment, shared experiences, and resolving basic, solvable problems (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000). Overview

As the title suggests, Gottman's book outlines seven key tools to build positive rapport and minimize the negative issues that often place couples at odds. Instead of asking couples to discuss their anger or resentments, Gottman encourages couples to overcome "gridlock" by solving concrete problems and "turning towards each other," to refocus on the aspects that they respect and enjoy in each other. Gottman also urges couples to control "flooding," a term he uses to describe highly emotional conflicts. He makes a very convincing argument that relationships with frequent episodes of "flooding" often leave partners feeling overwhelmed by resentments and discord. The seven key tools presented in Gottman's book include the following:

Enhance Your Love Maps?: Discuss key points in your marriage including accomplishments, shared memories, and future goals.

Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration: A sincere level of respect and admiration can help partners accept and cope with inevitable personal flaws. Focusing on...

Small daily efforts to display affection and humor help solidify positive rapport.
Let Your Partner Influence You: The most fulfilling marriages are those in which partners share equal responsibility and decision-making is a team process.

Solve Your Solvable Problems: Resolving conflict involves five steps: soften how you initiate communication, learn to make and receive "repair attempts," soothe or calm yourself and each other, and compromise and be tolerant of each other's faults.

Overcome Gridlock: Moving past "gridlock" doesn't mean solving the problem, but rather moving from conflict to dialogue.

Create Shared Meaning?: Create dialogue in which you can speak openly and respectfully about your values and dreams (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

The book also provides exercises that couples can complete together, giving them more insight on each of these seven points. For example, he offers a lengthy quiz in which couples review their household responsibilities and carefully assess which responsibilities are shared. This offers couples the opportunity to restructure the workload, but it also allows partners to develop more of an appreciation for what each individual is offering in the relationship in terms of day-to-day work and task completion (Gottman, J. And Silver, N., 2000).

Gottman's book offers married couples a guide to work through key issues, starting with a review of the couple's shared history. This process helps couples reflect, offering them an opportunity to revisit important factors that may have brought them together in the first place. Couples can also use the exercises to identify what role Gottman's "Four Horsemen" are playing in their communication patterns. For example, if a…

Sources used in this document:
References

Gottman, J. & Silver, N. (2000). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Marriage Is a Social Institution With Strong
Words: 1587 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Marriage is a social institution with strong political overtones. The institution has created and enforced gender norms throughout every human society in all historical eras. Therefore, one of the reasons marriage works is because it is often strictly enforced with social codes. Marriage is only now starting to fall out of favor, and is being viewed more and more as an option rather than as an expectation. Yet there are

Marriage Work According to Commonly
Words: 2926 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

On one hand, parenthood is tremendously rewarding for people who make the decision to become parents the right way. On the other hand, even in the best case scenario, child-rearing is also one of the most difficult and stressful of life's experiences that a couple can share. In many cases, young couples assume they will necessarily become parents simply because that is what is expected of them and because they

Marriage Preparation From the Perspective
Words: 1473 Length: 4 Document Type: Literature Review

SBFT focuses on the aim a couple wants to achieve. It centers on talking about the present and future conditions of both the partners. Some of the major contributions in the field were made by Milton Erickon, who provided the basics of hypnotic techniques. He asserted the use of hypnosis techniques to discuss with couples the existing and potential problems in their marital life. He focused on the effective and

Marriage and Long-Standing Relationships Marriage
Words: 2150 Length: 7 Document Type: Term Paper

" It said that an expanding range of adult parenting arrangements and the growing disconnection between marriage and children. The report believed that it would be wise to examine the events, which have been happening. Canada recently stood at the forefront of Western nations in instituting radical changes in family law. The U.S.A. seemed to be taking the same direction (Cere). The dominant stand among legal elites, including the two groups,

Marriage and Family Therapy
Words: 1875 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

Marriage and Family Therapy Issues and Ethics in Family Therapy: Psychologist Abraham Maslow once wrote that, 'We may define therapy as a search for value." In providing counseling for our patients not only are we providing a system of healing and value for them but also generating a reflection of our own values, ethical as well as legal, as family therapists. In the case scenario provided a large binuclear family, comprising a

Role of Marriage in the Book of Ruth
Words: 2097 Length: 6 Document Type: Research Paper

Book Of Ruth and Marriage: An Analysis Into Religious and Secular Conventions of the Time The Gospels of the Old Testament provide the structure of Judaism. Yet, they also provide an interesting examination into the anthropological activities of an ancient people. For example, in The Book of Ruth, there is significant content that helps describe the nature of marriage between both individuals and between God and his mortal followers. Along with

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now