Looking for a The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Review?
The Seven Principals for Making Marriage Work is an amazing and transformative book on how to literally save your marriage.
Dr. John Gottman and his wife Dr. Julie Gottman, of the Gottman Institute have been doing in-depth studies of couples for over 40 years.
Literally, no one has done more clinical research on relationships & divorce than the Gottmans. If there is 1 marriage and relationship expert you should follow it should be Dr. John Gottman.
Between the two of them, the Gottmans have won countless awards and Dr. John Gottman was also named “Top 10 Most Influential Therapists of the past 25 years” by the Psychotherapy Networker.
Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (click to see current price on Amazon) may literally have saved my marriage.
How The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Saved My Marriage
My wife and I were in a bad place in our marriage in 2013.
Working with a therapist who literally gave us a copy of this book was the start of our journey out of darkness. In fact, we just gave birth to our 3rd daughter in late 2017 and our marriage is better than it ever was before.
The answer was his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (click to see current price on Amazon).
In the book, Dr. Gottman has what he calls the Four Horsemen (click to read my detailed article) (of the Apocalypse). Those are the 4 things couples do that derail the marriage faster than anything else:
- Criticism
- Contempt
- Stonewalling (the silent treatment (click to read my post))
- Defensiveness
Click the link above to read an in-depth post I did that explores those 4 in great detail. If you are engaged in any of those behaviors (guilty!), now is the time to identify those behaviors and move in a new direction.
What are The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work?
- Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Maps – The more you are familiar with your partner, the more intimacy happens. This is called having a love map of your partner. This helps maintain intimacy, and better prepare one to deal with stressful events and conflict.
- Principle 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration – work to increase/recall/unearth positive emotions about each other. The “fondness” and “admiration” aspects of couple relatedness are the antidote to contempt.
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Principle 3: Turn Towards Each Other and Not Away – This principle is based on the idea of staying connected, and positively so. Turning towards each other in small interactions builds romance and connection beyond the cushioning of stresses-it is the small and regular interactions of turning towards each other.
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Principle 4: Let Your Partner Influence You – Meant for a partner who is unwilling to share power/influence in the relationship. More of a male thing, but females can also fault with this principle. 81% of couples where the men do not do this will self-destruct. Women tend to match or reduce negativity. Men tend to escalate it, usually with one of the four horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness or stonewalling).
- Principle 5: Solve Your Solvable Problems – If a given disagreement is deemed solvable, then a couple has to try something different than unresolved arguments, screaming, yelling or angry silences. The classical advice of improving communication or suggestions of “try to put yourself in the others‟ shoes” does not work, because some people cannot.
- Principle 6: Overcoming Gridlock – Gridlocks happen when people‟s life dreams (hopes, aspirations, wishes) for their life are not being addressed/respected by each other.
- Principle 7: Creating Shared Meaning – One can have a happy marriage, but some people look for a spiritual connection–finding meaning in the togetherness beyond the mere joint tasks of family life. Symbols and rituals are helpful. There is a family “culture‟ (which may change and the partners develop), which gives shared meaning to their sense of togetherness. There may be dreams that each partner has which cannot work well together with the other partner‟s dreams. But the “shared meaning” couple looks beyond that.
Why you should buy The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
I know without a doubt that if you and/or your spouse struggle with any of Gottman’s the four horsemen, this book can save your relationship too.
Dr. Gottman can literally predict with 90% accuracy if a couple will stay together or divorce.
If you have mentioned divorce in your house, aside from finding a great therapist, you owe it to yourself and your marriage to get to know Dr. Gottman and this amazing book!
If you read this book and follow his teachings, your marriage will improve, just as mine did.
It’s not always easy to change our behavior, but EVERYTHING is possible with time, energy, focus, and help!
Did you like The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Review?
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An affiliate link gets Amazon to pay me (literally) a few cents if you buy the book after clicking my link. It doesn’t raise the price to you whatsoever, so it’s literally a win-win-win.
Thanks in advance if you do buy it from my link.
Let me know what you think (both of my review and the book). I want to hear from you. Feel free to comment here or email me anytime!
