Dear Grand Community, Recently, my husband and I received a wonderful wedding gift, "Eight Dates: Essential Conversations For a Lifetime of Love", by John and Julie Gottman. I first read about psychologist John Gottman in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. In it, he talked about Gottman's famous Love Lab where he studied thousands of married couples and, after only 15 minutes, determined with 90% accuracy if they would stay together or get divorced. The premise seemed wild, but through these interviews, he was able to identify negative communication patterns that predict divorce. He called them the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. It turns out that contempt is the most destructive of the bunch. They also discovered that low-risk couples maintain a "magic ratio" of five positive interactions to every one negative interaction during a conflict. Armed with this knowledge, we can discern that kindness, appreciation, and respect (the antidotes to contempt) are some of the keys to a long-lasting relationship.
The Keys To a Successful Marriage
The Keys To a Successful Marriage
The Keys To a Successful Marriage
Dear Grand Community, Recently, my husband and I received a wonderful wedding gift, "Eight Dates: Essential Conversations For a Lifetime of Love", by John and Julie Gottman. I first read about psychologist John Gottman in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. In it, he talked about Gottman's famous Love Lab where he studied thousands of married couples and, after only 15 minutes, determined with 90% accuracy if they would stay together or get divorced. The premise seemed wild, but through these interviews, he was able to identify negative communication patterns that predict divorce. He called them the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. It turns out that contempt is the most destructive of the bunch. They also discovered that low-risk couples maintain a "magic ratio" of five positive interactions to every one negative interaction during a conflict. Armed with this knowledge, we can discern that kindness, appreciation, and respect (the antidotes to contempt) are some of the keys to a long-lasting relationship.