Book SummaryThe Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, by John Gottman and Nan Silver

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

What’s the secret to a happy marriage?

That’s the question relationship researcher John Gottman sought to answer in 1986 when he created the Love Lab—a laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle devoted to deciphering the secrets of happy couples. After years of watching couples in happy and unhappy marriages interact in the Love Lab, Gottman got so good at understanding what makes a marriage work that he could predict whether a couple would divorce with 91% accuracy.

In his 1999...

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Summary Why Improving Your Marital Friendship Is the Key to Marital Happiness

Gottman and Silver argue that if you want a long-lasting and happy marriage, you must improve your marital friendship. In other words, you and your spouse must hold each other in high esteem and genuinely appreciate the time you spend together.

(Shortform note: A 2014 study supports Gottman and Silver’s contention that a strong marital friendship improves your relationship: People who considered their spouse their best friend were more satisfied with their lives than those who did not. However, this finding was sex-dependent; women married to their best friends were much more satisfied than men married to their best friends.)

Gottman and Silver explain that a strong marital friendship supports a happy marriage because it encourages a phenomenon known as “positive sentiment override,” or PSO. If you have PSO, you trust that your partner is doing...

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Summary How to Improve Your Marital Friendship

Now that you know why improving your marital friendship is so important, how do you do it? Gottman and Silver say you must follow four principles: Keep getting to know your partner, foster and communicate affection, regularly respond to your partner’s overtures, and keep an open mind.

Principle 1: Keep Getting to Know Your Partner

According to Gottman and Silver, the first step to building a good marital friendship is to keep getting to know your partner. Happy couples are intimately familiar with the details of their partner’s lives; they store comprehensive information about each other in their brains (what Gottman and Silver call “love maps”). This information might include your partner’s favorite candy or their boss’s name.

Gottman and Silver explain that regularly updating your knowledge of your partner is essential for two reasons. First, you can only love someone if you know them. Second, making an effort to connect with your partner helps you maintain your connection through major life changes. For example, if your partner is laid off, regularly connecting with them during that time keeps you updated on what’s going on with them—so you don’t wake up one...

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work Summary How to Handle Conflict Effectively

Gottman and Silver suggest that the second key to improving your marital friendship is learning how to handle conflict effectively. In this section, we’ll first discuss how conflict destroys marriages and name some signs that your marriage might be in trouble. Then, we’ll share the two types of conflict that Gottman and Silver identify—and his advice on dealing with each type.

How Conflict Destroys Marriages

Gottman and Silver argue that conflicts can destroy marriages if they induce regular flooding—a psychological phenomenon in which one partner feels so emotionally stressed that they’re unable to respond rationally to their spouse. Someone who’s flooded is in fight-or-flight mode; both their heart rate and blood pressure are higher than normal. Men are more likely to become flooded than women.

According to Gottman and Silver, regular flooding leads to divorce because it leads spouses to emotionally detach from each other. If someone consistently feels flooded when fighting with their spouse, they start to expect that they’ll be attacked. Eventually, this expectation permeates the entire marriage—and in an effort to protect themselves emotionally, the...

Shortform Exercise: Improve Your Marital Friendship

Now that you know that having a good marital friendship is essential to the health of your relationship, apply Gottman and Silver’s advice so that you can improve your marital satisfaction.

Briefly describe a recent argument you had with your spouse. What did you think about your spouse during that argument? For example, if your spouse dropped their laundry next to (and not in) the hamper, did you think, “Man, they’re so lazy!,” or “Wow, they must have had a busy day!”