The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

by John Gottman, Ph. D.

  I’m not suggesting that all women are savvier about emotions and have better “people skills” than all men. There are plenty of women who are tone deaf to social nuances and insensitive to others. But usually women are more emotionally intelligent than their husbands for one simple reason: They’ve had an enormous head start in acquiring these skills. Observe children at any playground, and you’ll see that head start in action. When young boys play (usually run-and-chase games) their priority is the game itself—not their relationship with each other and their feelings. But for little girls, feelings are paramount. A cry of “I’m not your friend anymore” will stop a game cold. Whether it starts up again will depend on whether the girls make up.

  Even when a boy and girl play with the same toy, the gender difference is apparent. When four-year-old best friends Naomi and Eric shared her baby doll she wanted to play that the doll was their baby and they were going to show it off to their friends (relationship-based play). He went along with this for about ten minutes, and then the game roller-coasted into boy territory: “Hey Naomi, this baby is dead!” he announced. “We have to get it to the hospital right away!” He climbed into a pretend ambulance and away he went, “Brrrrrrrrr.” Naomi urged him not to drive too fast. Suddenly they both became surgeons and saved the baby’s life. (Eric wanted Naomi to be the nurse, but she objected that girls can be surgeons too, so some things have changed!) After the baby’s life was saved, they went back to playing Naomi’s way—showing off the baby to friends.

  The play styles of Naomi and Eric are equally charming and delightful. But the plain truth is that “girlish” games offer far better preparation for marriage and family life because they focus on relationships. As a general rule, boys don’t even include games with relationship and domestic themes in their repertoire. Think about it: While no preschool dress-up corner would be complete without bridal costumes, you never see tuxedos for little pretend grooms!

  Where does this difference in play styles between boys and girls originate? Because it occurs in virtually every culture, I suspect that it is caused mostly by biology rather than by socialization. But whether nature or nurture is the cause of these differences, their effect is undeniable. Because their play emphasizes social interactions and feelings, girls undergo an extensive education into emotions by childhood’s end. Boys learn how to pitch overhand. A boy’s experience at playing cooperatively and quickly resolving conflicts will be an asset later in the boardroom or on the construction site, but it will be a liability in marriage if it comes at the expense of understanding the emotions behind his wife’s perspectives.

  This difference in training is heightened by the fact that as they get older, boys rarely play with girls, so they miss the chance to learn from them. Although about 35 percent of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls (like Naomi and Eric), by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually 0 percent. From then till puberty the sexes will have little or nothing to do with each other. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Many explanations have been given for this voluntary segregation. One intriguing theory, by psychologist Eleanor Maccoby, Ph.D., at Stanford University, dovetails with my findings on accepting influence. She found that even at very young ages (1 1/2 years), boys will accept influence only from other boys when they play, whereas girls accept influence equally from girls or boys. At around ages five to seven, girls become fed up with this state of affairs and stop wanting to play with boys. From that age until puberty, our culture (and virtually all others) offers no formal structure for ensuring that boys and girls continue to interact.

  By the time Naomi and Eric are grown, the difference in their knowledge of homemaking will be apparent. Once a couple move in together or get engaged, the groom-to-be is suddenly immersed in what is probably an alien world. In the Broadway play In Defense of the Cave Man, a man says that when he was first married, he saw his wife cleaning the bathroom and asked her, “Are we moving?” In his bachelor days that was the only time he and his roommates bothered to clean the bathroom. Many young husbands discover they have a lot to learn from their wives about maintaining a home.

  You can see the shell-shocked look on the face of the typical young fiancé in any home furnishings store. He neither knows nor cares about the difference between taffeta and chintz. All of the china and silver patterns look remarkably alike to him. Most of all he’s thinking that this is taking an awfully long time, and if he turns around suddenly he will do about $10,000 worth of damage since all of the shelves are made of glass and placed about two feet apart, probably just to intimidate guys like him. How will he react? If pretty soon he hears himself saying, “Hey, that’s a great pattern,” another emotionally intelligent husband has been born.

  EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT HUSBANDS

  My data on newlywed couples indicate that more husbands are being transformed in this way. About 35 percent of the men we’ve studied fall into this category. Research from previous decades suggests the number used to be much lower. Because this type of husband honors and respects his wife, he will be open to learning more about emotions from her. He will come to understand her world and those of his children and friends. He may not emote in the same way that his wife does, but he will learn how to better connect with her emotionally. As he does so, he’ll make choices that show he honors her. When he’s watching the football game and she needs to talk, he’ll turn off the TV and listen. He is choosing “us” over “me.”

  I believe the emotionally intelligent husband is the next step in social evolution. This doesn’t mean that he is superior to other men in personality, upbringing, or moral fiber. He has simply figured out something very important about being married that the others haven’t—yet. And that is how to honor his wife and convey his respect to her. It is really that elementary.

  The new husband is likely to make his career less of a priority than his family life because his definition of success has been revised. Unlike husbands before him, he naturally incorporates the first three principles into his daily life. He makes a detailed map of his wife’s world. He keeps in touch with his admiration and fondness for her, and he communicates it by turning toward her in his daily actions.

  This benefits not only his marriage but his children as well. Research shows that a husband who can accept influence from his wife also tends to be an outstanding father. He is familiar with his children’s world and knows all about their friends and their fears. Because he is not afraid of emotions, he teaches his children to respect their own feelings—and themselves. He turns off the football game for them, too, because he wants them to remember him as having had time for them.

  This new type of husband and father leads a meaningful and rich life. Having a happy family base makes it possible for him to create and work effectively. Because he is so connected to his wife, she will come to him not only when she is troubled but when she is delighted. When the city awakens to a beautiful fresh snowstorm, his children will come running for him to see it. The people who matter most to him will care about him when he lives and mourn him when he dies.

  The other kind of husband and father is a very sad story. He responds to the loss of male entitlement with righteous indignation, or he feels like an innocent victim. He may become more authoritarian or withdraw into a lonely shell, protecting what little he has left. He does not give others very much honor and respect because he is engaged in a search for the honor and respect he thinks is his due. He will not accept his wife’s influence because he fears any further loss of power. And because he will not accept influence he will not have very much influence. The consequence is that no one will much care about him when he lives nor mourn him when he dies.

  THE CHANGE IS HERE

  Although there are men in traditional marriages who are masters at accepting influence from their wives, the reality is that sharing marital power is a relatively new concept and has come about in the wake of vast social changes over the past few decades. “Wearing the pants” was once the norm for
a husband, but times have changed.

  Maybe all of this sounds like a feminist line, but it’s also the reality. With more than 60 percent of married women working, the male’s role as the sole breadwinner is on the wane. Increasingly women’s jobs provide them with a source not only of income and economic power but of self-esteem as well. A significant number of the core issues we see between couples today have to do with this change in gender roles. Often wives complain that men still aren’t doing their fair share of domestic chores and child care. This is not just an issue for young couples. We have seen the same pattern among couples in their forties and sixties. Men who are willing to accept influence are happily married. Those who are not see their marriages become unstable. As one unhappy husband put it, “I married June Cleaver and she turned into Murphy Brown. It’s not fair. I didn’t bargain for this.”

  It’s understandable that some men have problems with the shift in the husband’s role. For centuries men were expected to be in charge of their families. That sense of responsibility and entitlement gets passed down from father to son in so many subtle ways that revising the husband’s role can be a challenge for many men.

  Some men may resist being influenced by their wives because they still believe that the upheaval in gender roles is a passing fad—or that the pendulum has swung to an extreme and soon things will revert. But there is scientific evidence that we are living through a cultural transformation that will not come undone. Anthropologist Peggy Sanday, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has devoted her career to studying and comparing hunter-gatherer cultures all over the world. On the surface our lives may seem very different from those of the peoples she studies. But human nature is fundamentally the same. Sanday has identified certain factors that determine whether a culture will be male dominant or egalitarian. (Interestingly, no cultures were female dominant.) She has also studied the signs that a culture is moving in one direction or the other.

  According to her research, male-dominated societies are characterized by the following:

  1. Food is quite scarce and daily life is hard. Danger lurks in the environment.

  2. Meat from large game animals is almost always more valued than other foods. Hunting large game is almost always an entirely male activity.

  3. Men do not participate in the care and raising of infants. They may care for children but not for babies.

  4. There is limited female representation in the culture’s sacred symbols, especially in its creation myths.

  Sanday found that the cultures in which these factors were the most extreme were also the most male dominant. And when these factors moved in the opposite direction, the culture also shifted to an egalitarian mode where men and women shared power. I believe you can see such a change happening in our culture today. Consider:

  1. Food is plentiful, and environmental conditions are not very harsh. Enforced laws keep the bulk of people feeling relatively safe.

  2. Men are no longer the sole breadwinners or “hunters” for food.

  3. Many men now want to participate in the care and raising of infants. There has been an explosion in the number of men who attend childbirth classes with their wives, are present at the birth of their children, and share in the diapering, feeding, and bathing of their babies. Go to the park on Sunday, and you’re likely to see young fathers carrying Snuglis and pushing strollers. Many women feel that men still don’t do enough caretaking of the very young, but it’s clear there’s been a shift in attitude.

  4. There is an increasingly strong female representation in our culture’s sacred symbols. Catholicism has seen an important growth in worship involving Mary, the mother of Christ. Not only has worship increasingly involved Mary, but her role has shifted dramatically from being the passive recipient of the Holy Spirit to being a woman who bravely and actively chooses to accept the role of mother in her encounter with the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:26–38). She intercedes on behalf of supplicants with love, compassion, and understanding.

  In Judaism, the Conservative and Reform movements have rewritten prayer books to emphasize the female in the sacred. The importance of the matriarchs is recognized, as well as the Shechinah, the female qualities of God: forgiveness, compassion, understanding, and love.

  True, not all marriages have become more egalitarian. Many men are still disengaged from family life. Yet a growing number are seeking guidance in coping with the cultural change. Witness the growing popularity of organized men’s movements such as the Promise Keepers, the Robert Bly mythopoetic movement, the Million Man March, and the men’s rights movement. People are now marching on Washington not to demand political change but to make new vows about their role in families. Whatever your opinion of each of these groups, their very existence is a symptom of the seismic shift in social relations that has left many men lost and befuddled.

  The challenge for each man is to decide how to deal with this great transformation. Our research clearly indicates that the only effective approach is to embrace the change rather than to react with anger and hostility. Time and again we can separate the happy from the unstable couples based on whether the husband is willing to accept influence from his wife.

  LEARNING TO YIELD

  Perhaps the fundamental difference between these two kinds of husbands is that the “new” husband has learned that often in life he needs to yield in order to win. When you drive through any modern city, you encounter frustrating bottlenecks and unexpected barricades that block your normal and rightful passage. You can take one of two approaches to these impossible situations. One is to stop, become righteously indignant, and insist that the offending obstacle move. The other is to drive around it. The first approach will eventually earn you a heart attack. The second approach—which I call yielding to win—will get you home.

  The classic example of a husband yielding to win concerns the ubiquitous toilet seat issue. The typical woman gets irritated when her husband leaves the toilet seat up, even though it only takes her a millisecond to put it down herself. For many women a raised toilet seat is symbolic of the male’s sense of entitlement. So a man can score major points with his wife just by putting the seat down. The wise husband smiles at how smart he is as he drops the lid.

  Accepting influence is an attitude, but it’s also a skill that you can hone if you pay attention to how you relate with your spouse. In your day-to-day life, this means working on the first three principles by following the advice and exercises in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. And when you have a conflict, the key is to be willing to compromise. You do this by searching through your partner’s request for something you can relinquish. For example, Chad, who infuriated Martha by working late when her mother was due to visit, might not be able to compromise on working more than usual, but perhaps he could switch the timing of his work. He could, for example, postpone the late night until Friday so that at least he could help Martha get the house ready for her mother’s visit. Perhaps she, Grandma, and little sister could take their son to soccer practice on Saturday (traditionally his task) so that he could get some work done then.

  If despite plenty of effort a man is still unable to accept influence from his wife on a particular issue, it’s a sign that an unacknowledged, unsolvable problem is stymieing his attempts. In such a case, the key is to learn how to cope with the unsolvable problem, using the advice in Chapter 10. One couple we studied, Tim and Kara, faced this dilemma. They constantly argued about his friend Buddy, who Kara thought was anything but a pal. Unemployed, he often fought with his live-in girlfriend and ended up boozing and then crashing on their living room sofa. Kara feared that Buddy would be a bad influence on Tim and saw his frequent presence in their home as an invasion and a threat. But whenever she tried to talk to Tim about it, he insisted that this was his home and that he could invite over anyone he wanted. When she disagreed with him, he would stonewall, which made her so angry she would start yelling. Then he would accuse her of being the one with the problem, not Buddy. Kara w
as infuriated by Tim’s attitude. As she saw it, he refused to respect that this was her home, too, and that he had to share decisions about houseguests with her.

  * * *

  More than 80 percent of the time it’s the wife who brings up sticky marital issues, while the husband tries to avoid discussing them. This isn’t a symptom of a troubled marriage—it’s true in most happy marriages as well.

  * * *

  When I interviewed Tim and Kara, Tim’s unwillingness to accept influence from Kara seemed to be the core of their problem—especially since he admitted that he saw no grounds for compromise on the issue. Then I asked him what his friendship with Buddy meant to him. It turned out there was more to the story. Tim explained that he and Buddy had been pals since childhood. During high school, when Tim’s parents were going through a bitter divorce and his home life was coming apart, Tim spent countless nights on Buddy’s couch. He believed it was now his responsibility to help out the friend who had helped him. He felt that Kara was trying to get him to abandon Buddy. Doing so would go against his sense of honor. He wasn’t concerned that Buddy would be a bad influence. He saw himself as a stable, married man and took pride in his ability to help his friend.

  The more Tim talked about Buddy, the clearer it became that he and Kara were grappling with a perpetual problem in their relationship about their views of friendship and loyalty. By recognizing that and working on the problem together, the issue was transformed. Tim stopped thinking about it in the context of his “right” to do what he wanted in his own home. Kara acknowledged that it had been Tim’s “piggish” attitude—not just Buddy’s presence—that was making her so angry. She told him that she really admired his loyalty—it was one of the things she loved about him. She just worried that Buddy was taking advantage of him. He acknowledged that Buddy could be a “user.” By identifying the issue for what it was—a perpetual problem—and agreeing to work on it with Kara, Tim had effectively accepted her influence. They each became better able to see the other’s perspective. In the end they agreed that Buddy could continue to use their living room as a crash pad, but less frequently than before.