The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

by John Gottman, Ph. D.

  Couple 3

  HUSBAND: My wife is overly jealous, especially at parties. I think that social occasions are a time to meet new people, which I find very interesting. But my wife gets clingy and shy. She claims that I flirt with other women at parties, but this isn’t true at all. I find the accusation insulting, and it makes me angry. I don’t know how to reassure my wife, and I’m tired of not being trusted.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  WIFE: At parties and other places my husband looks at other women and acts flirtatious. I find this upsetting and demeaning. I have brought this up repeatedly but cannot get him to stop.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  Couple 4

  WIFE: My husband likes to have sex much more often than I do. I don’t know what to do when he keeps approaching me for sexual intimacy. I don’t know how to say no in a gentle way. This pattern makes me feel like an ogre. I don’t know how to deal with this.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  HUSBAND: I like to have sex much more often than my wife. I keep getting my feelings hurt when she turns me down. This pattern makes me feel unattractive and unwanted. I don’t know how to deal with this.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  Couple 5

  WIFE: I think that my husband is far too stingy when it comes to money and doesn’t believe in spending enough on just enjoying life and having fun. I also resent not having more personal freedom and control when it comes to money.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  HUSBAND: I think that my wife is impractical when it comes to money and spends far too thoughtlessly and selfishly.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  Couple 6

  WIFE: My husband likes to stay in much closer touch with our families than I do. To me family connections are great sources of stress and disappointment. I have broken away from my family, and I want much greater distance.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  HUSBAND: I like to stay in much closer touch with my family than my wife does. To me family connections are very important. She wants greater independence from our families than I do.

  My Dreams Within This Conflict Might Be:

  Sample Dreams

  Couple 3

  HUSBAND: I really do not flirt, nor do I have any interest in anyone but my spouse. It’s just that parties are my only way of really satisfying my gregarious and wild side. I really don’t want to be responsible for anyone else when I go to a party. My dream is to feel the freedom to explore.

  WIFE: I have always wanted to be able to feel that I was “enough” for someone special in my life. That is my dream: to feel truly attractive and desirable to my partner. I want my partner to be interested in me, in knowing me and finding out what I think, wanting to know what I am like inside. I would find it incredibly romantic if I could go to a party with my husband and he didn’t even notice that there was anyone else there, had eyes only for me, and was totally satisfied spending hours in rapt conversation and dancing with just me.

  Couple 4

  WIFE: I was sexually mistreated long ago. I had no control over this, and it was quite horrible, but it did happen. I know my partner is not to blame for many of the feelings I now have. But I feel that sex can be okay only if it is on my terms. In my marriage there has been a lot of healing and gentleness, but I probably will never get over these feelings of having gone through a real trauma. My dream is to have sexual closeness on my terms only.

  HUSBAND: My dream is to have my partner initiate sexual encounters with me and somehow be “swept away” by passion, I guess to really be totally attracted to me. I know I am not especially much to look at, but on some days I am not too bad. I periodically want my partner to feel that I am simply irresistible.

  Couple 5

  WIFE: Life is too short to just save for the future all the time. I know that a certain amount of that is necessary, but I want to have some sense that I am not living just for tomorrow. I don’t want to feel that life is passing me by. And that’s what I often feel, that I am not special enough to “waste” money on. I want to feel special and very alive. Where this comes from is, I suppose, always having to scrimp when I was poor. But now I make a good income, and I don’t have to live like that anymore.

  HUSBAND: I want to enjoy life, but within limits. To me the problem with the world is greed. People never seem to be able to have enough “stuff” or get enough money. Just look at Americans on vacation, with all their things, campers, motorcycles, boats, cars. I don’t want to want things. I want to be satisfied with just a small amount of things and a small amount of money. I honestly don’t need very much to be happy. So I see myself as kind of like a monk, who has a purpose in life, and I do have that. A monk can be satisfied with very little, contented, counting all the blessings in life, and there are so many. So I believe in saving and spending very little. To me that’s how one should lead a moral life. Where does this come from? I think it comes from my father, who also was very frugal. Thanks to him our family always did well, and when he died, my mom was well provided for. I respect what he accomplished.

  Couple 6

  WIFE: It took me a great deal of effort to get away from a very dysfunctional family. My parents were very cold and distant. My sister wound up in a mental hospital, and my brother became a drug addict. I was the only one who escaped. I escaped by becoming very distant from my family and becoming very close to my friends. Friendships have always meant a lot to me and continue to be very important. But I am wary of being close to my husband’s family. I see a lot of dysfunctional patterns, and they scare me. My dream is for us to form our own family traditions and maintain our own independence.

  HUSBAND: To me a feeling of an extended family has always been very important. I can recall many a Sunday when my mother would have twenty or thirty family members visit. The coffee and pastries would keep coming all afternoon, and there would be lots of good stories, and card playing, and lots of laughter. Then there would be great food for dinner. Even during the hard times, my mother was always able to stretch the soup and it stayed thick and hearty. My dream is to have this family feeling of community, closeness, and great comfort in my own family.

  STEP 2: WORK ON A GRIDLOCKED MARITAL ISSUE

  Now that you have had some practice uncovering dreams, try it with your own marriage. Choose a particular gridlocked conflict to work on. Then write an explanation of your position. Don’t criticize or blame your spouse. Use the statements made by the couples above as your guide—notice that they don’t bad-mouth each other. Instead, they focus on what each partner needs, wants, and is feeling about the situation. Next, write the story of the hidden dreams that underlie your position. Explain where these dreams come from and why they are so meaningful to you.

  Once you both understand which dreams are fueling the gridlock, it’s time to talk about them. Each person gets fifteen minutes as the speaker and fifteen minutes as the listener. Do not try to solve this problem. Attempting to do that now is likely to backfire. Your goal is simply to understand why each of you feels so strongly about this issue.

  Speaker’s job: Talk honestly about your position and what it means to you. Describe the dream that’s fueling it. Explain where the dream comes from and what it symbolizes. Be clear and honest about what you want and why it is so important. Talk as if you were explaining your dream to a good friend or neutral third party. Don’t try to censor or downplay your feelings about your dream in order to avoid hurting or arguing with your spouse. If you find this difficult, review the advice in Chapter 8 about softening the startup. Some of the same approaches hold: namely, to make “I” statements and to talk only about your feelings and your needs. This is not the time to criticize or argue with your partner. How you feel about your spouse in relationship to this dream is a satellite issue that should not be addressed right now.

  Listener’s job: Suspen
d judgment. Listen the way a friend would listen. Don’t take your spouse’s dream personally even though it clashes with one of yours. Don’t spend your time thinking up rebuttals or ways to solve the problem. Your role now is just to hear the dream and to encourage your spouse to explore it. Here are some supportive questions to ask. You don’t have to use these verbatim—put the thought and spirit behind them into your own words.

  • “Tell me the story of that. I’d like to understand what it means to you.”

  • “What do you believe about this issue?”

  • “What do you feel about it?”

  • “What do you want? What do you need?”

  • “What do these things mean to you?”

  Don’t:

  GEORGIA: I’ve always dreamed of going on a mountain-climbing expedition to Mount Everest.

  NATHAN: First of all, we can’t possibly afford something like that. Besides, I can’t think of anything more stressful than mountain climbing. I get vertigo standing on a table.

  GEORGIA: Forget it.

  Do:

  GEORGIA: I’ve always dreamed of going on a mountain-climbing expedition to Mount Everest.

  NATHAN: Tell me more about what it means to you to climb a mountain. What would it do for you?

  GEORGIA: I think I would feel exhilarated, like I was at the top of the world. As a child I was always told that I was weak and couldn’t do anything. My parents were always saying “careful, careful.” I think climbing a mountain would be the most liberating thing I could do. I’d feel such a sense of accomplishment.

  If you can, tell your partner that you support his or her dream. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you believe the dream can or should be realized. There are three different levels of honoring your partner’s dreams—all of which are beneficial to your marriage. The first is to express understanding of the dream and be interested in learning more about it even though you don’t share it. For example, Nathan could support Georgia’s decision to take a course in mountain climbing and listen with enthusiasm when she talks about it. The second level would be to offer financial support for her dream. This would mean helping Georgia finance a mountain-climbing trip. The third level would be to become a part of the dream, to come to enjoy mountain climbing himself.

  * * *

  Acknowledging and respecting each other’s deepest, most personal hopes and dreams is the key to saving and enriching your marriage.

  * * *

  You may find that you’re able to “go all the way” with some of your partner’s dreams while with others you can’t get past the first level of understanding and interest. That’s okay. The bottom line in getting past gridlock is not necessarily to become a part of each other’s dreams (although your marriage will be more enriched to the extent that you can) but to honor these dreams. After all, you don’t want the kind of marriage in which you triumph at the expense of crushing your partner.

  STEP 3: SOOTHE EACH OTHER

  Discussing dreams that are in opposition can be stressful. Since you’ll accomplish nothing if either of you becomes flooded, take a break for some soothing before you attempt to slog through the gridlock. See the exercises in Chapter 8 (“Soothe Yourself and Each other,” p. 176).

  STEP 4: END THE GRIDLOCK

  Now it’s time to begin the ongoing task of making peace with this issue, accepting the differences between you, and establishing some kind of initial compromise that will help you continue to discuss the problem amicably. Understand that your purpose is not to solve the conflict—it will probably never go away completely. Instead, the goal is to “declaw” the issue, to try to remove the hurt so the problem stops being a source of great pain.

  The way you start this process is by using the circle exercise (“Finding Common Ground”) on page 182. You define the minimal core areas that you cannot yield on. To do this you need to look deep into your heart and try to separate the issue into two categories. In one put those aspects of the issue that you absolutely cannot give on without violating your basic needs or core values. In the second category put all aspects of the issue where you can be flexible, because they are not so “hot” for you. Try to make the second category as large as possible, and the first category as small as possible.

  Share your two lists with your spouse. Working together, and using the skills you learned in Chapter 8, come up with a temporary compromise. Try it for about two months and then review where you stand. Don’t expect this to solve the problem, only to help you both live with it more peacefully.

  For example, Sally believes in living for the moment—she tends to be spontaneous and loose with her money. Gus’s main goal in life is to feel secure. He moves slowly and carefully toward decisions and is very frugal. These differences lead them to clash when Sally insists that they buy a mountain cabin. Gus immediately says no—they can’t afford it. Sally feels confident that they can.

  For a year they gridlock over this issue. Whenever they try to discuss it, they become embroiled in a shouting match. Gus lets Sally know he considers her an irresponsible dreamer who always wants to squander the money he works so hard to earn. Sally accuses Gus of wanting to squash all the fun and joy out of her life.

  To overcome the gridlock, Gus and Sally first have to explore the symbolic meaning of their positions on the cabin. In their first conversation to try to work on this issue, Sally says that her dreams are to pursue pleasure, to be able to truly relax, and to feel unity with nature, all of which she can realize by having a cabin. Although she also fears that Gus wants to turn her into a drone who’s living just for tomorrow, she doesn’t say this to him now. (She’s said it frequently in the past.) Instead, she focuses on what she desires, not her anger and fears connected to Gus.

  When it’s Gus’s turn to talk, he tells her that saving money has a lot of symbolic meaning for him. He longs to feel financially secure because he fears being destitute in his old age. He remembers seeing his grandparents suffering because they were so poor. His grandfather ended up in a state-run nursing home that Gus believes took away his dignity. One of his big goals in life is not to feel humiliated when he is old. Gus is also furious at Sally because he believes she is reckless and has a childish need for immediate gratification, which is a threat to his well-being and the life he’s trying to build for both of them. However, he doesn’t hurl those accusations at her this time. Instead, he sticks to explaining and describing his dream of financial security and its roots in his childhood.

  Once Sally and Gus have discussed the symbolic meaning of their positions, a transformation takes place. Rather than seeing each other’s dreams as threats, they see them for what they are: deep desires held by someone they love. Although their dreams are still in opposition, they are now motivated to find some common ground, to find a way to respect and perhaps even accommodate both of them. Here’s how they do this:

  1. They define the minimal core areas that they cannot yield on. Sally says she must have a cabin. Gus says he must save $30,000 in order to feel financially secure.

  2. They define their areas of flexibility. Sally says she can settle for a small cabin on just a couple of acres, rather than the larger retreat she had envisioned. She can also be flexible on the timing of acquiring a cabin. She would like to buy one right now, but can wait a few years as long as she feels Gus supports the decision and they work toward it together. Gus says he can be flexible about how quickly he must save his $30,000 as long as he knows that they are consistently working toward that goal by saving a specific amount from each of their paychecks.

  3. They devise a temporary compromise that honors both of their dreams. They will buy a small cabin, but not for another three years. Meanwhile, they will devote half of their savings to a down payment and half to a mutual fund. In a couple of months they will review this plan and decide if it’s working.

  Sally and Gus realize that their underlying perpetual problem will never go away. Sally is always going to be the visionary, having ideas for t
hings like cabins and great trips, and Gus is going to worry about their financial security, their retirement fund, and so on. But by learning how to cope with their differences, they can avoid gridlock on any specific conflicts their fundamental differences trigger.

  Here are a few other examples, using some of the couples from the “Detecting Dreams” exercise above, that show how you can learn to live with your differences through this process. While none of these conflicts are likely to mirror yours exactly, they should give you an idea of how couples with entrenched differences of opinion can overcome gridlock.

  Couple 1

  Gridlocked problem: Housecleaning—she wants him to be neater, he wants her to leave him alone about it.

  The dream(s) within the conflict:

  Hers: A sense of order and security at home

  His: A sense of freedom in his own home

  Nonnegotiable areas:

  Hers: She can’t abide dirty dishes left out in the kitchen or a dirty bathroom.

  His: He can’t abide having to clean up his papers right after he’s finished with them.

  Areas of flexibility: She can live with some clutter as long as there isn’t any dirt. He can cope with cleaning dishes and bathrooms as long as he doesn’t have to straighten up all the time.