Summary
The book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M. Gottman, Ph.D. and Nan Silver focuses on the provision of effective tools for repairing and strengthening couples in marriage. The book also addresses individuals that aspire to be married and provides an effective perspective regarding marriage life and how to make life in marriage interesting. The main aspect addressed in the book is why marriages fail and the factors that may be necessary to ensure that marriages succeed. The provision of deep-rooted causes of why marriages fail provides adequate information on issues that create discord and outcomes of the discords in marriage, which is often divorce. The crucial and effective information analyzed within the book is a result of engaging in intensive research for over 40years to come up with information that is relevant and reliable in making creating effective marriages.
According to Gottman & Silver (2002), self-reports such as quizzes and exercises on marriage provides an effective pathway for understanding why some marriages succeed and why others fail. The quizzes and exercises help to engage individuals in marriage to provide an understanding of need to implement crucial aspects such as communication in marriage. The issue of communication and conflict resolution does define a happy marriage considering the need to listen to each other. In that case, active listening is regarded an important aspect that helps in defining success in marriage and it helps in ensuring that the couples focus towards the main objective of succeeding in marriage. The authors maintain that marriage is based on friendship, thus need to cultivate deep friendship by understanding a majority of aspects that are necessary to make each of the couples happy and content, which may involve understanding the likes and the dislikes of the partner.
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According to Gottman & Silver (2002), the first principle for making marriage to work is enhancing the love maps, which is an aspect that helps to maintain intimacy. Maintaining intimacy in a relationship is necessary as it helps in preparing couples to deal with stressful episodes, which are inevitable on life considering the life-cycle transitions. The second principle involves nurturing fondness and admiration towards each other. Fondness and admiration provide a basis for an effective relationship in marriage as it helps to overcome challenges associated with negativity. The third basic principle for making marriage work involves the idea of staying connected by always turning towards each other and not away from each other. A positive connection in marriage helps in cushioning against different stresses and enables couples to withstand pressures from life stressors.
The fourth principle involves focusing on positive influence from a partner. Positive influence from a partner helps in dealing with the issues of criticism, contempt, and defensiveness, which significant players in affecting success in marriages. The fifth principle involves solving the solvable problem and understanding the different kinds of conflict in marriage and having the ability to distinguish them. The two forms of conflicts in marriage include the solvable and unsolvable conflicts, which require the implementation of different strategies to cope and overcome. The sixth principle entails overcoming gridlocks in marriage, which arises when dreams and expectations in life are not met. Lastly, the principle of creating a shared meaning in marriage helps to sum up all the principles that helps in making a marriage work. Gottman & Silver (2002) argue that the principles are significant tools in sustaining marriages and overcoming issues of fallout and divorces.
Concrete Responses
The principle of positively staying connected and turning towards each other and not against each other triggered a memory regarding a past relationship that did not work and ended up in a fallout. In the relationship, my partner and I constantly engaged in arguments and fights triggered by life stressors such as lack on finances or poor communication. During each time we had an argument my partner turned towards friends exposing our marital issues, which is an aspect that did not work well considering that the friends could not solve any of the issues but rather laugh at our misfortunes. In most case, we did not engage in conversations that would reduce stress in the relationship but rather we constantly argued, which is a factor that contributed to creating a rift in the relationship. At the end of our heated arguments, I always felt hurt, broken, and insecure.
In the relationship, communication was always based on the negatives and active listening was not part of our lives considering that each of us wanted to be superior in the relationship. In that case, the relationship lost meaning and we all knew that a major fallout awaited us as there were no individual effort that were made to make the marriage work. From the book, communication does not define a happy relationship, which is an aspect that was clear in my relationship considering that we engaged in communication but we always fought and never came up with long term solutions. An important aspect that lacked in the relationship was active listening to have a deep understanding of individual feelings and emotions regarding different issues. The much-anticipated fallout resulted from the need for freedom, which is an aspect that affects most relationships considering that partners tend to feel tied up due to lack of understanding.
Reflection
In my personal analysis, I must say that I found the book as being rather compelling, especially focusing on the points that the authors are able to bring out. However, one of the key aspects that I would like to understand further is why the authors held the view that active listening did not achieve its intended objectives. Gottman & Silver (2002) state that, “The problem is that therapy that focuses solely on active listening does not work” (p.13). In my view, I tend to believe that when couples are arguing, active listening would serve as one of the fundamental principles that is likely to minimize the occurrence of conflicts. That is one of the key areas that I may need clarity considering that the authors do not provide readers with what can be considered as a well-structured understanding of how active listening is likely to fail married couples.
The book also incorporates several exercises for couples that are strategically focused on seeking to improve on their marriage in one way or another. My favorite exercise, out of the different exercises, is “The History and Philosophy of your Relationship.” The exercise is specifically focused on seeking to ensure that couples look at their relationship from the very beginning. The expectation is that this will provide them with a clear understanding of why they fell in love in the first place. Celello (2009) indicates that the ability for couples to reconnect is determined by their ability to identify the main reason why they fell in love, which would help push them together to advance their capacity to make their marriage work. Gottman & Silver (2002) argue that the completion of this exercise is especially important towards recharging the relationship that the persons may have had based on why they fell in love from the very beginning.
Action
From my personal analysis, I view “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” as being an amazing book for couples that are specifically focused on trying to make their marriage work. The book provides strategies on how couples would be able to repair their broken marriages while advancing an overall narrative that indeed marriages can work. As part of my action, I intend to recommend this book to some of my married friends as a way of ensuring that they understand how they ought to build on their marriage. I will specifically focus on those friends that I consider as being committed and serious in their relationships considering that the book will help provide them with new approaches on how to increase the overall levels of commitment to their partners.
On the other hand, I must appreciate the fact that some of the exercises may be of great value in building my personal relationship with my boyfriend, especially in trying to improve on the area of communication. I intend to use the “I Appreciate” exercise to help show that I indeed appreciate everything that my boyfriend is doing for me irrespective of how small the action may seem. For example, the use of the words ‘I Love You’ often can be seen as one of the key areas of consideration towards ensuring that one shows his or her appreciation. That is one of the key aspects that I intend to work on as part of trying to make my relationship better. Additionally, I will use of the book to show gratitude to those that support my relationship including my parents among others, which is an important step towards making marriage work.
References
Celello, K. (2009). Making marriage work: A history of marriage and divorce in the twentieth-century United States . Univ of North Carolina Press.
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2002). The seven principles for making marriage work . New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group.
