The Love Prescription

Informationen zum Autor John Gottman, PhD, and Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD Klappentext "The authors' decades of research have revealed that a great relationship is founded on the small stuff. [This book] distills the data they have gathered over the past fifty years on more than three thousand couples (everything from their body language to the way they converse to their heart rates and stress hormone levels) into a seven-day action plan to transform your relationship"-- Leseprobe Day 1 Make Contact Alison and Jeremy showed up for one of our weekend couples retreats looking tired. It wasn't surprising: we already knew from their intake forms that they had young kids and had been working from home, while supervising remote learning, for months. Of course they looked exhausted. It was nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and like everything, the retreat was on Zoom. Not being in the same physical space with our participants, we had to work especially hard to observe their emotional states and body language. But even through the slightly grainy, brightly pixelated Zoom window, we could see Alison and Jeremy's disconnect. They sat side by side so that we could see them both through our screen, but they could have been in their own separate Zoom squares, sitting in different rooms, miles apart. Alison and Jeremy explained why they'd enrolled: They felt constantly at odds with each other. They always seemed to disagree on how to handle stuff-everything from how to deal with a kid not wanting to finish his vegetables to how much risk they were comfortable taking on during the pandemic. Should they see friends outside, or not gather at all? Should they require the kids to wear masks if they went for a bike ride in the neighborhood? Everything turned into a fight; then life intervened before they could resolve it-the kids burst in, or an urgent work issue came up (work had seemingly become a twenty-four-hour activity, now that everything was remote)-and they would end up ruminating on the fight and just getting more upset. They were having thoughts they never used to have about the other: He never really considers my opinion; he just thinks of reasons why I'm wrong. She always pushes her agenda; she always has to win. "We used to be more in sync," Alison said. "I mean, with little kids, there's always been a lot of logistics and dropped balls. But now we're just never on the same page." We asked them to describe a typical day. When did they have opportunities to connect? Not to problem solve or work through life logistics-but to talk and listen. They blinked at us. "We don't have any," Jeremy replied. They hit the ground running in the morning, one of them taking work calls in a bedroom while the other got the kids fed and ready for remote school; one or both of them usually ended up skipping lunch in lieu of squeezing in some work time. Dinner was chaos; then one of them was cleaning up while the other did bedtime. Jeremy said, "By the time I finish doing the dishes and come upstairs, she's already asleep." We don't need to be mid-pandemic for this to sound familiar. And you don't need to have kids underfoot to feel like it's hard to make time to connect. Here's a massive misconception that a lot of us have: For connection to be meaningful, you must give hours of time to it. Therefore, in a busy day, we just don't have time for it. True? False. We have opportunities for meaningful connection constantly-but we miss them. We don't know exactly what we're looking for, and we don't know how important these seemingly small, fleeting, insignificant moments can be. In the language of the science of love, what we are doing in these quick moments is making what we call "bids for connection." What's a bid for connection? Well, it can look like a casual remark. It can be as simple as one person sitting down ne...

Auteur

John Gottman, PhD, and Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD

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*INSTANT *NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“This book feels so hopeful because it’s direct, it’s really honest, and it’s so actionable.” —Brene Brown

From New York Times–bestselling authors Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, a simple yet powerful plan to transform your relationship in seven days

What makes love last? Why does one couple stay together forever, while another falls apart? And most importantly, is there a scientific formula for love?
 
Drs. John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman are the world’s leading relationship scientists. For the past forty years, they have been studying love. They’ve gathered data on over three thousand couples, looking at everything from their body language to the way they converse to their stress hormone levels. Their goal: to identify the building blocks of love.
  
The Love Prescription distills their life’s work into a bite-size, seven-day action plan with easy, immediately actionable steps. There will be no grand gestures and no big, hard conversations. There’s nothing to buy or do to prepare. Anyone can do this, from any starting point.

The seven-day prescription will lead you through these exercises:

Day 1: Make Contact
Day 2: Ask a Big Question
Day 3: Say Thank You
Day 4: Give a Real Compliment 
Day 5: Ask for What You Need
Day 6: Reach Out and Touch
Day 7: Declare a Date Night

There is a formula for a good relationship, and this book will show you how a few small changes can fundamentally transform your relationship for the better.

Échantillon de lecture
Day 1

Make Contact

Alison and Jeremy showed up for one of our weekend couples retreats looking tired. It wasn't surprising: we already knew from their intake forms that they had young kids and had been working from home, while supervising remote learning, for months. Of course they looked exhausted.

It was nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and like everything, the retreat was on Zoom. Not being in the same physical space with our participants, we had to work especially hard to observe their emotional states and body language. But even through the slightly grainy, brightly pixelated Zoom window, we could see Alison and Jeremy's disconnect. They sat side by side so that we could see them both through our screen, but they could have been in their own separate Zoom squares, sitting in different rooms, miles apart.

Alison and Jeremy explained why they'd enrolled: They felt constantly at odds with each other. They always seemed to disagree on how to handle stuff-everything from how to deal with a kid not wanting to finish his vegetables to how much risk they were comfortable taking on during the pandemic. Should they see friends outside, or not gather at all? Should they require the kids to wear masks if they went for a bike ride in the neighborhood? Everything turned into a fight; then life intervened before they could resolve it-the kids burst in, or an urgent work issue came up (work had seemingly become a twenty-four-hour activity, now that everything was remote)-and they would end up ruminating on the fight and just getting more upset. They were having thoughts they never used to have about the other: He never really considers my opinion; he just thinks of reasons why I'm wrong. She always pushes her agenda; she always has to win.

"We used to be more in sync," Alison said. "I mean, with little kids, there's always been a lot of logistics and dropped balls. But now we're just never on the same page."

We asked them to describe a typical day. When did they have opportunities to connect? Not to problem solve or work through life logistics-but to talk and listen.

They blinked at us.

"We don't have any," Jeremy replied. They hit the ground running in the morning, one of them taking work calls in …