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Your marriage

What keeps a marriage well is not the big gestures. It is knowing each other, turning towards each other in ordinary moments, staying regulated when it gets hot, and repairing quickly when it goes wrong. Most of the practices here take under five minutes.

What works for this

Gottman on repair, and emotionally focused therapy

What separates couples who last is not the absence of conflict but what happens in the ordinary moments and whether repair gets through. Emotionally focused therapy works on the pattern the two of you fall into, not the thing being argued about.

One move, today

Notice one small overture from them today and answer it. Not a conversation, just turning towards it rather than past it.

What matches

8 practices

Narrow these down

Raise the hard thing with how you feel and what you need, not with what they did wrong.

I felt alone last night and would love an evening together, not you always disappear.

A minuteStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 20:44Seen more than once

In the next argument, make one repair attempt, a softer word, a small step back.

Can we start over. I hear you. Let me try again. A hand held out mid-fight.

A minuteStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 49:10Seen more than once

Name the one thing you cannot give up here, and the parts you can flex. Then ask theirs.

Most deadlocks are a small core need wrapped in a lot that is negotiable. Protect the core, trade the edges.

A minuteStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 4:128Seen more than once

Voice the specific complaint, not a verdict on their character.

This dish is still here, not you never help. One moment can be fixed; a character cannot.

A minuteStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 2:263Seen more than once

If you take a break from a fight, name when you will come back, and come back.

Give me twenty minutes, I am not leaving this. Then return, calmer, as promised.

Five minutesStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 3:134One line of research

After a fight has cooled, revisit it once without blame, each saying how it felt.

Not who was right. How it felt for me, how it felt for you, and what we each needed.

Twenty minutesStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 42:40One line of research

On the fight you keep having, stop trying to win it and ask what it means to them underneath.

What are you hoping for, or afraid of, in this. Then only listen for the dream beneath.

Twenty minutesStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 4:19One line of research

Before you argue your side, say their side back so well that they feel understood.

Summarize what they mean until they say yes, that is it. Then, and only then, your turn.

Twenty minutesStaying regulated in conflictGottmanQur’an 4:135One line of research

Learn this in order

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