Areas › Your marriage
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
6 practicesWhen you feel flooded today, name it and take a real break before you say a word.
Racing heart, tight chest, that is the signal. Step away, breathe, come back when steady.
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.
For a compromise, name your one true core need, then be genuinely flexible on everything around it.
Separate the small inflexible core from the wide flexible area. Guard the core, give on the rest.
On a break, do not rehearse how wronged you are. Let the grievance go and let your body settle.
Thoughts like I do not have to take this keep you flooded. Turn to something calming instead.
On a stuck, recurring fight, stop trying to persuade. First explore the dream or value behind each position.
Gridlock rarely yields to argument. Set persuasion aside and get curious about what the issue means to each of you.
Before you try to persuade, summarize your partner's position back until they say yes, that is it.
No persuasion lands until your partner feels understood. Interview them, then reflect their view to their satisfaction.