What Makes Love Last? Drs. John and Julie Gottman Interview

I started working with the Loving Children, Loving Families project with a question – a yearning desire to understand one thing: What makes love last? 

Day and night, I saw couple after couple transform.

Groups of 2-20 couples gathered around on the second floor of a small house turned non-profit center in Bothell, WA.

What Makes Love Last Is Open Communication

During the research program, I worked with hundreds of couples.

One thing I saw that made their love endure and last was their ability to open up. Using the Gottman method, unhappy couples found ways to discuss the taboo. The hidden. The feared.

Looking into each other’s eyes, couples learned how to discuss their problems, drop their guard, and share what was in their hearts.

In the process of being in couples counseling classes, we helped them learn how to bring more love into their lives.

Each day, I watched masses of kids enter the non-profit with their parents. I saw the children transformed as their parents stopped complaining about them.

What Makes Love Last For Parents

Mom and Dad stopped saying: “Our son has a problem. He has a short temper, and he yells a lot. We need you to help us change him.”

Instead, the wife started explaining: “Our son is like this because we set a bad example. My husband yells at me, and then I get angry and start yelling back. Let’s be better partners with each other. Let’s help Tommy by being better partners.”

It wasn’t just the couples and the children who were changing.

To me, this was more than just a job. This sparked a passion and talent within me that made me feel alive.

The Gottman’s research had become part of my obsession.

The 7:1 ratio, the 5:1 ratio, Gentle Start Up, Taking a Break, Date Nights, Turn Towards and Not Away, The 4 Horsemen of Apocalypse, The Love Bank, Love Maps…I felt alive teaching their work.

The Answer to “What Makes Love Last” 

After countless hours I had a pretty good idea.

Love is a verb. When couples learn to act and be certain ways with each other – regardless of age, gender, kids, or no kids, no matter what – all couples can be happy.

Now, in this interview, we sit with the Gottmans to help everyone understand the answer to this question.

Are you worried about what makes love last?

In this interview with Drs. John and Julie Gottman, they share their insights on living harmoniously in your relationships and what makes love last.

Drs. John and Julie Gottman discuss how technology can connect people in a deep way if used correctly.

Drs. John and Julie Gottman also talk about ways to make your partner feel safe so you can create healthy and fulfilling relationship dynamics. If you want to learn insightful and practical advice on how to make a relationship last, keep reading!

Key Takeaways From Julie Gottman and John Gottman What Makes Love Last

• Our definition of success is based on what we’ve seen in our culture, media, and people we’ve looked up to.
• Technology can be either good or bad for a relationship. Sometimes it can help to make a relationship last.
• Social networking can be a great alternative to building community in America.
• Through technology, couples get to know one another and find out more about who their partner is.
• Meaningful questions really open up the heart of the other person and help them know how to make a relationship last.
• 58% of the time, what precedes a suicide attempt by a soldier, is a fight with the stateside partner that they’ve had on Skype or cell phone.
• We can use technology in a way that connects people in a very deep way. It doesn’t have to be distancing if it’s used correctly.
• When couples are unhappily married, they missed 50% of the positivity that was there.
• People who have been abused are often very good at giving positives. They develop giving positives as a survival skill, but it’s very difficult for them to take in the positives.
• Our parents are a mirror for us. If they’ve learned how to make a relationship last, it is easier for us.
• We have to make a conscious, mindful, concerted effort to crack ourselves open in order to know how to make a relationship last.

Ways to increase the feeling of safety in a relationship

• Never assume the thought you think your partner is having is accurate. Don’t assume it. Ask it.
• Ask for reassurance.
• Ask your partner for what you need.  Asking for what you need is one of the hardest things in the whole wide world to do when you’ve been traumatized.
• Listen to your partner and acknowledge their emotions when you hurt them.
• Deal with your partner’s negative emotions.

Gentle start-ups

• Meant as an antidote or an alternative to being critical or contemptuous. One doesn’t have to necessarily be sweet per se. One just has to not be critical or contemptuous.
• You can have negative emotion.
• You can have intensity in your expressing your complaint.
• Asking nicely doesn’t guarantee you’ll hear “Yes” in a response. Your partner still has the right to say “NO” to be true to themselves.

As a listener

• Take notes while you’re listening.
• Ask some questions before you respond.
  • What makes that so important to you?
  • What would be your ideal dream here?
  • Is there some childhood history or backstory to why you want this?
• A predictor of a very poor prognosis of the future of a marriage or a relationship is getting flooded.
• If the conversation is very touchy and sensitive, you can get flooded. Paying attention to one another is what makes love last.
• You can’t think well when you are in a fight or flight. Avoid fight or flight by implementing the tips on how to make a relationship last.
• Avoid the four horsemen

If one person feels charged

• Tell your partner that you need to take a break and to tell your partner when you’ll come back to resume the conversation.
• If you don’t tell your partner when you’re going to come back, the partner will just feel abandoned.
• When you’re on the break, don’t think about the argument because that will keep you engaged in all the feelings of it, which will keep you flooded. Instead, do something self-soothing to take your mind off the argument so your body can calm down.
• Make a little repair right in the moment when you start feeling charged.
  • “Will you please stop interrupting me? I just need to finish my thought.”
• To repair, the other partner needs to take in what is being said and hear it.
  • “Okay. All right. Go ahead. Finish”
• Solve the moment instead of solving the problem.

Transcript From Julie and John Gottman What Makes Love Last

Luis Congdon Here we are with John and Julie Gottman, who are world-renowned in marriage and family therapy and teaching what makes love last.

It’s incredible to be here with both of you. Your work has touched me incredibly in my own life. It’s very personal to me.

In a period of nearly 3 years, I got to work with close to 200 couples that were impoverished with children, and I got to see the impact that work made for parents and, really, more specifically, for the children.

Again, I’m honored to be here with John and Julie Gottman, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington. Thank you.

Julie Gottman We’re so grateful to you for having done that work because without you doing that work, there are no ripples. There’s no effect out there. There’s no impact. So thank you.

Knowing How to Make a Relationship Last Is So Important

Kamala Chambers I hear that you’re doing your work with technology and how it’s affecting relationships. I love the way you teach what makes love last and how to work through marital stability and divorce.

Julie and John Gottman, you authored or co-authored New York Times bestsellers, and you are founders of the Gottman Institute. You have worked with the American Association for Marriage as clinical psychologists, and you are unmatched directors of relationships.

I’d love to hear more about that and what you find you’re doing with that breakthrough research and that work with technology and how it’s putting the break between couples in connecting.

John Gottman It’s not research that we’ve done, really. It’s really based on our clinical experience and we came up with different ways for what makes love last.

I think it’s a double-edged sword. I don’t think technology is either good or bad. It can work both ways. Sherry Turkle in Alone Together, an amazing book shows readers, it can really damage relationships because people want less connection with more people rather than a deeper connection with fewer people.

It can work that way, but I’ve also seen it work the other way. It really helps in knowing how to make a loving relationship last.

I’ve seen our daughter, for example, have all these Facebook friends, and the community she’s able to create around herself is really impressive. Especially now that Robert Putnam has written his book Bowling Alone, and we know that community is declining in America.

This social networking can be really a great alternative to building a community in America, and that plays a significant role in knowing how to make a relationship last.

Technology can work in a bad way where people don’t want to talk face to face. In this case, it does not contribute to teaching how to make a relationship last. They’d rather text or use email.

And we know that kind of communication really sucks for emotional communication.

It’s just terrible. It can really hurt loving relationships. It can get in the way of communication that people are always on their phones when they sit down at dinner, and we’ve seen 12 teenage girls having breakfast, not even talking to each other, just on their phones.

It can be awful, and it can get in the way of a love relationship too, but it can also be positive, I think.

John And Julie Gottman On Helping Couples Understand What Makes Love Last

Julie Gottman On the other hand, we have been taking some bar exercises, for example, the kinds of things that we do in workshops while mentoring people about what makes love last.

We’ve created apps for them so that couples who may not be able to come to the workshop, maybe can’t afford it, can’t travel, maybe the partner doesn’t really want to get involved especially committed to 2 whole days of doing something, with their partner but are much more open to something that is very much a part of their left hand, which is the cellphone.

They can go forward and do some love map questions, for example, where some questions may come up that they’re guessing the right answer in terms of their partner’s world.

They get to know one another and find out more about the human being that their partner is through technology, through this app. Or for example, there may be some open-ended questions that are questions that really open up the heart of the other person.

Open up the mind really are questions that are much deeper. Like, “Why is it so important to you to be a parent in the future?” Questions like that are a part of another app that couples can play with.

Let’s say on a date or when you’re out for breakfast, asking one another to really get to know who you are. What are your deeper values? What are your deeper feelings?

We’re in the process of crafting lots of different apps because we’re really old. We tend to write on yellow notepads and stuff instead of on our iPhones. We know that technology is very intervolved in our culture now, it helps in educating people how to make a relationship last.

If we want to be able to really help and reach couples who are younger, and who are very comfortable with technology, then that’s the language we need to speak to in terms of helping people learn better ways to connect with one another and giving them the tools to do so.

Technology has really helped in know how to make relationships last.

John Gottman For example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers are deployed for really long periods of time, like 12- 15 months.

What the army has learned is that 58% of the time, what precedes a suicide attempt by a soldier is a fight with the stateside partner that they’ve had on Skype or cell phone.

So a captain in the army we worked with in Iraq created Skype conversations between soldiers and their stateside partners where they worked through our exercises and our seven principles of making marriage work and helped them understand intervolve.

It eliminated the problem of suicide.

Luis Congdon I’ve loved how you guys have taken that question and really framed it around the positive aspect because there are so many people that taken issue like our schools aren’t doing enough, and I consistently want to say, let’s talk about what they’re doing right.

Now, we can enhance that and utilize what is right in a way to further enhance the experience of children and parents. My next question for you is about that 5:1 ratio.

In the time that I’ve worked with couples in teaching them how to make a relationship last, one of the key things we come across a lot is couples who come from backgrounds where they’ve been heavily abused, and we know that if you’ve been heavily abused, you’re likely to think that that’s the way you receive or show love.

That 5:1 ratio, in a lot of ways to some degree, at least for me, assumes that you have a lot of positivity and are able to draw that out and then feed that to your partner.

How can we, as individuals, get more of that sense of being able to give love, be positive, and use words of affirmation?

John Gottman I want to tell you about a study that is so interesting, which is relevant to what makes love last. It was done by these two researchers, Robinson and Price.

They put observers in couple’s homes just to count the positive things that a husband did toward a wife, and a wife did to a husband. What was interesting about their study was they also trained the partners to count these positive things.

So the husband was actually trying to notice positive things his wife did for him in the evening, and she was doing the same for him. When the couples were happily married, the observers and the couple were in lined. They were reliable.

John Gottman A lot of the problem in this 5:1 ratio is not seeing the positive that actually is there rather than having to generate a positive.

It’s a habit of mine to scan your social environment for what’s going right in the a good relationship.

If you have been abused, you have these shift attractors where you’re trying to scan your social environment for potential danger and what’s wrong.

And so requires a mental shift to look for what’s going right, and lo and behold, people are mostly doing a lot of really nice things for you regardless of your background.

Julie Gottman First of all, I think it’s very easy to oversimplify a little bit in terms of the effects of emotional abuse perhaps. If you are in an abusive relationship, you need to focus on what makes love last in a better way.

For example, I’ve been treating abuse for about 45 years now. That’s where I started my own individual therapy.

What I’ve learned from all the people I treated is that actually, people who have been abused are often very good at giving a positive.

They’re using giving positives as a way to please the other person so the other person doesn’t hurt them.

They develop giving positives as a survival skill, as a tool to be able to shape the behavior of a partner so that that partner is kinder to them. That partner doesn’t get displeased with them because if the partner does get displeased with them, they fear emotional abuse.

They’re good at giving positives, so the thing that’s very difficult for them is taking in the positives. Taking in the positives means saying, “Yes, I believe you. That’s true,” “I am a good person,” “I am a kind person.”

Our parents are a mirror for us. If they are good at how to make a relationship last, so are we. So if they treat us badly we believe we deserve it. If we deserve it, that means we’re bad people.

Taking in the positives means, “Wait a minute. I am a bad person. So why are you telling me I’m a good person? It doesn’t make any sense.” It collides with our own messages that we’ve internalized.

In order to take them in without batting a bat and saying something offensive like, “You’re just saying that because you want to go to bed with me tonight.”

Julie Gottman Open up the door and say, “This makes no sense to me, but I’m going to take it in. I’m just going to take it on faith and be thankful my partner doesn’t have great eyesight, has to wear glasses, and thinks I’m beautiful. Terrific. Great news.”

Just take it in, and that’s where the hard work comes in. Sometimes we need to work hard to know how to make a relationship last.

Luis Congdon It’s rewiring your brain essentially to believe something that you thought wasn’t true or something that you were told the opposite. This is incongruent with the messages and the way my mind has been trained to think.

Sharing art about our relationship is one of the things that early on, when we went to Harville Hendrix’s seminar, we did this exercise. It was an appreciation exercise where Kamala got to stand up and walk a circle around me and give me compliments for a minute, and I got uncomfortable.

I told her afterward I felt uncomfortable with that experience, whereas a lot of the room was like, “This is awesome!” and I felt uncomfortable, and what you’re saying resonates for me in that receiving compliments to some degree is uncomfortable for me.

Kamala Chambers I’m really curious more about the piece about people who have had trauma in their childhood, do they really have to struggle with what makes love last. What do you say to people when they’re trying to feel safer in their relationship? What are some tools that you give them to feel that sense of safety?

John And Julie Gottman What Makes Love Last In Traumatized Couples

Julie Gottman I think there are some particular tools to use for people who’ve been traumatized in order to increase their safety so that they become more confident about what makes love last.

One, for example, is when you’ve been traumatized, never assume the thought you think your partner is having is accurate. Don’t assume it. Ask it.

For example, if one of you has been traumatized and the other one says, “Gosh! I don’t think the bills have been paid. Have they?”

What you end up hearing the other person say and what you think the person saying is, “Oh, so you think I’m really lazy? Do you think I’m bad? Do you think I’m irresponsible that I haven’t paid the bills? So, you ask.

“Are you saying that you’re upset with me that I haven’t paid the bills? Is that what you’re saying?

And the person then gets a chance to correct your distorted perception and to say, “No! Gosh! This wasn’t about you at all. I was just thinking to myself, ‘Oh oh! They haven’t been paid’ and either you or me, maybe we should sit down together and pay them. It wasn’t about you.”

A lot of times, when you’ve been traumatized, any little pint, we’re vigilant. We’re hypervigilant for criticism, and we’re going to see where it doesn’t exist, and then we’ll react defensively, which then ends up with an escalated quarrel.

Instead of assuming you know what your partner’s thinking or saying, ask. Check it out to make sure you’re not distorting the perception.

Another thing to do is ask for reassurance that helps in knowing how to make a relationship last.

If your partner hasn’t said, “I love you” all day today, what may come up in you is an anxiety of, “Gosh! I wonder if he doesn’t love me anymore.” “I wonder if she still cares about me.” “I wonder if they’re lunch with that cute girl at work means maybe they’re attracted to the other girl.”

That’s where our minds will go when we don’t feel safe and when we’re so insecure. Again, asking the partner for what you need is huge. This is how to make a relationship last.

Coming to the partner at the end of the day, “How was your day? Honey, I really miss you saying you love me. Would you please tell me you love me and then give me a detailed list of why so I can figure it out?”

Asking for what you need is one of the hardest things in the whole wide world to do when you’ve been traumatized because of portion not worthy of anything.

Kamala Chambers And it’s not safe, or you feel like it’s not.

Julie Gottman Yeah.

Insightful and practical advice about trauma

John Gottman To feel safe in all relationships, trauma or without trauma, is attunement, which means that you really do listen when your partner is upset, even upset with you.

You deal with your partner’s negative emotions by saying, “Talk to me, baby. I want to know what you feel. Are you mad at me? Okay, so what are your concerns? Tell me. I’ll take notes. What is it?”

By always meeting negative emotions, anger, disappointment, hurt feelings, sadness, fear, not feeling safe, feeling afraid by comfort and listening and taking it in and empathy, you systematically build safety moment by moment.

Luis Congdon I want to add a little anecdotal story to what you’re talking about asking. I was working with this couple, and the husband has autism.

His sensitivity to emotion is not really there. He doesn’t really get the subtle new ounces of emotion.

So his wife said, “It’s really hard with my husband because I have to be very clear with him about what I’m feeling, unlike if I’m conversing with you.”

This was what she said to me, “When I converse with you, you get the little subtle things and what that means. My husband is completely inapt in that field,” and I actually thought that was awesome.

I said, “I really wish you could come and teach a class on how to be that clear in your relationship so that we assume that if I do this or that, you’re going to get it because you’re sensitively attuned.

Hopefully, you are to some degree, but to another degree, there’s a space of responsibility of how clearly can I communicate so my partner is let into my world.”

During the classes at Loving Families, Loving Children, we taught gentle start-up regarding how to make a relationship last. For anybody who’s tuning in and doesn’t know, that skill is essentially what I feel when and what I need.

When any situation comes up, we talk about the feeling that that situation brings up for us than the situation that creates that emotion and then the need behind it.

Now, a lot of the confusion that occurred when teaching that skill is people thought they always had to be very sweet while they did it because it’s gentle.

In your work, I understand that you’re not always advocating that we’re going to be super sweet when we do these gentle start-ups. Can you say a little more about that, particularly in knowing how to make a relationship last?

John And Julie Gottman On The Role of Self-Awareness and Knowing How to Make A Relationship Last

Julie Gottman I think I’m going to kind of take a leap here that when you say sweet, you mean not angry.

Luis Congdon Right. Not upset, or they would go, “Hey honey,” even though they’re upset. Then, there was the other thing that would happen too is “I did the general start up, but then, he didn’t do what I asked him to do.”

John Gottman Right. Most of us are not sweet all the time, and if we are, it’s phony. I think the point is that gentle start up is meant as an antidote or an alternative to being critical or contemptuous.

One doesn’t have to necessarily be sweet per se. One just has to not be critical or contemptuous, and the way to do that is to be describing yourself.

“I feel about what– Here’s what I need”. If you mean by sweet, don’t be critical. Yes, that’s true. You can have negative emotions. You can express those negative emotions.

“I’m angry,” “I’m furious,” “I’m really upset.” You can have passion. You can have intensity in your expressing your complaint.

That’s a “gentle start up” but the point is to not go critical and contemptuous and say, “You! You! You! You are too lazy. You are irresponsible.” That’s the harsh start up that we’re trying to avoid.

So as long as you describe yourself in making the complaint and situation, that’s good enough. This is so important in creating self-awareness about how to make a relationship last.

The other thing that you’re bringing up, which is such a good point, is that asking nicely doesn’t guarantee you’ll hear “Yes” in a response.

Your partner still has the right to say no to be true to themselves and say, “Gee, you’ve said that ever so sweetly, but forget about it. It’s not going to happen.”

That’s okay. Your partner has a right to adhere to their own needs, their own values, to what feels right for them, and if that means “No” in response to your need, then they’ll say sweetly “No,” and you move on.

Related Reading: The Four Horsemen

Kamala Chambers I’d like to hear the other side of that about the listener. What do you think the listener, who is eager to know what makes love last, should be doing at that time, or what’s the best way to hear someone?

Julie Gottman It depends on what you’re talking about. If it’s a topic where your partner’s need is your nightmare, let’s say, for example, you just had a baby by a cesarean section, and it’s a week later, and your partner wants to have sex.

You’re not excited about having sexual intimacy at that point. How do you listen without going ballistic and say, “Are you kidding? I just went through– What’s the matter with you that you’re asking?!”

You don’t want to go defensive. That’s the point. At this point, you realize why it is important to educate your partner regarding what makes love last.

One of the things you can do is take notes to have self-awareness about how to make a relationship last. Take notes while you’re listening.  

Then, if your partner’s done gentle start up, it will be easier to say, “Okay, let me make sure I’ve got it straight,” and say what you heard and try to put yourself in your partner’s shoes to say, “Okay, makes sense that you want that.”

Still doesn’t mean you have to say “Yes,” but what it does mean is at least you can help your partner feel listened to and understood. And you may, as a listener, also want to ask some questions before you respond.

Create an emotional connection with questions

• What makes that so important to you?
• What would be your ideal dream here?
• Is there some childhood history or backstory to why you want this?

Asking questions enables you to understand in a much deeper level what your partner is asking for and why they’re asking for it, which may soften your desire to want to reach toward your partner and give them what they’re asking.

John Gottman Let’s say something about “No”. Using game theory and mathematical proof people respond to “No” when somebody has asked her for sexual intercourse.

They are making love with punishment. Any negativity will lead a couple to eventually stop having sexual intimacy.

The only way to respond to “No” about sex is to say, “Oh, thank you for telling me you’re not in the mood to have sex. What would you like to do?

Want to go for a walk? Want to make popcorn and watch a movie? This is why self-awareness is so important in knowing how to make a relationship last.

Kamala Chambers I think that piece is really important to hear that when someone is saying, “No,” you don’t respond negatively, and you found that’s really essential.

What if you’re feeling hurt, though? If someone just said “No” to you and you feel rejected or hurt. What would you say to that?

John Gottman I think you just eat it. I think that particularly if a man feels hurt. If he’s getting rejected every time, that’s different.

Then it’s worthy of conversation. “Let’s talk about this. What’s going on for you? What’s happening?” But I think that when somebody says “No” to sex, you really want to say, “I’m happy to know you’re not in the mood.”

But it doesn’t end the connection. This is how to make a relationship last with the help of small gestures.

John And Julie Gottman Talking About How Happy Couples Know How To Make A Relationship Last

Julie Gottman Again, it comes back to asking. Asking is something really essential to what makes love last.

For all of us who come into a relationship, having had less than perfect parenting, if we want to have sexual intimacy with our partners and our partner says, “No”, we end up feeling hurt.

What are we hurt by? We think that our partner doesn’t love us, our partner’s not attracted to us, our partner doesn’t feel any sexual desire for us, or our partner wants somebody else.

Again, it comes down to asking. It comes down to saying, “Does that mean you’re not attracted to me?” “Does that mean you don’t love me?” This brings to mind the story.

We have a very wonderful therapist and friend who is currently dying of a brain tumor. We went to visit him about a week and a half ago and spent some time with his wife. Here is this man. He was like 63. He’s literally on his deathbed.

He’s just the sweetest, most wonderful man. He and his wife are sitting outside. She tells us, and he says to her, “Honey, do you think I’ve been too selfish and self-centered throughout my life? Are you sorry you married me?”

And she said, “Oh my God! No,” and she broke down in tears, and she told him how loving he had always been during their 35 years together and how grateful she was for everything. Such couples learn how to make a relationship last in the perfect way possible.

John Gottman And the arguments were not getting enough of them.

Julie Gottman That’s right. That’s what the arguments were about. There you have even wonderful, fabulous human beings who’ve been together forever, and they’re committed, they love each other, and they’ve raised kids together.

Even there on the death bed, there is the question of “Did I give you enough, and have I been good enough for you to love me to be worthy of your love?”

It’s a question we always have. When we feel hurt by somebody saying “No” to us, what do we do with it? Ask. Because that hurt has this preconceived notion beneath it that says, “I’m not worthy of love.” So, ask. “Am I?” And that’s typically what you’ll hear.

Kamala Chambers I love that with those two perspectives on what makes love last.

John Gottman We always have totally different perspectives.

Julie Gottman Even though we together make one brain. Two halves of one’s cerebral cortex. Two halfwits make a wit.

John And Julie Gottman Explains How Understanding Is What Makes Love Last

Luis Congdon I wanted to finish off with this one question because we were talking about attunement and how important it is to have self-awareness about what makes love last.

Working with couples, one of the hardest things about being with a couple in the midst of an argument is teaching them how to slow down and, as you said, write down what you hear.

If you’re listening right now, all you technologically savvy people, you can write down on your iPhone, or you can use your notepad during an argument and use that as a way to calm and simmer down the argument.

Teaching couples the skill of attunement is one of the most difficult and it takes a while to really help them learn that.

Yet, what I’ve found is that a lot of times, couples want the solution, and the solution a lot of times is missing the whole point of the drive.

If we think of love mapping, it’s the drive through a city in creating a GPS system so we know how to drive around tactfully and not end up on the wrong roads.

An argument is a really wonderful opportunity to update that map, but couples struggle with that. If couples can slow down and set, “Okay, so you’re asking for sex,” and you don’t want it, or somebody doesn’t want it.

It’s a charged conversation which is important to address to know how to make a relationship last. One person automatically feels hurt, and then one person maybe tries to explain what’s going on, and then you start getting into the defensiveness and the criticism.

It’s slowing that whole process. It‘s very hard to teach couples how to stop that. What happens is that they don’t actually need to come to the place of resolving the problem. They come to a place of understanding.

Then the next time the partner asks for sex and one doesn’t feel like it, one goes, “I know you’re tired actually. Maybe tomorrow we can schedule it,” or it turns into understanding.

What have been some skills you’ve discovered that can help you when your partner is charged and you’re feeling charged, and one of you has to set some of your emotions aside to listen and be the receiver and the listener?

Julie Gottman When you say charged, there are various degrees of charge. Of course, in John’s research on love, one of the big things they found that was a predictor of a very poor prognosis of the future for a marriage or a relationship was getting flooded.

Meaning, a heart rate above 100 beats a minute, or, if you’re athletic, maybe 80-85 beats a minute while you’re sitting there having a conversation.

You’ve gone into fight or flight. If the conversation is very touchy and sensitive, you can get flooded, you can feel attacked, you can feel criticized, and your body will react to that as if somebody’s throwing a spear at you. You can’t think well when you are in fight or flight.

You can’t resolve anything. You can’t even hear what’s been said because all you hear is attack. Realize that mastering skills to how to make a relationship last is above all.

One tool we often give people is if either one of you feels so charged that you are really feeling hot or your body is getting tensed, your fists are clenching, your jaw is clenching, and your eyes are clogging out. Your heart rate is too high.

Luis Congdon Can I add a little piece? Perhaps more relevant to what makes love last. I want to illustrate how simple that is. When I taught classes we thought this thing about getting flooded and then you get into stonewalling and etcetera.

One of the things I did was I had couples stand up and run in place. Then, I try to have a conversation with somebody. I would just ask them simple questions. “How was your day?” “What did you eat for breakfast?” and it was hard for people to have a conversation.

I’d have them sit down, and I’d say, “Put your hand on your heart, here on your wrist, and tell me what that feels like.” Everybody would say, “It’s charged,” and I’d say, “That can happen very simply when you’re having the conversation around a subject like money, kids, ex, finances, etcetera.” Everyone should value how to make a relationship last. It’s very simple to feel that way.

Julie Gottman Beautiful, yes, that’s right. People have to tell their partners that they need to take a break and to tell their partner when they’ll come back to resume the conversation. This is so important in knowing what makes love last.

They need to take a break when they’re out of visual range, and out of hearing range from each other, and during that time, they’re working on self-soothing. But when they announce they want a break, if they don’t tell the partner when they’re going to come back, the partner will just feel abandoned, and they cut off, so that’s an important element of it.

When they’re on their break, they need to not be thinking about the argument because that will keep them engaged in all the feelings of it, which will keep them flooded. Instead, they need to do something self-soothing to take their mind off the argument so their bodies can calm down.

For example, listening to music, taking a walk, yoga, meditation, or anything that will be self-soothing. Then, they can come back, and it will be a very different conversation because their bodies are calm, and they value how to make a relationship last.

Another thing with feeling charged is to make a little repair right at the moment when you start feeling charged. A repair can be something like, “Can you hold on a minute? Let me just catch my breath for a second,” or could be something like, “Will you please stop interrupting me. I just need to finish my thought” or, “You know, that felt like an insult. Could you say that in another way?”

The other partner, in order for it to really be a repair, needs to take that in, to hear it, and to say, “Okay, All right. Go ahead. Finish.” Or, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. Let me say it in another way.” Then a repair is made, and it calms things down.

At the Gottman Institute, we have what’s called a repair checklist, and it has a whole series of phrases for people to look at and repeat when they can feel that conversation getting too charged and crossing the over the line into ugly territory.

We know this is important to make them realize how to make a relationship last. If they look at that list, there are lots of phrases that are rehearsed that they can then just say in the moment, even though it feels kind of phony because it’s not their words. Nonetheless, it has the effect of slowing things down and getting things back on track again.

John And Julie Gottman On Teaching Couples What Makes Love Last

John Gottman The other thing that we do in therapy is try to teach people a concept that Dan Wile has come up with, and we teach them what makes love last. That is, “Solving the moment instead of solving the problem.” Solving the moment is about turning attack and defensiveness into self-disclosure. So instead of you or your partner getting defensive, you can really talk about what you’re feeling.

As couples therapists, we can help clients do that and speak for them. We put all our efforts in order to teach them how to make a relationship last. When we do that, we can really model how to say it. “I’m feeling defensive” instead of attacking and becoming defensive or acting like an innocent victim and becoming defensive, and you can really say, “I’m feeling defensive right now. I truly said repair. Can you say that in a different way?”

It’s totally different to say, “I’m feeling defensive. Can you say that in a different way?” and then say, “Well, you’re an idiot”. Before we teach them how to make a relationship last, we need to be role models.

Solving the moment, I think, is a really useful concept for couples to learn how to make a relationship last. So they’re not only trying to solve the problem, they’re trying to solve the moment when they run into a speed bump in their communication.

Luis Congdon I like that, and one of the common questions I get asked during interviews is, “When does a couple know they should go in for counseling therapy,” or “Is it a good idea to get coaching around your relationship,” and one of the examples I use is Tiger Woods who had 20 different coaches.

We don’t just get coaching when we’re thirsty, and now, we need to have that thing. It can be a really great idea to get it early on what makes love last. I just want to highlight your answer to that question really brought forth how coaching can help us because someone can help role model and guide us through the process of how to do that.

Kamala Chambers I’m just curious if there’s anything else you want to make sure people know about what makes love last before we close out today.

Julie Gottman Many thoughts are coming to mind about how to make a relationship last, but they’re not appropriate to say. It’s been a pleasure.

John Gottman I would say there’s one little tool that we have called How to be a Great Listener. It’s just a little pamphlet on how to listen to anger, how to listen to fear, how to listen to sadness, and how to be a real active listener who listens with love in mind and compassion. This all helps you in knowing what makes love last. I think that’s a skill we could all develop a lot better.

Luis Congdon Thank you so much for your time.

Kamala Chambers We’re just so grateful to have your wisdom and your insights about what makes love last and how to live more harmoniously in our current relationships and be real with each other too.