Gottman Quotes & Sayings

People are in one of two states in a relationship," Gottman went on. "The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It's like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they'll say, 'Oh, he's just in a crummy mood.' Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative. — Malcolm Gladwell

Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right. — John M. Gottman

I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase. You can glue it back together, but it will never be the same again. — John M. Gottman

We move in response to our conversation partner's face, and our brain also fires as we move those muscles and stirs the passions. Paralyzing the face is idiotic. — John M. Gottman

I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them. — John M. Gottman

In order to get to a healthier and more productive place, we need to give up our fear of conflict, turmoil and resistance. — John M. Gottman

Thus, the critical dimension in understanding whether a marriage will work or not, becomes the extent to which the male can accept the influence of the woman he loves and become socialized in emotional communication. — John M. Gottman

If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter. — John M. Gottman

Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. — John M. Gottman

Trust is built in very small moments, which I call 'sliding door' moments. In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner. One such moment is not important, but if you're always choosing to turn away, then trust erodes in a relationship- very gradually, very slowly. — John Gottman

Gay and lesbian relationships operate on essentially the same principles as heterosexual relationships — John M. Gottman

The problem in today's economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman's intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee. — John Medina

Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or a wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system. — Malcolm Gladwell

John Gottman is our leading explorer of the inner world of relationships. In The Relationship Cure, he has found gold once again. This book shows how the simplest, nearly invisible gestures of care and attention hold the key to successful relationships with those we love and work with. — William J Doherty

news flash: Men, you have the power to make or break a relationship. — John M. Gottman

In a good relationship, people get angry, but in a very different way. The Marriage Masters see a problem a bit like a soccer ball. They kick it around. It's 'our' problem. — John M. Gottman

Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Even within the Four Horsemen, in fact, there is one emotion that he considers the most important of all: contempt. If Gottman observes one or both partners in a marriage showing contempt toward the other, he considers it the single most important sign that the marriage is in trouble. — Malcolm Gladwell

There's nothing more fulfilling in therapy than watching two people find each other again. — Julie Schwartz Gottman

Couples who regularly practice empathy see stunning results. It is the independent variable that predicts a successful marriage, according to behaviorist John Gottman, who, post hoc criticisms notwithstanding, forecasts divorce probabilities with accuracy rates approaching 90 percent. In Gottman's studies, if the wife felt she was being heard by her husband - to the point that he accepted her good influence on his behavior - the marriage was essentially divorce-proof. (Interestingly, whether the husband felt heard was not a factor in divorce rates.) If that empathy trafficking was absent, the marriage foundered. Research — John Medina

In the largest survey ever done on reasons for divorce, 80% of divorced men and women said their relationship broke up because they gradually grew apart and lost a sense of closeness, or because they did not feel loved and appreciated. John Gottman's research shows that this is the core issue which (in only 20-27% of cases of divorce studied) led to an extramarital affair, and not the other way around. — Richard Bolstad

Bid for connection: Each of our daily interactions with another person. — John M. Gottman

Our gridlocked conflicts contain the potential for great intimacy between us. But we have to feel safe enough to pull our dreams out of the closet. When we wear them, our partner may glimpse how beautiful we are - fragile but shimmering. Then, with understanding, our partners may join us in being dream catchers, rather than dream shredders. — John M. Gottman

Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. If he watches a couple for fifteen minutes, his success rate is around 90 percent. — Malcolm Gladwell

When a couple gets to the last stage, one or both partners may have an affair. But an affair is usually a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause. The end of that marriage could have been predicted long before either spouse strayed. — John M. Gottman

A hallmark of domestic violence is a man feeling threatened by a woman's friends and attempting to control or limit a woman's social contacts, or to isolate her socially. — John M. Gottman

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt. — John M. Gottman

Which scientific puzzle confounds the genius of Hawking? "Women," he said. "They are a complete mystery. — John M. Gottman