44 pages • 1 hour read
John Gottman, Julie GottmanThe Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaDays 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Day 3 Summary: “Say Thank You”
While the Gottmans have worked with couples from every demographic, the common denominator in everyone they encounter is that we all want to be appreciated, acknowledged, and “seen” for the positive contributions we make (41).
While relationship scientists used to think that unhappiness in couples arose from partners not being kind to one another, Elizabeth Robinson and Gail Price’s 1980 study showed that happily married couples do not necessarily do more kind things for one another but are better at acknowledging and appreciating each other’s considerate gestures.
Unfortunately, given the negativity bias humans have developed as part of an evolutionary survival strategy, our default is to troubleshoot problems rather than acknowledge the positive. In relationships, this means that we tend to view our partners and their actions through a disproportionately negative lens. Thus, we often approach them in a critical way, by either seeking to control their actions or getting sulky when they do not automatically anticipate our needs. However, relationship health depends upon giving equal weight to our partners’ good actions. For example, the simple act of saying “thank you” can be revolutionary, completely changing the dynamic of a relationship. If our default settings are negative, we might employ mindfulness meditation techniques to ensure that we are concentrating on the present moment. In the long term, we can create new neural pathways that can amend the negative filter. The Gottmans attest that paying attention to the positive and voicing it to our partners can fend off the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (53)—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—which lead to relationship breakdown.
The Gottmans’ Day 3 challenge to readers is to deliberately observe their partner, notice their positive actions, and thank them for specific acts, even if they do them every day. It is also beneficial to voice how their actions have helped. They advise that people who find it difficult to emerge from a negative perspective look at their past and explore whether their primary caretakers were overly critical. Chances are, they are projecting that past relationship onto their present ones. If the negative feelings continue, the reader may have depression, which causes “a brain-generated mountain of negative thoughts and feelings, not only about themselves but also about others” (61). At this point, it may be difficult to reach for a positive perspective without professional help.
Day 4 Summary: “Give a Real Compliment”
Love Lab research has shown that couples who stay together happily can easily name specific traits they admire in their partners and can draw upon a narrative of positive shared experiences. While there will always be conflict in relationships, and while some couples are even faced with problems that are unsolvable, couples who take their time to appreciate each other often end up making it long-term.
Using the case study of Caroline and Molly, who have become disparaging of each other after a promising beginning, the Gottmans explain that while we often begin relationships with a tidal wave of positive feelings about each other, as the years pass and we face the challenges of navigating day-to-day life together, we can become critical of our partners and allow negative perceptions of their behavior to morph into defamatory views of their character. Thus, “He never cleans the car becomes he’s lazy and sloppy” (67). Such thinking is a prelude to the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse. Of these, contempt, which emerges from a pattern of negative thinking and criticism, is the most dangerous and the chief indicator that a couple is headed for divorce.
We can safeguard our relationships from the horsemen by becoming skilled at seeing our partners’ good qualities. The brain’s negativity bias is such that a partner needs to encounter a ratio of five to one positive to negative interactions during a conflict to keep their love alive. Thus, even while discussing a thorny issue, positive interactions might include smiles, touches, or expressions of understanding to counter negative interactions such as blaming or snapping. The reason for this, the Gottmans explain, is that “negativity has much more power to inflict damage and cause pain than positivity does to heal and bring you closer. That’s why we need five times more positives than negatives during conflict” (70). In ordinary, conflict-free times, we need 20 positive interactions for every one negative. Those who stay together happily manage this statistic, whereas those headed for divorce or unhappiness show a higher ratio of negative interactions. This often occurs because we are unaware of our negative impact on our partners, regardless of our original intentions. While most people’s intentions are positive most of the time, the Love Lab found that intentions do not influence how a partner receives a comment phrased in a hostile manner—the impact on the receiving partner is overwhelmingly negative. Instead, happier couples are kinder when they speak to each other, aware that the medium is the message.
We can change the impact of our comments on our partners by admiring their positive qualities and fostering compassion for the challenges they have faced and how these still impact them today. The Gottmans emphasize that “to be in love for the long haul is to choose to see the best parts of our partners first, instead of looking for the worst” (77). We can daily admire our partners and remind ourselves what we cherish in them and why they are unique to us. This is a practice that needs to be undertaken before it gets too late, as couples who neglect to do this may find that they forget what drew them to their partner in the first place. This can lead to that relationship killer: contempt.
Day 4’s practice is about giving one’s partner a genuine compliment by identifying when the partner puts one of the positive qualities the Gottmans list into practice in their daily lives. While this may feel uncomfortable for couples who are out of practice at giving compliments, the results can be radical, as people’s body language and attitude change with the simple practice of being admired.
Days 3-4 Analysis
Science versus instinct is a dominant theme in these chapters about appreciation, as the Gottmans show how our brains’ evolution to ensure the survival of our species strongly favors us paying attention to the negative over the positive. While negativity bias impacts all parts of life, it can become especially prominent in long-term relationships, where partners are trying to juggle demanding jobs alongside housework and childcare. As we become stressed and burned out individually, we can fall under the illusion that we are the ones doing all the work, miss our partner’s efforts, and become critical of them. In a career-driven life, rewarded by individualist American society, we turn to our partners little, and when we do, it is to find a flaw in their behavior or, in the long term, their characters. The Gottmans demonstrate this through the case study of Caroline and Molly, who are navigating the stresses of trying to afford life in Seattle and deciding whether to start a family by continually attacking each other. For example, when Molly expresses the wish to be a mother, Caroline accuses her of being “restless” and continually dissatisfied with life (64). Molly in turn charges Caroline with going back on their original plan to have kids, thereby implying that she is a flaky procrastinator. The Gottmans observe that the couple is “starting to lob the kinds of criticisms that can corrode a relationship—the kind that eat through fondness and friendship like rust through metal” (64). According to the Gottmans, the couple is paving the way for the entry of two of the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse introduced in these chapters: criticism and contempt. Their fixation on flaws in each other’s behavior (criticism) is migrating into sustained denigration of each other’s characters (contempt). The Gottmans’ emphasis on preventing contempt derives from Love Lab data ascertaining that contempt is the primary predictor of divorce.
By personifying the qualities that destroy love into Biblical horsemen who can “come galloping in” (53), the Gottmans seek to galvanize couples against these malign entities and have them work together to build a fortress. Thus, the enemy in a distressed relationship is no longer one’s spouse but a third quality that comes in to attack the closeness partners once shared. The theme of Love and Dailiness becomes important in this section, as the Gottmans show how guarding against the horsemen is a work of daily labor to combat negativity bias by actively building a culture of appreciation. Days 3 and 4, then, are programmed to force couples to take off the “blinders” (43)—another horse metaphor used by the Gottmans—and relinquish their single-minded view to gain a fuller perspective of all the good that their partner is doing. Importantly, it is in the daily act of noticing the positives, rather than the execution of those same actions, that relationships are saved. The active voicing of gratitude and compliments makes our partners melt with goodwill toward us and promotes more happiness, both in life and the relationship. By training ourselves to look for the positives that were so easy to see at the beginning, we rewire our neural pathways, making this task easier as time goes on, again emphasizing the theme of dailiness.
While the Gottmans emphasize the benefits of taking the appreciation prescription daily, they acknowledge that some common mental health conditions, such as depression, might make it difficult for the afflicted to find any positives. Here, they advocate turning to science again, as people with depression should enlist the help of medical professionals to restore the chemical balance in their brain through therapy and medication. It is only then that they will give themselves the chance of noticing positivity and helping their relationship. While much of the guidance in the seven-day prescription can be performed by a couple alone, the Gottmans acknowledge—thereby warding off criticism from mental health professionals—that in some instances external help is necessary to make the prescription work.
