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 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Day 5 Summary: “Ask for What You Need”
Many of us expect our partners to be mind readers. We drop subtle hints about our needs and wants and expect them to magically pick up these cues. When they do not anticipate our needs, we become resentful, and this often leads to criticism, where we focus on what they are doing wrong as opposed to what we need them to do. The Gottmans use Jake and Miriam as a case study here: Jake feels upset because his wife has been working late on her gallery show every night for months and neglecting to fulfill his need of spending evenings together—a need he hasn’t voiced out of shame, but which stems from the absence of his workaholic father in childhood.
The reason it is often so difficult for us to assertively express our needs is that we have been taught by a culture and society that values self-reliance that they are an unattractive weakness. This manifests differently for women and men. Women, who are often the prime caretakers of other people’s needs, are fed the view that neediness makes them unattractive, while men, who have been raised to be tough providers, think that requiring things from other people makes them unmasculine. We are also all afraid of having our needs rejected, judging it safer to leave them unexpressed.
Our fears around needs often hearken back to early childhood, in which, if our needs are ignored, we learn the message that we are unworthy of having them met or that needs are inherently bad. The Gottmans assert that as a society we need to change this script and accept that “needs are normal, healthy, and human” (89), as essential to us as the oxygen we breathe. Further, they say that it is imperative that we express our needs to our partners; otherwise, the resentment can manifest as criticism about our partner’s character in general. In the long term, this creates far more problems than what would have happened if needs were expressed in the first place. Contrary to popular wisdom, the Gottmans believe that constructive criticism does not exist. Instead, “criticism is always destructive” (91), as an attacked partner is primed to be on the defensive and unlikely to change their troubling behavior.
In Day 5’s task, the Gottmans offer a map for expressing one’s needs to one’s partner. The first, crucial step is to start with oneself and what one positively needs rather than zoning in on flaws in the partner’s behavior. Instead, one can tell one’s partner exactly what they can do to help.
In relationships where there has been a pattern of criticism, partners may still hear a positively expressed need as an attack on their character. However, beginning to frame one’s needs in a positive manner will, over time, set a new pattern in the relationship.
Day 6 Summary: “Reach out and Touch”
Many couples in long-term relationships report a dearth in the amount of sex they are having, in addition to dwindling feelings of sexual desire. While many people assume that reinvigorating a dormant sex life relies upon novel measures, data gathered by sociologists Dr. Pepper Schwartz and Dr. James Witte to determine what is universal in modern love across cultures, demographics, and sexualities found something different about couples who had a great sex life long-term. Mutual satisfaction springs from frequent expressions of affection, both verbal and physical, in the form of touch. Other factors include the practices of turning toward and being curious about one’s partner that the Gottmans prescribe earlier in their book.
However, touch, even the nonsexual variety, is crucial in maintaining partners’ bonds, as it releases oxytocin, the hormone that assists connection between mothers and children at birth. Oxytocin is also present when romantic partners touch and has the added benefits of improved health outcomes. Indeed, touch is so essential that we cannot survive without it. While touch does not have to be sexual to release oxytocin, studies have shown that increased exposure to touch can improve libido, especially for women, who mostly have a responsive type of sexuality, where “contact leads to sexual desire” rather than the other way around (113). Importantly, touch should be seen as important for its own sake rather than a conduit to sex. Simple forms of touch include hand-holding and hugging that lasts for at least 20 seconds, as this is how long it takes for oxytocin to metabolize in the bloodstream.
Factors that get in the way of touch between romantic partners include coming from a family or culture where touch was infrequent or even taboo, as well as adverse experiences of touch, such as sexual abuse. In some people, then, touch is “‘double-edged’: it can be wonderful, comforting, arousing, but it can feel threatening if it’s done quickly, too roughly, or by surprise” (111). We thus have to be aware of our partners’ touch backgrounds and be comfortable with asking them what they enjoy and what we should refrain from. Even when a background of abuse is not a factor, we should expect that successful models regarding touch and sex habits are going to diverge across different couples. Therefore, there is no one version of normal. However, Love Lab research shows that couples who touch more are usually better at staying happily together, as there are more points of connection between them.
In Day 6’s activity, the Gottmans invite the reader to “create as many moments of physical connection as possible” and to experiment with different types of touch, such as hand-holding, kissing, and a hand on their partner’s shoulder when they are feeling stressed (121). After, both they and their partner should reflect on giving and receiving touch and discuss what especially felt good to them, as well as what felt threatening. This is especially important when partners have different levels of touch needs or there has been a background of abuse.
Days 5-6 Analysis
Days 5 and 6 collectively address the topic of assertiveness and thereby the courage to show our partners more fully who we are and what we need from them. While Day 5 deals with verbally addressed needs, Day 6 treats physical ones. The Gottmans show how most of us have become so ashamed of our needs, owing to receiving messages that these make us less desirable, that we would prefer to short-circuit them and resort to the more comfortable territory of criticizing our partners instead. The Gottmans try to reframe their subjects’ perspectives, raising awareness that the second-person focus of criticism is more palatable to most of us than the first-person perspective of positively stating a need. However, as in previous chapters, the Gottmans maintain that criticism of the other’s behavior and character is never constructive, as it leaves one party feeling attacked and the other on the receiving end of defensive behavior. Instead, it is far better to defy cultural conditioning and ask for what we need in terms of how we feel and how it will benefit us. This builds upon the work of previous chapters in the acknowledgment of positivity, as the Gottmans advocate—against the practice of some other popular couples therapists—that we bypass the negative in order to actively offer our partners the “opportunity” to show up for us (100). As with all the other practices, the Gottmans state that we will get better at expressing our needs, as our partners will at hearing them, over time. This fits in with behavioral-science research that shows the effort needed to create a new habit before it becomes effortless.
The theme of increased vulnerability filters through to Day 6’s focus on touch. As the Gottmans’ science-backed research shows, as we touch more and the oxytocin starts flowing, we transition from a more rational, individual state to a more emotional, bonded one. However, owing to the prevalence of sexual abuse, the Gottmans advocate that partners build upon Day 5’s practice in expressing needs to assert their boundaries and explore how touch might be performed pleasurably and safely. Here, the Gottmans acknowledge that for partners with a different family of origin experiences and sexual pasts may be on different wavelengths. They advise a measure of compassion and acceptance for our partners’ attitudes to touch, using an analogy:
Here’s a parallel: you have really light blue eyes and have to wear sunglasses, but your partner doesn’t like that because they want to be able to look into your eyes. Well…there’s nothing you can do about that. Accepting that it’s nobody’s fault, that this is just the way it is, can go a long way (124).
Readers are therefore encouraged to let go of ideas of perfection in favor of a workable solution that takes into account a partner’s history and vulnerabilities.
While the Gottmans acknowledge the possibility of sexual trauma, the theme of Love and Dailiness crops up again, as the types of case studies they draw upon are couples beset by everyday problems rather than dramatic, singular ones. For example, part of Jake’s difficulty in expressing his need to spend evenings together is his sense of shame, worried that Miriam will see him as weak instead of as half of the “proud, ambitious” couple they delight in being (83). Here, the Gottmans assert that Jake, who learned in early childhood that he had to be OK with loved ones not showing up for him, needs to acknowledge and accept both that there is more to him than his professional drive and that he needs to be actively and frequently shown he is loved through quality time. The mundaneness of Jake’s problem makes it relatable to many Americans who have grown up in a similar work-first culture, and the nature of his need (for his wife to have dinner with him) is both modest and potent, as many needs are. The Gottmans rely upon quotidian case studies as part of their argument that what can make or break a marriage is in the daily details, rather than in stand-out, singular events.
