The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

“Love is a practice. More than a feeling, it’s an action. It’s something you do, not something that just happens to you. And you need to give—and get—a daily dose to maintain a healthy, thriving relationship.”

The Gottmans bust the common myth that love is a psychosomatic affliction akin to a mood that the possessor has no control over. Instead, it is an action that is performed in the unit of a day. Thus, external manifestations of love such as behavior matter more than the internal sensations one keeps to oneself when it comes to having a good relationship.

“60% of his earliest ideas about what makes marriages succeed or fail were off base. Like the rest of us, he’d spawned those ideas from cultural stereotypes—our favorite novels, TV shows and movies, our own families and experiences. These all have the capacity to lead us astray, and often do. That’s why we really need data. Analyzing data can accurately reveal what’s true and not true about what helps relationships succeed.”

This extract reveals John Gottman’s subordination of instinct and experience, both lived and cultural, to data when it comes to analyzing the success of relationships. In showing how Gottman, too, despite his education and mathematical mind, was able to be led astray by stereotypes of successful love, they demonstrate the pervasive destructiveness of these cultural myths and why data is essential to discovering the truth. Here, they attempt to instill faith in an increasingly data-literate audience’s interpretation of their research outcomes.

“Seven days, seven new habits. They’ll be easy. They’ll be quick. They’ll be fun. There will be no grand gestures and no big, hard conversations.”

In their guide for how to use the book, the Gottmans emphasize the easiness of their seven-day method. The short sentences in this extract, along with the colloquial diction and repetition of “they’ll” and “no,” stylistically conveys breeziness and fun, thus challenging couples who are already overstretched to make the recommended changes in their lives.

“There’s a misconception out there that you only need help with your relationship if you’re having problems. But that’s not how most of us behave in the other arenas of our lives. With everything from our bodies to our careers to, well, our cars, we are proactive—we try to eat right and exercise; we take our cars in for tune-ups before they break down. Why don’t we think about relationships the same way?”

Here, by using comparisons to other areas of life, such as health and car maintenance, where people are proactive about preventing problems before they begin, the Gottmans demonstrate the absurdity of not doing the same when it comes to relationships. This analogy enables them to draw upon habits that most people are already practicing to introduce a novel idea.

“Love is not enough. Because so often, as time goes on, we stop courting each other. We stop prioritizing romance, fun, adventure, and great sex. Life gets in the way.”

The Gottmans’ idea that love is not enough to sustain a relationship hearkens back to their notion of love as a practice rather than a feeling. If we do not see love as a practice, we will find that life soon gets in the way of the outward manifestations that are essential to maintaining it. Thus, we must learn to prioritize the vital elements of love, even after we have gotten over the first flushes of it.

“What’s a bid for connection? Well, it can look like a casual remark. It can be as simple as one person sitting down next to the other one. It can be as subtle as a sigh. It’s an invitation to connect. And how we respond to these tiny bids for connection can actually make or break a relationship!”

The Gottmans reemphasize the value of the small in showing how most of the signals our partners give about wanting to be close to us are subtle and seem casual. Nevertheless, these bids for connection have an outsized value, as our responses to them over time can determine the outcome of the relationship.

“The message was clear: Focusing only on conflict was the wrong way to go about things. First we have to work on friendship. That’s hard to do, because if you are in conflict, you may have a strong desire to ‘fix’ it. But when we gravitate back to our conflicts first, we can make things worse.”

One of the Gottmans’ most counterintuitive findings is that couples in conflict should focus on bolstering their bond or friendship before tackling the issue that plagues them. This is an instance where people must trust the data above their own instincts and common sense.

“You don’t need to magically make more time when there is none. No matter how frantic a day, there are always opportunities to turn toward. It costs very little in terms of time, and the payout is huge…and exponential. The more you do it, the more it works.”

Here, the Gottmans emphasize that the revolutionary practice of turning toward one’s partner is possible within the unit of a busy day. It is about paying closer attention and discovering opportunities that previously eluded you. It is a practice, like the Gottmans’ conception of love, something they emphasize with the notion that “the more you do it, the more it works.”

“If we stop asking the big questions, while expecting our partner’s answers to be identical to those we heard the last time we checked in, we might be in for quite a surprise.”

Here, the Gottmans emphasize that people change over time and that we need to keep asking our partners the big questions, so natural at the time of courtship, to keep track of how they are changing and who they are now. The default expectation, that our partners will be identical to the people we met, is a myth, and the expression that “we might be in for quite a surprise” is an understatement that conveys the high and potentially perilous stakes of losing sight of who our partners have turned into.

“If you approach your partner with curiosity, you will never run out of new facts to discover. Even after a lifetime together, there will still be new stones to turn.”

The Gottmans emphasize that approaching one’s partner with curiosity and asking big questions can help maintain the spark and a sense of freshness in a long-term relationship. Contrary to the myth that all the discovery is in the dating stage, prioritizing discovery of each other throughout the bond is a natural way to inject much-needed novelty. The metaphor of new stones to turn accompanies the notion of lifelong discovery.

“Couples are working so hard these days that they’re on parallel tracks—like trains, they power along on their separate paths, never intersecting. We’re each so caught up in planning what we have to get done, and then actually getting it done, that we don’t often notice what the other person is doing.”

The Gottmans show how contemporary workaholic culture is making us all self-obsessed and focused on our own activity to the extent that we miss all the things our partners are doing. The image of a couple on parallel tracks is one that lacks intimacy and suggests remoteness.

“A thriving relationship requires a thriving culture of appreciation between partners, where we’re as good at noticing all the things our partners are doing right as we are at noticing what they’re doing wrong. It’s easy to fall into the trap of only seeing what they’re not doing. You develop a narrative where you’re the one putting in all the effort, and you start to believe it’s true.”

The term “culture of appreciation” denotes a state of being that couples must enter if their relationships are to survive and thrive. We must get into the habit of noticing all the good that our partners are doing, as well as the negatives, which our brains’ natural negativity bias encourages. The idea of seeing all that our partners are not doing as a “narrative” is helpful, as it is suggestive of a bad story that we can elect to believe or not.

“Here’s a statistic from the Love Lab that everybody needs to know: five to one. That’s the ration of positive to negative interactions during a conflict that you need to have in order to keep love alive over time. For every one single negative interaction, you’ll need five positive ones to make up for it.”

Throughout the book, the Gottmans furnish the reader with statistics from their data, emphasizing their scientific, evidence-based approach. Here, they counteract any bewilderment on the part of the reader—as partners might wonder how they can remember to be positive five more times than negative during a conflict—with their unwavering precision.

“Intentions made no difference! Everybody had positive intentions, even if their behavior was angry and hostile. Intention meant nothing; impact was everything. And the difference between the extremely unhappy couples and the very happy couples boiled down to one simple thing: the happy couples were kinder when they spoke to each other—they treated each other more gently, without criticism, contempt, or sarcasm.”

Here, the Gottmans destroy the myth that good intentions are enough for maintaining the bond in a relationship, regardless of how they are delivered. Instead, delivery in the form of impact dominates how the discussion—and, in the long term, the relationship—will go. The list of tonal qualities to avoid, such as contempt or sarcasm, demonstrates the idea that the medium is the message.

“So we are all moving through life with these subterranean needs and desires, suppressing instead of expressing them. And the trouble is, they find a way to rear their furry little heads, no matter how much we push them down.”

The Gottmans assert that suppressing needs is futile. The metaphor of needs as furry-headed animals indicates their primal, illogical nature. Characterizing them this way contextualizes the fact that they cannot be controlled by our intellect.

“If we do manage to state our needs, we often feel we have to justify them by pointing out a deficit—something the other person isn’t doing for us, or is lacking. We’ve been taught we shouldn’t have needs, so the urge to justify is hard to overcome.”

Here, the Gottmans show that our shame around having needs in the first place manifests in our need to frame them as criticisms directed at our partners. The urge to justify, which makes the need feel right to us internally, is actually destructive to the relationship, as it forces the other partner to be lacking in some way.

“Touch is a powerful drug. Physical intimacy has a physiological effect on the body—it releases oxytocin, the hormone that helps with bonding and connection. It’s what bonds mothers and babies together after birth […] For us humans, it’s as necessary as water, as food—even as the air we breathe.”

The idea of touch as essential is conveyed in this extract. It is the primal sense that bonds mothers with their babies and what bonds partners to each other. The idea of touch being as essential as oxygen and food and the other life substances we depend upon reinforces its importance to the development of healthy humans and relationships.

“The point is touch for the sake of touch. Physical intimacy does not need to lead to sex for it to be worthwhile. One of the best things you can do is to erase the expectation that it will or should. Touch is its own nutrient that both of your bodies need.”

Here, the Gottmans emphasize the benefits of touch for its own sake rather than a precursor to sex. Whereas touch-averse American society has learned that sex is the biggest reward, the Gottmans ask people to consider the benefits of touch in its own right. The use of the word “nutrient” emphasizes the status of touch as a physiological requirement with nourishing effects.

“When it comes to sex, each relationship is wildly different. There is no magical number, no set data point, on how much sex you should be having in order to have a great, fulfilling, and long-lasting union. Models for success in that arena are all over the map.”

Whereas the Gottmans are happy to quantify other aspects of a relationship, sex is an area in which they refrain from doing this. Phrases such as “no set data point” and “all over the map” indicate that a couple must figure out how much sex is satisfying to them by themselves. Here is one instance where the use of intuition trumps calibration.

“Whether your family was big on hugs and physical intimacy, for example, is incredibly informative. What we were raised with forms these deep footprints in our brains that we tend to step right into in our adult relationships.”

Here, the Gottmans encourage readers to be sensitive to the differences between their own and their partner’s backgrounds when it comes to how much touch they are comfortable with. The idea of “deep footprints” being left over from childhood illustrates how much formative experiences impact adult relationships, regardless of the intervening years.

“But if we don’t look up and pause every so often to check where our partners are—what they’re thinking about, what they’re worried about, excited about, what they dream about—when we finally do stop and try to connect with them, they’re going to feel really far away. It gets harder and harder to reach them, or for them to reach us.”

The Gottmans warn against becoming so immersed in the busyness of life that we completely lose track of where our partners are mentally and emotionally. They show how it only takes something as seemingly innocuous as busyness and self-involvement to wedge distance between partners. Over time, the growing distance between self-obsessed partners can feel insurmountable.

“It’s almost as if we’ve gotten the message that ‘adulting’ means shutting down the imagination you had as a kid—the play, the imagination, the creativity. We come to believe that we need to let go of these ‘childish’ pursuits in order to be successful. But a successful relationship is built upon these things. They’re part of our best nature as humans.”

While society tells us that as we age, both as humans and in our relationships, play is unnecessary, the Gottmans’ research tells us the opposite is true. They acknowledge that the idea that a serious adult relationship is built on play and imagination might seem startling until one recognizes that these qualities are behind the best feelings and inventions in the world—and so should inevitably play a role in a thriving partnership.

“If you don’t have time for date night, make the time. Yes—we’re suggesting that you make time. Manifest it out of thin air if you have to! Cancel something. Leave the dishes in the sink. Let the work emails wait. This is more important.”

The Gottmans assert the vitalness of maintaining a weekly date night by not offering any option for the excuses they list above, such as practical concerns like emails or unwashed dishes. The notion that people must become miracle-workers who manifest extra time out of thin air alludes to the analogous miracle that will take place in their marriages when they start making date night a priority.