The final step in Gottman’s Sound Relationship House is Creating Shared Meaning. This area focuses on rituals of connection, roles, goals, and symbols for the couple. Gottman posits that each family creates its own unique culture. Within that family’s culture, different things, holidays, traditions, etc. hold great importance. For example, some families insist that dinnertime […]
The next step in building your own sound relationship house is nurturing fondness and admiration. Sometimes in relationships, we can let the stresses of life get in the way and it can be easy to focus on the negative things about our partner instead of enjoying who they are like we do at the beginning […]
Marriages and romantic relationships take a lot of work, and it is hard to know what to do when we don’t feel the relationship is as satisfying as it could be. Luckily, there is a researcher named John Gottman who has spent decades studying love and marriage scientifically and has developed a list of traits […]
I can remember being a young girl and offhandedly complaining to my mother as we were packing for a beach vacation that it seemed like a lot of work. She looked at me and not so depressingly said, “Everything in life takes work, even going on a vacation. You work before you go and you […]
“I just want to have mediocre sex,” or “I just want to talk LESS/spend LESS time with him/her,” said no one ever in a healthy romantic relationship.
I could write at length about what I have experienced in my various relationships over the years. Instead, I am going to try to extract from my past and current relationships the most important things I have learned.
Relationships can be highly rewarding or extremely difficult. Sometimes, they are both of these things at the same time. There is no question human beings long to connect with others, be loved and feel a sense of belonging in the world. However, life does not come with a relationship manual. Much of what we learn […]
