That communication is the key to a good relationship is not something that has not been said before. But it is often not clear what good communication means and how it can be achieved. American clinical psychologists John and Julie Gottman have more than 50 years of research with more than 3,000 couples on marital stability in the Gottman Love Lab, their couples study laboratory.
In their book The Secret of Eight Dates (Roca Editorial) they propose a roadmap to achieve or recover love and intimacy. The proposal consists of having eight major conversations, about eight major topics that have been identified as determining the functioning of couples: trust and commitment, how to approach conflict, sex and intimacy, work and money, family, fun and adventure, growth and spirituality and lastly, dreams.
But the idea is not to have these conversations in any way or in any context, but within the framework of an appointment and with a series of pre-established questions that guide the conversation. La Vanguardia speaks with the American therapist couple who affirm that being in love forever is possible, it just requires a lot of work.
Falling in love is usually thought of as something that happens at the beginning of a relationship. But in your book you suggest that it is possible to be in love forever.
John Gottman (Jo.G.): Helen Fisher of Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) analyzed MRI images of people who said they were still in love, and compared the brain’s response to the images of strangers and those of the loved one. The brain reacted just as intensely to a loved one, so the person you are in love with becomes more appreciated over time, not less. As a result of this, she concluded that being in love has no expiration date. In other words, you really can be in love forever.
Julie Gottman (Ju.G): When you really fall in love with someone, over time, you get deeper and deeper into knowing who that person is. And those layers that you get to know and that the other person opens up to you, are neither wonderful nor bad traits. They are simply part of who an individual is. These are things that make him deeply human. And that often relates to his fears, to the things that make him angry, to the injustices he has suffered, to his backstory, perhaps to traumas from his past. You get closer and closer to the person’s heart, to their soul. And the more you see of that, the more you love her.
Jo.G: Even after 20 years with someone, there are several transformations that happen when falling in love. The first is the establishment of trust. All the arguments we saw between newlyweds in our love laboratory were along the lines of Will you be there for me? I can count on you? Will you be faithful to me? Am I more important than your mother, your friends or your soccer team? That is the first door you have to go through to be in love forever. The second is commitment, that you can say: “You really are the love of my life and there is no one who can replace you.” You put it in and invest everything in that relationship. This will make it so that when things are not going well, you will actually talk to that person about what is going wrong. Then, even after the engagement, there is another door you have to go through, which is that of your partner’s story becoming yours. There becomes a collective story. The painful moments my wife had when she was a child become part of my story too. I remember them somehow. I have a lot of emotions about the pain she experienced as a 10-year-old girl, even though I wasn’t there. That story is part of my story.
We tend to associate dating with the beginning of a relationship. What would you say to a couple who has been married for 20 years and perhaps thinks the time for dating has passed?
Ju.G: People are so preoccupied with a long list of things to do… I’m sure this is true in Spain as much as it is in the US. There are so many things that one has to deal with when He is an adult. Taking care of the kids, the house, making sure you pay taxes and bills… A date is like a sacred time in which all that disappears and you are sitting face to face, hopefully in a good restaurant, without having to think about all those other things. You are only there with your love, with your person. And the interesting thing is, if you ask these big open-ended questions that we pose in the book, the answers will change over time. We are always growing and changing. Therefore, our responses too. You can ask the same questions year after year, and all the answers will change.
Can having this script with questions already prepared by someone external help open up uncomfortable or complex conversations?
Ju.G: What we have observed is that people do not know how to ask these questions. We don’t tend to ask ourselves big questions. We expose, we announce something, we say: “Hey, you don’t know what happened today.” But those kinds of things tend to be more superficial. As psychologists who have observed couples and studied what makes relationships work for 50 years between the two combined, we have seen what questions really matter to people. In fact, before writing the book, we did a survey. We created a series of twelve big questions and had 350 couples go on each of the dates and record their conversations. Then we interviewed them and they told us which quotes they really found meaningful and which ones they didn’t. Based on that, we narrowed down the number of questions in the book to eight large sets of questions or important themes that we tested previously in the research, to see which ones made the difference.
Why do you think these eight big themes were so important for couples?
Jo.G: These people recorded their quotes and we listened to them and analyzed them. One of my favorites is trust and commitment. Ask the other things like: What has been your experience with trust and commitment? Have you ever trusted someone and they betrayed you? Have you had relationships in which someone truly communicated to you that they loved you and would love you forever? These quotes about trust and commitment turned out to be very powerful for couples. People could talk about times when they really felt let down or hurt, and what they needed in this relationship to feel safer, more accepted, more loved. It’s amazing the things that come up when people really ask themselves these fundamental questions about important topics like, what does money mean to you? Do you feel like a failure or a success? Have there been times when you’ve felt really out of control with money? Asking these questions and going into past history turned out to be very powerful.
Ju.G: I think my two favorite topics are spirituality and dreams for the future. What do you aspire to do or be or who do you want to become? How do you want to grow? What experiences do you want to have? What do you dream of doing? Asking each other that is really interesting, because many of us harbor dreams deep down and we don’t talk about them.
In the book you talk about “happily ever after,” but in a way that is not exempt from conflict, but rather includes or naturalizes it.
Ju.G: Yes, that is very true. I can’t tell you how many clients have told me things like, “She’s not my soulmate” or “I want to find my soulmate.” But there is no such thing as your soulmate. There is no such thing as the perfect person for you. There are probably thousands of people you can be in a relationship with. And, as we saw in our lab, most couples argue. They may be in a honeymoon stage for the first year or two, but then differences start to emerge because they are two different people. They are two different bodies with two different brains. And those differences can sometimes create tension, contrast and conflict. We also discovered that 69% of all conflicts between couples are perpetual. They continue forever. They never disappear. You can’t solve them, because they are usually based on personality differences or different lifestyle preferences. You are not going to turn your partner into you or vice versa. So those differences will be there. That’s why you have to work on how to manage those differences and how to have conflicts.
There’s this idea that if a relationship takes a lot of work, it’s because it’s not working. On the contrary, it is often thought that it is something that should flow, feel easy or natural.
Ju.G: No, forget it. That will probably only happen if you marry a robot.
Jo.G: It’s like saying you should be able to play the violin as soon as you hold it. And that, if you’re really talented, you shouldn’t have to work at it. However, the best violinists in the world really work very hard at playing the violin. It’s the same with love. There is much to learn. You have to study love. In fact, you have to make an effort to get to know your partner and continue to be open with him/her.
Ju.G: Most of us didn’t take a class in high school called “Relationships 101.” We don’t know how to have relationships. In the United States, the divorce rate is almost 50%. It’s down a little, but it’s stayed pretty high. And what that indicates is that many children are growing up with parents who really don’t have good marriages. They are not seeing how to be successful in having an intimate relationship. They are looking more at getting away from her partner, like betraying her or fighting with her. So part of our mission has been to provide people with knowledge that is not speculative. They are not just our opinions. We are not gurus. Mainly John has conducted studies for years with over 3,000 couples to see what successful couples do and what unsuccessful couples do. We can state quite clearly how you can have a successful relationship based on what those successful couples have done and that is what we are trying to reach and teach people, so that they have a better chance of success in their relationships. But all that takes learning, practice, working at it.
Is this a book just for couples who are going through problems? John: It’s for all couples. For new couples, for old couples, including LGTBI couples…
Jo.G: No, it is for all couples. For new couples, for old couples, including LGTBI couples…
Ju.G: …It’s for couples who have been together for a long time, who need to refresh their relationship. For those people who want to develop that connection with the person they may have been sleeping with for 30 years, but don’t really know their heart. This provides opportunity, it opens a door.
