John M. Gottman > Quotes

“If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.”
― John Gottman (

“Once you understand this, you will be ready to accept one of the most surprising truths about marriage: Most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other’s mind—but it can’t be done. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, or values. By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“Thus, the critical dimension in understanding whether a marriage will work or not, becomes the extent to which the male can accept the influence of the woman he loves and become socialized in emotional communication.”
― John Gottman

“Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“Successful long-term relationships are created through small words, small gestures, and small acts.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Human nature dictates that it is virtually impossible to accept advice from someone unless you feel that that person understands you.”
― John Gottman, The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work

“Converting a complaint into a positive need requires a mental transformation from what is wrong with one’s partner to what one’s partner can do that would work. It may be helpful here to review my belief that within every negative feeling there is a longing, a wish, and, because of that, there is a recipe for success. It is the speaker’s job to discover that recipe. The speaker is really saying “Here’s what I feel, and here’s what I need from you.” Or, in processing a negative event that has already happened, the speaker is saying, “Here’s what I felt, and here’s what I needed from you.”
― John M. Gottman, The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples

“The point is that neuroses don’t have to ruin a marriage. If you can accommodate each other’s “crazy” side and handle it with caring, affection, and respect, your marriage can thrive.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert

“They don’t object to their children’s displays of anger, sadness, or fear. Nor do they ignore them. Instead, they accept negative emotions as a fact of life and they use emotional moments as opportunities for teaching their kids important life lessons and building closer relationships with them.”
― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child

“Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in closed energy systems things tend to run down and get less orderly, the same seems to be true of closed relationships like marriages. My guess is that if you do nothing to make things get better in your marriage but do not do anything wrong, the marriage will still tend to get worse over time. To maintain a balanced emotional ecology you need to make an effort—think about your spouse during the day, think about how to make a good thing even better, and act.”
― John M. Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last

“taking responsibility—even for a small part of the problem in communication—presents the opportunity for great repair.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Make dedicated, nonnegotiable time for each other a priority, and never stop being curious about your partner. Don’t assume you know who they are today, just because you went to bed with them the night before. In short, never stop asking questions. But ask the right kind of questions.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Women find a man’s willingness to do housework extremely erotic.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“When parents offer their children empathy and help them to cope with negative feelings like anger, sadness, and fear, parents build bridges of loyalty and affection.”
― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child

“You can spend a lifetime being curious about the inner world of your partner, and being brave enough to share your own inner world, and never be done discovering all there is to know about each other. It’s exciting.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“We move in response to our conversation partner’s face, and our brain also fires as we move those muscles and stirs the passions. Paralyzing the face is idiotic.”
― John Gottman

“Trust is built in very small moments, which I call 'sliding door' moments. In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner. One such moment is not important, but if you're always choosing to turn away, then trust erodes in a relationship- very gradually, very slowly.”
― John Gottman

“Some people leave a marriage literally, by divorcing. Others do so by leading parallel lives together.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“But in their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones. They have what I call an emotionally intelligent marriage.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“And when your family shares a deeper intimacy and respect, problems between family members will seem lighter to bear.”
― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child

“Happily ever after simply means that both partners are known, valued, accepted for who they are and who they are becoming. The goal is to be able to love your partner more deeply each and every year you’re together.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Couples with a strong friendship have a lot more access to their humor, affection, and the positive energy that make it possible to have disagreements or to live with them in a much more constructive and creative way. It’s about earning and building up points.”
― John M. Gottman, The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples

“The early part of a relationship, besides the fun and infatuation, is about establishing trust and a shared future.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship, because that relationship nourishes Baby’s development.”
― John M. Gottman, And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives

“When a child has that strong emotional connection with a parent, the parent’s upset, disappointment, or anger creates enough pain in the child to become a disciplinary event in itself.”
― John M. Gottman, Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child

“You live longer if you are married or have a long-term partner. She lives longer if she has female friends. You live longer if she lives longer. Encourage her female friendships.”
― John Gottman, The Man's Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab About What Women Really Want

“Our partners don’t always have to think like we think. That’s what makes life interesting—it would be boring to be married to yourself. In fact, that’s called being single.”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“In the midst of a bitter dispute, the husband or wife picks up a ringing telephone and is suddenly all smiles: “Oh, hi. Yes, it would be great to have lunch. No problem, Tuesday would be fine. Oh, I am so sorry to hear that you didn’t get the job. You must feel so disappointed,” and so on.”
― John M. Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

“If my wife is in pain, my world stops so I can listen to her.” In a committed relationship, you will both stop the world to try to understand and ease each other’s pain. This is partly why we get married, and this is partly why we love. We need each other and we need to be needed by each other. True commitment is choosing each other over and over again,”
― John M. Gottman, Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

“Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right.”
― John Gottman