BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
Book Review: Gottman and Silver
School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University
BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
Book Review: Gottman and Silver
Summary
Gottman and Silver’s, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (2015), provided a
helpful guide to how to, in simple terms, make your marriage work. The book is filled with
exercises, games, and activities that one can do with their partner when applicable. The seven
principles were as follows:
●Principle 1: Enhance Your Love Maps
Gottman defines the love map as “the area in your brain where you store all relevant
information about your partner.” With this love map, you’re able to remember your
partner's fears, hopes and dreams, best friend’s name, how they feel about work, etc. He
states that one cannot truly know their partner if they don’t have a love map.
●Principle 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration
Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long
lasting romance. It involves looking at your partner as someone who is worthy of dignity
and respect.
●Principle 3: Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away
This principle is where Gottman encourages talking to your partner about the “little
stuff.” It involves remembering to enjoy talking to your partner about your day at work,
how you’re feeling, and dealing with one another’s sadness, fear, and anger. Doing so
helps you two develop a mutual trust.
●Principle 4: Let Your Partner Influence You
BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
Gottman recommends that couples allow a little “give and take” in their relationship. This
allows for effective communication and less harshness when it comes to discussing tough
martial conversations.
●Principle 5: Solve Your Solvable Problems
This principle reviews how to effectively communicate with your partner and how to not
let things escalate into things that they were not in the first place.
●Principle 6: Overcome Gridlock
In layman's terms, “overcoming gridlock” is simply compromising. Gridlock occurs
when couple’s cannot “find a way to accommodate perpetual disagreements.”
●Principle 7: Create Shared Meaning
It is important to have a sense of what is meaningful about your lives together.Gottman
shares that “the more shared meaning you find, the deeper, richer, and more rewarding
your relationship will be.”
Concrete Responses
As an individual who is not yet married, but in a serious relationship, I found myself reading
from both a coaching perspective and from the perspective of the female in the marriage.
Principle two on fondness and admiration is one that really hit home for me. Oftentimes, we
spend time reflecting on the negative surrounding our partners, especially after they have made
us upset. I can personally say that this is something that I do from time to time when my
boyfriend makes me upset. I zero in on all of the negative things, which in turn makes me lose
sight of his positive traits and all the lovely things that he does for me. Allow me to set the scene
for my most recent example of this:
BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
The loss of my grandmother. This was and is still a tough thing for me to deal with. I had not
experienced the loss of a grandparent until her passing, so this was all new to me. My boyfriend
is about 7 years older than me, and has experienced the loss of his grandparents. He also
sometimes struggles with remembering that there is a time and place for certain things to be said
and done. Though I can’t remember the specifics of what was said at this point in time, I can
remember that it upset me quite a bit and caused us to have a big argument. At that moment, I
hated everything about him and didn’t want to be around him. Following this blow up, I realized
that I was truly looking at him in the wrong light. His personality flaws in that moment caused
me to feel as if I hated him, which in turn made me forget that he held me when I cried, and was
there to hold my hand every step of the way on my journey.
Reflection
I was extremely glad that we started the course with this book, as I am very interested in the
topic of marriage. As I stated earlier, I am not married, but hope that it is in God’s plans for me
in the near future. I also come from a family where everyone has been married twice, and their
second marriage is the one that ends up working. So as you can imagine, I am super interested in
how to make things work the first time since I do not want to follow in my family’s footsteps. I
was appreciative of all the activities that Gottman included in the book. It truly allowed me to see
where my boyfriend and I would stand if we were married. One can definitely say that I had a lot
of “ah ha” moments while reading this book as an unmarried woman. It was a pleasant surprise
to see that even happy couples go to marital counseling. It was also extremely interesting to see
that marital counseling works for couples who were truthfully on the last leg.
BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
I also strongly agreed with Gottman on the love maps portion of the book. I, too, believe that
knowing things about your partner is important and a marriage cannot survive without both
partners knowing their lover. I would even go as far as to say that this is the most important part
of the entire book because I think that there is no marriage to be had if one cannot say that they
truly know who they are married to.
Application
Gottmaan and Silver have definitely influenced both my professional and personal growth
process. Personally, I plan to let these principles guide my relationship and may even ask my
partner to read the book himself. Though I feel as if our relationship is pretty stable and on the
right track, some of these exercises cover topics that could always need a little uplifting,
especially that of the fondness and admiration piece of things for me. I know that I tend to lose
these for him when I am upset and I would like to work on that. I think that we could also work
on creating a shared meaning. As Gottman said, “the more shared meaning that we find, the
deeper, richer, and more rewarding our relationship will be”, and I truly do want that for us.
Professionally, I think that reading this book has opened my eyes. It will allow for me to better
understand couples and will help me push them in the areas needed. Since the book touched on
many of the common issues that couples face, I will be able to utilize the principles and help my
client’s change their perspectives and hopefully help them turn their marriage around.
BOOK REVIEW: GOTTMAN AND SILVER
References
Gottman J.M., & Silver, N. (1999,2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work : A
practical guide from the country’s foremost relationship expert. Harmony Books.
