Gottman

Generally, people think the goal of conflict is winning. Sometimes in life it is.  But in a marriage, that's another losing strategy. If you're winning an conflict, then your partner [...]

Asking for what you want, rather than telling your partner what they did wrong, or about what you don't want, is a winning strategy. A common mistake couples make is [...]

One of the things that connected with me personally when I first heard John and Julie Gottman speak was the concept of the emotional bank account. Several of the Gottman [...]

  This is a question I get a lot during sessions, when clients have had a conflict, right in front of me. My answer is: Let’s do a quick repair. [...]

  The antidote to defensiveness is to accept responsibility for your role in the issue. Think about the word responsibility. Response. Ability. You have the ability to respond with patience [...]

In the movie “War Games” (Yes, dating myself), the computer famously says “the only winning move is not to play.” Now there are obviously times in our marriage when we [...]

In my work with couples a lot of people ask questions like “How can you do that kind of work?-sitting there while couples yell at each other, I couldn’t take [...]

Contempt: Contempt is the most detrimental of the four horsemen to a relationship.  In Gottman language we talk about “negative sentiment override”, which means that there is a time when [...]