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A groundbreaking, practical program for transforming troubled relationships into positive ones
“This is the best book on relationships I have ever read. . . . John Gottman has decoded the subtle secrets that can either enrich or destroy the quality of our ties with others.” Daniel B. Wile, Ph.D., author of After the Fight: Using Your Disagreements to Build a Stronger Relationship
“John Gottman is our leading explorer of the inner world of relationships. In The Relationship Cure, he has found gold once again.”William J. Doherty, Ph.D., author of Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart
“When he says his five steps will help you build better connections with the people you care about, you know that they have been demonstrated to work.” E. Mavis Heatherington, Ph.D., professor of psychology, University of Virginia
From the country’s foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life—with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman:
* Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls “emotional connection”
* Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional “bid,” the fundamental unit of emotional connection
* Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others’ bids
Got tired of the male bashing.
| Customer Rating:   | The author should have tried to appeal to men more.
Any family therapist knows that rule #1 is "Do not take sides." Your job is not to find out who's got the problem, who is to blame. Your job is to recognize the patterns that the family systems fall into.
The concept of the emotional bid is very simple and effective, but that doesn't get a book 5 stars. The rest of the book was Gottman's hairbrained speculations and "command system" formulas. Reminds me of all the other authors who have done the same thing, cataloging people according to their primary motives...Napoleon Hill, Anthony Robbins, Carl Jung, Myers and Briggs, David DeAngelo, etc. Obviously the emotional command systems notion wasn't "discovered" in his Love Lab. He invented that lens and now sees all human relations through it.
I found it telling that in the dozens of examples, every one portrayed the man as the one at fault and the woman as the innocent damsel trying her best. A man simply snaps at his wife. That's it. Tell the same story about a woman and we get a page of backstory justifying her discourtesy. And the irony is, Gottman's research showed that husbands in happy marriages "turned toward" their wives more often than husbands in unhappy marriages. But not wives. Whether their marriages were happy or unhappy, they "turned toward" their husbands the same amount.
Of course, that means that marriages will benefit most if MEN read and apply this chapter, but not women.
The problem with the entire book is, his research may be sound, but his conclusions are flawed. Gottman did the unforgivable (as it is called in statistical circles). He assigned a CAUSAL LINK where there was none.
OF COURSE their are more emotional bids in happy marriages. Gottman claims that the emotional bids lead to (cause) happy marriages. The problem is, it is just as likely that happy marriages lead to more emotional bids.
Therefore, emotional bidding causes nothing. It is the natural fruit of a happy marriage. Something ELSE caused the marriage to be happy (I'm sure you can think of dozens of plausible causes).
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Excellent Book
| Customer Rating: | | I think this book has some very good insights for a variety of situations. I bought it more for some personal issues, but it has some lessons that seem just as effective in the workplace. |
Life-changing strategies!
| Customer Rating: | This book has altered the course of my life. I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who would like to improve their relationships with their spouse, parents, siblings, children, bosses, coworkers, friends, or ANYONE. It teaches fundamentals about the human nature of communication, offering real-life examples to aid in understanding. Based on years of research, I think these guys are onto something amazing, and it has truly changed my life.
When one of my best friends confided to me that her husband had moved out and they were on the verge of divorce, I said, "Read this book together with him. It changed my life. Maybe it can help you, too." A few months later, she told me through tears that going through the process of reading this book together had changed their life too, and that now they were closer than ever. I ended up buying another copy to keep for myself.
For the preview- it breaks communication down to simple "bids" for connection, the way you could respond to them, and the outcomes of various types of responses. Apparently, we are a lot more predictable than we realize, and I have found the information to be tried and true in my life since I first read the hardcover edition when it first came out, happening upon it by accident in the bookstore. |
Excellent book
| Customer Rating: | | John Gottman's books always have some good advice, and this one is no exception. I find his research very interesting and useful. See also Michele Weiner-Davis's The Divorce Remedy: The Proven 7-Step Program for Saving Your Marriage |
Great book with lots of practical exercises
| Customer Rating: | | This book contains a lot of practical information about all types of relationships. It will help you to become more aware of how you function in relationships and why. Then, even more importantly, it gives you sound information on how to take this new awareness and use it to improve your significant relationships. This is one of the better relationship books I've ever read and I read a lot on relationships. |
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