3 ways to build a happy marriage and avoid divorce

As well as reading his books, I have had the great pleasure of attending John's workshops. You simply cannot go wrong by reading his work. Being a mathematician before he became a psychologist led him to do something innovative in this field; he studied healthy couples to get control data. While this might sound like an obvious thing to do, no one had thought to do this before. He proved that healthy couples were not simply the opposite of unhealthy couples. One finding that I share with couples all the time is that he found that, contrary to expectations, healthy couples had lots of negative interactions. What defined them, however, was the greater extent of their positive interactions and their commitment to having fun together.

John's blog is particularly worth subscribing to. It offers articles with very practical tips on relationship issues with contributions from other professionals as well as Gottman. Topics include dating, relationships, conflict management and parenting as well as the latest research in these areas. It also provides quizzes to allow you to identify the strengths in your relationship and pinpoint areas that may require attention. You can also suggest topics for their blog to write about and there are links to enable you to access a Gottman-trained therapist in your area.

I deeply admire Hendrix's writing skill. Few authors are able to reduce complex psychotherapeutic ideas down to as digestible a form as he does. To my mind there is no more sophisticated (yet accessible and beautifully elaborated) explanation of how attraction really works than this text. It is pretty much required reading for all my patients (most who have been deeply injured by love). You only need to read the first section of the book — around 80 pages — to gain these critical insights into why we find ourselves drawn to certain people. In particular, it explains why the people that we are most attracted to will often cause us the greatest pain once the honeymoon is over.

I read Dan's publications and then, some years later, had the good fortune to attend one of his workshops. He brings a brilliant idea to this space: that relationship growth is actually driven by conflict. This turned therapy on its head for me (and improved my own marriage). Conflict is a good thing! Not when it gets too aggressive, but he is quite right in arguing that through conflict we find the path to making a relationship stronger and healthier. Couples who master conflict go on to have richer relationships than couples who don't have conflict. Think about that.

When I wrote this "inspirational novel" (as the genre is defined), I was more focussed on the question of how does one, at a practical level find meaning and purpose in life? The truth is that nothing makes us more attractive to a potential partner than having passion and purpose in life. People are inexorably drawn to those who have found their path. In the book, I also spend some time explaining my working definition of love and how we build love through old-fashioned concepts of commitment and care.