The Seven-Day Love Prescription

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BG: Even when John said in the podcast that like, as you get older, it’s harder to do that. He said, “As we get older, it takes more effort to connect with people and build a community.” And I totally believe that because I can find myself the most happy just by myself.

JG: And it’s really interesting how they see things so differently, and so as we get older, it takes more of an effort to really do things like talk to strangers and find out who they are. But then when we do that, we create a little community, and that community of caring really makes a huge difference in our own well-being and our own health. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Love_Prescription_-_John_Gottman.pdf, The_Love_Prescription_-_John_Gottman.epub BB: Before we jump in to this first episode, let me tell you a little bit about our guest. Dr. John Gottman previously served as Executive Director of the Relationship Research Institute, and is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington, where he founded the Love Lab. He is world-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction. Has conducted 40 years of ground-breaking research with thousands of couples. His work has earned him numerous major awards, and he was named one of the top ten most influential therapists of the past quarter century. He is the author of many books, including several that we’ve talked about here. Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman is president of the Gottman Institute and co-founder of Affective Software. She is a highly respected clinical psychologist. She was named Washington State psychologist of the Year and received the 2021 Psychotherapy Networker Lifetime Achievement Award. That Lifetime Achievement Award, I’m telling you right now from Psychotherapy Networker, no joke. JG: Yeah. I keep thinking of the Sloan Center study at UCLA that my colleague, Tom Bradbury, was involved with where they put microphones and cameras in couples’ homes, dual career couples with young children, and they spent less than 10% of an evening in the same room, and they talked to each other an average of 35 minutes a week. That’s all. And all of the conversation was about the to-do list. JG: Yeah. We need a cookbook and that has the recipes in it, and tells you just how to do it, and that’s what we try to do, is create a cookbook. I love to cook, and I’m learning how to bake bread now and how to make better sauces, and how to use the clay cooker better, and so I really like cookbooks and… Well, we need a relationship cookbook too, and that’s what we wrote.BB: Well, I think both of us had 20 or both of us had 10. And that big, gaping 80 is why it was the hardest season. Alison and Jeremy explained why they'd enrolled: They felt constantly at odds with each other. They always seemed to disagree on how to handle stuff-everything from how to deal with a kid not wanting to finish his vegetables to how much risk they were comfortable taking on during the pandemic. Should they see friends outside, or not gather at all? Should they require the kids to wear masks if they went for a bike ride in the neighborhood? Everything turned into a fight; then life intervened before they could resolve it-the kids burst in, or an urgent work issue came up (work had seemingly become a twenty-four-hour activity, now that everything was remote)-and they would end up ruminating on the fight and just getting more upset. They were having thoughts they never used to have about the other: He never really considers my opinion; he just thinks of reasons why I'm wrong. She always pushes her agenda; she always has to win.

JSG: And his leather hat. Oh my God, there it was. Yep, my vision of perfection. There he is. He still wears the same hat. We don't have any," Jeremy replied. They hit the ground running in the morning, one of them taking work calls in a bedroom while the other got the kids fed and ready for remote school; one or both of them usually ended up skipping lunch in lieu of squeezing in some work time. Dinner was chaos; then one of them was cleaning up while the other did bedtime. Jeremy said, "By the time I finish doing the dishes and come upstairs, she's already asleep." Whether you’re looking to fix specific problems or get the most out of your marriage or romantic relationship, couples therapists John and Julie Gottman will get you moving in the right direction. . . .There isn’t a marriage or romantic partnership out there that won’t benefit from this book.” Because the authors have been researching what makes relationships succeed or fail for more decades than many readers have been alive, they liberally cite research from the Love Lab and Gottman Institute to support their recommendations. Using evidence-based predictions based on their studies—across various ages, cultures, races, and genders—they describe which personality traits and transactional styles are most likely to make for smooth sailing in relationships and which are most likely to tank them. JG: Right. I read the New York Times every morning, and they’ve been having a series on talking to strangers and how when people do a commute in the morning or even on the train, they prefer to stay inside their own minds or they’re listening to music, and that people who make the choice to talk to strangers find it immensely rewarding. “This person is really a lot like me.”Day 5, Ask for What You Need, explains why it’s crucial not to expect a partner to be a mind-reader, but instead to tell them your wishes even when doing so makes you feel scared and vulnerable. BB: Do you know what I mean? Like, your inner map is not a reflection of dry cleaning, groceries, and what time does the game start, and are you bringing the camera to the game or am I bringing it to the game, and how’s graduate school going for this. There’s no way you piece that shit together and come up with an inner map. ABR: I also really loved in the podcast, they were saying, like, with your kids, I wrote this part down. It was like,” I love you so much. I want to know everything about every minute, the history of what’s changed you. Like, you’ve gone off, and now you’re a new person, and I want to know everything that happened, what changed you, how that went down.” Because I think that about my daughter right now who’s taking social work classes for the first time. And I’m like, “She’s going to get so fired up, just like we all did in social work class and want to make all these changes,” and it’s so hard for me not to want to have every single conversation about her classes, like, “What did you learn? What’s firing you up? Where do you want to protest? Do you need a ride?” So I love that part about that… JSG: Yeah, the other thing too, about turning towards is if you’ve made a bid for connection in some way, and your partner responds to it in a affirming way to say, “Thank you, I notice that you’re doing something for me.” That is incredible, that is really important.

BB: So instead of talking up here about a cabin, you needed to make this about John’s inner world and your inner world, and those bigger questions. Is that what I’m hearing? ABR: Yeah. I mean, because it can go from one movie and a fun meal to a weekend and five pizzas. [laughter] BB: And we’re talking about the Gottmans. Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman have written a new book, The Love Prescription, and it is a short tactical, practical, get-your-vulnerability-on book, and we’re going to talk about our reaction to it, what we learned from those first two podcasts and the book. Stay tuned. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you know it will be interesting or weird.

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ABR: Yeah, okay. The Gottmans have this question that they shared, that they ask, and so let’s start there. So what’s on your mind and what’s on your heart today? Barrett is going to go first.

This book feels so hopeful because it’s direct, it’s really honest, and it’s so actionable.”—Brene Brown JSG: So, we think, “Well, as adults, we shouldn’t need what kids need,” but the reality is, that’s totally wrong. We have that infant, that child, that young adult, big adult, all inside of us and all of them need touch. So, it’s one of the most soothing things to be touched, it lowers stress. It lowers anxiety, it improves depression, and I’m not necessarily talking about erotic touch here, but affectionate touch. It’s fabulous. We saw in a study of ours, with new parents who were having babies, that 15 minutes of a husband massaging the shoulders of a wife reduced postpartum depression in the women who were massaged. It was incredible. So, we need touch. We got to give touch. That’s the moral. JSG: Yeah, that’s right. Because all you need are little tiny moments, small moments. Let me give you an example. One of our most powerful findings in our research that we translated into a chapter in this book, “Giving What You Can Do,” is what we call turning towards. Turning towards. BB: So beautiful. But I have to say this, it’s vulnerable. It’s what you’re asking is really vulnerable. It feels really like… I think it’s very easy to be cynical about it, to laugh about it, to dismiss it, but it’s very vulnerable. This book feels so hopeful because it’s direct, it’s really honest, and it’s so actionable.” —Brene BrownBB: To love somebody, to ask to be loved, to see people, to want to be seen, and to talk about that. And I think to show your inner map is vulnerable. I think to ask to see someone’s, is vulnerable. So, if it feels like it’s hard, it’s because you’re being brave, right? You’re being brave with your heart. JSG: That’s right. And at the time, she in one session, and after about five sessions said to John, you know what, John, you can simply say no to her. You don’t have to fulfill her request, you can just say no, and that’s okay. The Love Prescription, a simple yet powerful plan to transform your relationship in seven days, from New York Times–bestselling authors Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman. Alison and Jeremy showed up for one of our weekend couples retreats looking tired. It wasn't surprising: we already knew from their intake forms that they had young kids and had been working from home, while supervising remote learning, for months. Of course they looked exhausted. BB: So why is there such a mythology in addition to, “I have to be laying and snuggling the tree every day for six hours if I’m going to nurture it.” In addition to the time myth, why is there… Is it just early psychology that, “If we’