In a recent interview on her online class platform “Sessions”, psychotherapist and bestselling author Ester Perel interviewed renowned clinical psychologists John and Julie Gottman.
One of the Gottmans’ core focuses is how to make relationships, and love, last.
The two have interviewed more than 3,000 couples and followed some for as long as 20 years. They have also studied more than 40,000 couples who are about to begin couples therapy.
Much of their research is through the The Gottman Institute, formerly the Gottman Love Lab, a center at the University of Washington which has been conducting research since the 1980s.
One commonality most successful couples had, the Gottmans found, was their ability to do “repairs.”
“The couples who really were successful a few years down the road were the ones who made repairs,” Julie Gottman told Perel. “They made repairs when their partner didn’t receive a bid for connection. They made repairs if they said the wrong thing, [if] they blurted out the wrong thing.”
This lesson was a “paradigm shift,” Perel told them.
They made repairs when their partner didn’t receive a bid for connection.
Julie Gottman
Clinical Psychologist
‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’
Making repairs doesn’t mean making grand gestures, Perel said. In fact, a repair can be a sort of “common sense” question.
“They were actually not at all declarations of love,” she said. “It was like, ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’ The fact that in the midst of a fight or right after when you’re still pissed you would actually think about the partner.”
It also doesn’t mean saying “sorry” or even having a more serious conversation about the transgression.
“It didn’t have to do with apologizing, it didn’t have to do with specific things about the couple, but it implied, ‘you still exist for me,'” Perel said.
John Gottman gives an example from one of his clients who just fought with his partner: “One guy said, ‘Well now that we’ve destroyed each other’s personalities, how about a piece of cheesecake.'”
By taking a beat and asking your partner even the most mundane question, Perel said, you are showing “that the other one is still in your orbit.”
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