Cultivating Lasting Love: Enhancing Relationships Through the Gottman Method
Building Love, One Principle At A Time.
This year I was thrilled to get my Gottman Method certification! Even with the deep love I share with my partner, as two highly sensitive individuals, we sometimes find ourselves in recurring conflict loops. The desire to enhance and nurture my own relationship prompted me to delve deeper into methods and principles that promote thriving relationships.
Secondly, having worked as a Breathwork Coach for several years, I’ve come to understand that what most clients desire is greater clarity, deeper insights and healing in their relationships as well as the guidance to how to cultivating long-lasting, fulfilling connections.
The Gottman Method is a trusted guide for enhancing relationships, backed by thorough research. It zeroes in on essential aspects like friendship, open communication, conflict resolution, and emotional awareness. With these principles in action, couples can reshape their relationship dynamics, strengthening their bond and create lasting happiness together. By teaching the tools to handle small disagreements or major hurdles, the Gottman Method equips couples with effective strategies to nurture connection, navigate conflicts, and cultivate a resilient and fulfilling partnership.
Gottman Method therapy is based on over 40 years of research by Dr. John and Julie Gottman. Dr. John Gottman is a world-renowned relationship researcher whose work into what makes committed relationships thrive is unparalleled by any other researcher in the world. At the core of the Gottman Method is the Sound Relationship House theory — an inviting framework that outlines the key ingredients for a thriving relationship. This theory unveils seven essential principles that lay the groundwork for lasting love and deep emotional connection:
The Sound Relationship House
Building Love Maps: Maintaining awareness of your partner’s world (their worries, stresses, joys, dreams)
Sharing Fondness and Admiration: Expressing fondness and admiration involves actively appreciating and highlighting each other’s positive qualities. This practice creates a culture of appreciation and respect within the relationship.
Turning Towards Bids for Connection: In healthy relationships, partners continually make and accept bids for connection through gestures, questions, or requests for attention.
The Positive Perspective: Maintaining a positive perspective involves interpreting each other’s actions and intentions in a generous and empathetic manner.
Managing Conflict: Conflict is inevitable in any relationship, but how couples manage it determines their long-term success. The Gottman Method teaches couples to navigate conflicts constructively by fostering healthy communication, understanding each other’s perspectives, and finding common ground.
Making Life Dreams Come True: Supporting each other’s aspirations, dreams, and goals is essential for relationship fulfillment.
Creating Shared Meaning: Shared meaning involves building a sense of purpose and shared values within the relationship.
Understanding what’s meaningful and significant to each partner is key to many of the Gottman tools for strengthening friendship and navigating conflicts. When partners inquire about each other’s values and what matters most, intimacy deepens through mutual respect and genuine desire to understand. This sentiment is beautifully captured in the following statement:
“Understanding precedes advice giving and problem-solving.” — Dr. John & Julie Gottman
When you ask your partner, “What’s important to you and why does it matter?” It shows a deep level of trust and openness. It’s crucial to respond with respect and create a safe space for sharing.
The two walls, Trust and Commitment.
Trust occurs when you believe your partner has your best interest in mind and acts in ways that benefit you. It’s knowing your partner values your interests and needs as much as their own. Simply put, trust means feeling like “my partner is on my side and has my back,” and it involves mastering teamwork to uplift each other.
Commitment means believing and behaving as if this relationship is a lifelong journey, for better or for worse. This means that if it gets worse you will both work to improve it. It involves cherishing your partner’s positive qualities and nurturing an attitude of gratitude about what you have with this person. .
Turning Towards: Making Bids for Connection
My Favorite Burning Man Sculpture
This is one of my favorite principles of the Gottman method. This principle states it is the small moments that build safety and trust in a relationship. Dr. Gottman articulates the theory of bids for attention. All day long, people make little bids for attention from their partner: “Look at that boat on the water, isn’t it beautiful?”
At that moment, the partner has a choice. They can turn away from the bid by ignoring it; they can turn against the bid by saying something like, “Why are you bothering me when I’m reading the paper”; or they can turn toward the bid by embracing the comment and responding to it: “Say, that is a beautiful boat! We should go sailing sometime, wouldn’t that be fun? Turning toward a bid is like improv: Say ‘Yes’ and run with it. It’s in those happily-answered bids that good feelings are built.
To “miss” a bid is to “turn away.” Turning away can be devastating. It’s even more devastating than “turning against” or rejecting the bid. Rejecting a bid at least provides the opportunity for continued engagement and repair. Missing the bid results in diminished bids, or worse, making bids for attention, enjoyment, and affection somewhere else. Love is in the small things. Deep emotional connection is created during the small day-to-day moments that partners have together.
By turning towards your partner on a regular basis, even during times of conflict, you are adding fuel to your relationship by helping to create openness, safety, and security for both you and your partner.
With these principles in mind, I’ve created a new 8-week online course called Clear Path to Connection. This unique offering combines the proven principles of the renowned Gottman Method with the powerful practice of Breathwork, creating a holistic approach to relationship wellness.
It is designed to guide you through an enriching LIVE group coaching experience. More than a course, it’s your roadmap to deeper connections, personal healing, and the manifestation of your dreams.
Learn more about it on my website: https://www.clearpathtoconnection.com
Nonetheless, it remains our deepest human longing to be seen without judgment for who we are, recognized for our essential goodness, free of shame and self-defense, exposed, accepted, and blessed without condition.
(Mother of the Unseen World, p. 26)
