Mohamad Shabib
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) · September 16, 2026
The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work, published as The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, is John Gottman and Nan Silver's self-help guide for couples. Its central argument is that lasting couples run on an everyday friendship, and that the goodwill built between arguments shapes how words land during them.
This guide is commentary, not a stand-in for the book, which you can borrow from a library or find at a bookstore.
It is a self-guided program that turns Gottman's research on couples into seven principles, with exercises for partners to do together. The publisher describes the 2015 revised edition as adding new exercises and newer research, and reports more than a million copies sold (Penguin Random House).
John Gottman is a psychology researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and the principles come from his research observing couples. Julie Schwartz Gottman, his wife and co-founder of The Gottman Institute, is not a co-author of this book.
From the 1970s, his lab observed couples, looking for sequences of interaction that could tell happy from unhappy couples apart. In 1986, his team built an apartment laboratory at the University of Washington, nicknamed the Love Lab by the media, to study how couples build friendship and intimacy (The Gottman Institute, Research Overview).
The first three build the friendship the book treats as the foundation. Here they are with our commentary, under the book's own names where we can; its exercises stay with the book.
Published critiques say the headline figure has not been shown to hold up on new couples. The Gottman Institute says its seven longitudinal studies predicted divorce with average accuracy above ninety per cent.
Heyman and Smith Slep used Gottman and colleagues' 1998 newlywed study as their example of a wider problem (Heyman and Smith Slep, 2001, Journal of Marriage and Family). A formula built and scored on the same couples is tailored to them (overfitting); the check is testing it on a separate group (cross-validation), which no published divorce-prediction study of general-population couples had done. To illustrate, they built their own formula from a national survey: it sorted couples well where it was built and much less well in a second group, which shows the risk rather than re-testing Gottman's results.
They also factored in how prevalent divorce is. In their worked example, a formula right four times in five for both outcomes would, at the divorce rate for couples married three to six years, be wrong more than half the time when it told a couple they were likely to divorce. They warned against telling the public or clinicians that divorce can be accurately predicted.
The critics' point is that these patterns have not been shown to forecast whether a particular relationship will end, so treating your fights as a countdown claims more certainty than the evidence gives. If an argument leaves you afraid, that is a safety question, not a prediction question.
Advice drawn too early. In 2000, Stanley, Bradbury and Markman called the 1998 newlywed study's recommendations premature (Stanley, Bradbury and Markman, 2000). As they summarized it, the study had called for dropping active-listening interventions, concluded that anger was not harmful, and advised that wives raise issues more gently and husbands accept influence. (Whatever that meant, anger expressed through threats or intimidation is never harmless.) They cited nonrandom sampling, no control for how couples differed at the start, and causal conclusions from correlational data (two things occurring together). Gottman and colleagues' reply disputed a number of these points.
Gendered findings that did not hold up in a different sample. In 2007, Kim, Capaldi and Crosby followed eighty-five young married or cohabiting couples from at-risk backgrounds for about two and a half years. Men's rejection of their partner's influence, men's failure to de-escalate their partner's negative emotion and women's negative start-up did not predict whether couples stayed together. The authors said the 1998 study's major findings failed to replicate in their sample and the models need further investigation (Kim, Capaldi and Crosby, 2007).
These critiques question how lab findings became predictions and prescriptions, not whether the book's everyday suggestions help a given couple. Our article Does couples therapy work? looks at the wider evidence.
The principles describe friendship, respect, conflict and meaning, which unmarried and same-sex couples can weigh too, though the research behind the original book was framed around husbands and wives.
The Gottman Institute reports a separate twelve-year study of twenty-one gay and twenty-one lesbian couples, and says relationship satisfaction and quality were about the same across straight, gay and lesbian couples (The Gottman Institute, Same-Sex Couples). If inclusive wording matters to you, check a library copy of the 2015 edition first.
Yes, if both partners are willing and feel safe with each other; it was written as a self-guided program.
One way in is to pick one principle, read it together, and agree that either of you can pause a heated conversation. If a partner starts using the book's terms as ammunition, set the book down. If the terms are used again and again to belittle or control you, get support rather than keep going alone.
A book on its own may not be enough when a gridlocked argument keeps leaving you hurt, when one partner will not engage, or after a betrayal comes to light.
It may suit couples who both want to work on the relationship and prefer concrete skills. Consider getting support if any of these apply; in the first case, set the couples book aside and start with individual support:
Start with whichever matches the problem in front of you; there is no required order.
A broad overview and a sensible first read for the whole framework.
Also with Nan Silver and subtitled How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal, it may fit better if trust is the live issue.
By John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams. Its publisher, Workman, describes eight conversation-based dates on topics from trust to money and dreams.
For couples wanting a structured, research-informed introduction to relationship skills, it is a reasonable start, with three caveats: its divorce-prediction claims rest on models critics say were not tested on new couples, some gendered findings behind its advice did not hold up in a later study of different couples, and its exercises need two willing partners who feel safe with each other.
Its core point, that everyday respect and attention shape how conflict goes, is worth considering. Reading it is not couples therapy, and neither the book nor therapy can promise a particular outcome.
Unlike the book, Gottman Method therapy begins with an assessment, so a clinician can focus on your patterns and slow things down when a conversation becomes overwhelming.
At TEO Counselling, two clinicians are trained in Gottman Method Levels 1 and 2. Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO (Ontario), works online with couples in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, in English or Arabic. Alison Shaji, MA, RCC #22608 (BCACC), works with couples in British Columbia only, in English, Hindi or Malayalam. See relationship counselling for how couples work runs.
TEO does not offer couples Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), sex therapy, partner-abuse intervention programs or domestic violence advocacy. Couples sessions are $175 per 60 minutes, and individual sessions are $150 per 60 minutes if one partner wants to start alone, or if couples work is not safe right now. No referral is needed. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation by video or a scheduled phone call, booked online.
This guide is commentary on The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. It is not a substitute for reading the book, and it is not a substitute for professional help. If you would like to talk through whether couples work fits your situation, book a free consultation online, or text (519) 760-5211 with a question first. This text line is not a crisis service.
The seven principles are: know each other's inner world (what Gottman calls love maps), nurture fondness and admiration, turn toward each other instead of away, let your partner influence you, solve your solvable problems, overcome gridlock, and create shared meaning. The book treats the first three as the friendship a couple draws on when conflict comes.
It draws on John Gottman's observational research on couples. From the 1970s his lab looked for sequences of interaction that could tell happy from unhappy couples apart, and in 1986 his team built an apartment laboratory at the University of Washington that the media nicknamed the Love Lab. Published critiques question how those findings were turned into predictions and advice.
Published critiques target the research behind the book's advice. In 2000, Stanley, Bradbury and Markman called the recommendations from Gottman and colleagues' 1998 newlywed study premature, citing nonrandom sampling and causal conclusions drawn from correlational data; Gottman and colleagues published a reply disputing a number of their points. In 2007, Kim, Capaldi and Crosby reported that the 1998 study's major findings, including its gendered ones, failed to replicate in a sample of eighty-five young couples from at-risk backgrounds.
Its principles describe friendship, respect, conflict and shared meaning, which unmarried couples can weigh too. The research behind the original book was framed around husbands and wives, and The Gottman Institute reports studying same-sex couples separately, in a twelve-year study of twenty-one gay and twenty-one lesbian couples.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work gives a broad overview. What Makes Love Last? (2012, with Nan Silver) is subtitled How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal, and Eight Dates (2019, with Julie Schwartz Gottman, Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams) is built around eight conversation-based dates. Start with the one that matches the problem in front of you.
Book a free, no-pressure consultation. We'll talk about what you're going through and figure out together if we're the right fit.
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