The seven principles for making marriage work
John Gottman has revolutionized the study of marriage by using rigorous scientific procedures to observe the habits of married couples in unprecedented detail over many years. Here is the culmination of his life's work: the seven principles that guide couples on the path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Packed with practical questionnaires and exercises, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential.
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- "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by Gottman. It's not the best writing in the world yet it's based on 50 years of actual research.
"Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. It's a book every manager should read about how, maybe, you can create a team that jells.
"The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker. Examines the necessities of knowledge work. What every manager and employee should read.
- Recommendation you didn't ask for (just skip if not open to it).
Seven principles for making marriage work[1] - has great advice for many sorts of committed romantic relationships.
Also if he's criticizing you as you described he may want to consider talk therapy/CBT to come to an understanding of the nature of his frustrations and his inability to productively communicate them to you.
[1:] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/849380.The_Seven_Princip...
- Failing is how we humans learn! Through our failures, or the failures of others. It's normal, healthy, and OK. You like all of us have failed before, right? And you survived! It's what help make you who you are.
Some decisions are not right or wrong, some decisions have no serious lasting impact. What do you want for dinner? What do you want to watch on tv tonight? There's no choosing wrong, there's no perfect answer.
Concern that you're a poor husband sounds a lot like imposter syndrome. The thing is, having those concerns means you're far from being a poor husband. Bad husbands don't care if they are bad husbands, and usually convince themselves that they aren't the problem. Communication is the biggest most important thing in making a relationship work. Focus on that. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a book by John Gottman that will help.
Every adult on the planet is an ineffective adult. It sounds like you have a lot of high expectations of yourself. No one is perfect. No one has all of their shit together. No one person can do everything on their own that they "should" be doing to be a "proper" adult.
You have to remember to show yourself some compassion. What advice would you give to someone that came to you with these concerns?
I recommend reading "The way of the peaceful warrior" by Dan Millman.
I too am naive and overly trusting. I would rather live my life with the occasional screw over and manipulation then living jaded and distrusting. I want to live a life of kindness and love. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but more often it does.
This too shall pass. Suicide only ensures that things can never get better.
The simplest "food for the soul" is to eat, shit, and sleep. Everything else can be addressed later.
- I certainly know what it's like to be in your shoes, losing sleep, feeling depressed, searching for answers. I can and do truly empathize with your relationship struggles. And honestly, I still struggle with this (though to a lesser extent than in the past), and certainly all my relationship problems are not solved. However, my relationship did truly experience a significant improvement. So perhaps my experience / research is of some value to you and others that are in a similar situation. I'll go ahead and share a few more pertinent thoughts / resources below, but it won't be comprehensive. If you'd like to discuss this more comprehensively (I don't want to share too many personal details here) I'd be happy to chat with you via email or phone. You can email my throwaway account to get my contact info. My throwaway email account: barndoor16@protonmail.com
I think you touched on the root of the one-sided empathy situation with your SO and most likely also your broader relationship issues: incompatible attachment styles. After much research / reading and therapy, I eventually identified this as the root of my own relationship issues as well. Essentially it boils down to this: a person with an insecure attachment style is poorly matched for a person with an avoidant attachment style. I highly recommend reading the following book on this matter: "Attached Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller". I also recommend reading Gottman's book "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" (Gottman doesn't really utilize the attachment styles model but his model is effective for relationship issues nonetheless).
Regarding how to talk to your partner about this, the optimal approach is in fact certainly much more nuanced than "be direct". You need to take care not to make your partner feel criticized, as this will trigger defensiveness, causing them to become more resistant to making changes. Generally, using "I feel" statements is a good approach but it can be tricky to implement well in practice. Also, you certainly don't want to make your partner feel the relationship is threatened / communicate a threat, unless you sincerely feel you're tired of trying / progress isn't being made / you've exhausted all other approaches. With I statements, it's possible to communicate that an issue is very important to you and your happiness in the relationship without making your partner feel excessively worried that the relationship is threatened. In particular by making it clear that you're not looking for immediate changes / perfection - that you're willing to work through it with them. And there's certainly much more to communication - it's a deep topic.
I think it's also important to note that attachment style / relational incompatibility is a matter of degree. As you'll learn from the book I recommended, attachment style is quantified on a four quadrant spectrum. If you're only a little insecure and your partner only a little avoidant, then your incompatibility is probably more workable. So I would certainly recommend using the attachment style assessment tool to gauge the degree of your and your partner's attachment style incompatibility. So while it will certainly always be difficult being in a mismatched attachment style relationship, it is possible for both partners to meet closer to somewhere in the middle and have a mostly functional relationship, through a mutual deep understanding of the mismatch and a sincere willingness to modulate your respective behaviors and expectations. However, if eventually you observe that your partner fundamentally lacks a willingness to make any significant changes to their own understanding and behavior, then I agree with the other poster in this thread that leaving the relationship should be seriously considered. But from what you've shared so far it sounds to me like you've not yet reached that point / haven't exhausted all your options. That said, the decision of whether to keep trying to make the relationship work or to give up on it, also depends on how much you've invested in it already. A long marriage with a kid (my situation), warrants trying harder to find solutions, putting up with unmet needs longer, and generally being more patient. If you don't have much time invested in your relationship then it may not make sense to keep banging your head against the wall for years (as I did). In which case you may want to set a more reasonable time limit on the order of months (keep this to yourself of course) to see if there's sufficient progress.
I also highly recommend seeing a personal therapist as they can provide an alternate source of empathy to you for your struggles so that you're not totally reliant on your avoidant attachment style partner - this was invaluable for me personally. Couples therapy was also helpful as forum for discussing relationship issues with my partner. It helped lend more weight to what I had to say, so that they took my stated issues and my analysis of the cause and solutions for the relationship problems more seriously.
Hopefully this is helpful to you and anyone else in a similar situation that comes across this post. It's really difficult to understand the cause of one's relationship problems and to find solutions because there's just so much information out there that it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not to mention that you're doing all this research under the constant drag of feeling emotionally distressed / depressed. And although therapists are very helpful, in my experience, without extensively researching / reading on your own, you're unlikely to cultivate a deep enough understanding to work through to a positive outcome for a fundamental relationship problem such as an attachment style mismatch. It's a real struggle and I really wish there were better resources to help people that are dealing with relationship issues and mental health issues in general. In any event, best of luck to you, and as I said feel free to reach out if you want to discuss this further.
- On a completely different topic: After watching my first marriage degenerate and my wife asked me to move out, I was fairly well mystified about what was going on. We'd read lots of books about marriage and communication, planned for it to be tough, intended to see it through... so what happened?
"The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman was a book that I read after we'd separated that first started to make sense of the dynamics of my first marriage, and what caused it to spiral out of control. Unfortunately by that point it was basically too late (as the book predicted, actually); but it certainly helped a lot in my second marriage, and has helped make sense of the dynamics of a lot of other relationships as well. Definitely recommended reading.
- That is oversimplified.
John Gottman has been doing research on this topic for decades: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman
He has 7 predictors. I highly recommend his book: "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work".
