In order to get to a healthier and more productive place, we need to give up our fear of conflict, turmoil and resistance.
You don't have to be interesting. You have to be interested.
I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them.
Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right.
In a good relationship, people get angry, but in a very different way. The Marriage Masters see a problem a bit like a soccer ball. They kick it around. It's 'our' problem.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt.
Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions whereas when the ratio approaches 1 to 1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce.
Thus, the critical dimension in understanding whether a marriage will work or not, becomes the extent to which the male can accept the influence of the woman he loves and become socialized in emotional communication.
Bid for connection: Each of our daily interactions with another person.
When a couple gets to the last stage, one or both partners may have an affair. But an affair is usually a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause. The end of that marriage could have been predicted long before either spouse strayed.
We move in response to our conversation partner’s face, and our brain also fires as we move those muscles and stirs the passions. Paralyzing the face is idiotic.
I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase. You can glue it back together, but it will never be the same again.
Gay and lesbian relationships operate on essentially the same principles as heterosexual relationships
