I regularly turn to the work of Drs. John and Julie Gottman when I see couples in therapy. A number of years ago I was fortunate enough to complete their Level One training in Toronto, and their approach has stayed with me ever since. It is evidence-based, refreshingly straightforward, and over the years it has been genuinely appreciated by many of the clients I work with. The Gottmans also offer wonderful resource material for both clients and therapists, which makes their ideas easy to bring into everyday life outside the therapy room.
One of the cornerstones of their work is something called the Sound Relationship House. It is a research-based framework that maps out the essential components of a healthy, long-lasting partnership. I find the metaphor especially useful because it does what good metaphors do: it takes something complicated and makes it feel approachable. A relationship, in this model, works a lot like a physical home. It needs a solid foundation, supportive framing, and strong structural walls in order to stand the test of time.
The Two Load-Bearing Walls: Trust and Commitment
Before you can build any of the floors of the house, you need the two pillars that hold everything together.
The first is trust, the core belief that your partner will support you, look out for your best interests, and have your back. The second is commitment, the mutual decision to stay together through the good times and the hard ones, and to view the relationship as a lifelong journey rather than something contingent on the next disagreement. When these two walls are solid, everything else has somewhere safe to rest.
The Floors of the House
Resting on that foundation are seven levels. Each one builds on the one below it.
- Build Love Maps. A Love Map is the part of your mind where you store the intimate details of your partner’s inner world: their hopes, their stresses, their friendships, their dreams, and the small routines of their day. You build it by staying curious and asking open-ended questions.
- Share Fondness and Admiration. This is the daily practice of appreciation, respect, and affection. It is what gradually replaces criticism and contempt with warmth.
- Turn Towards Instead of Away. Couples make small “bids” for connection all day long, and turning towards means meeting those bids with interest rather than letting them pass by.
- The Positive Perspective. When the lower floors are strong, couples develop what the Gottmans call positive sentiment override. You give your partner the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst.
- Manage Conflict. Conflict is natural in every relationship. The aim is not to avoid it but to handle it well, by accepting your partner’s influence, soothing yourself when things heat up, and keeping the so-called Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling) at bay.
- Make Life Dreams Come True. A thriving partnership is one where both people feel supported in pursuing their deepest personal goals rather than quietly shelving them.
- Create Shared Meaning. At the very top sits the inner life you build as a couple: your rituals, your shared roles, and the values and goals that make you a team.
I want to slow down on three of these in particular, because they tend to make the biggest difference in the couples I see. The Gottmans like to say that their goal is to help people become relationship masters rather than disasters, and these three are where that work really begins.
Build Love Maps
Building Love Maps simply means knowing what is going on in your partner’s world. What is causing them stress right now? What are they excited about? What goals, big or small, are they working toward this season of their life?
The important thing to remember is that Love Maps change over time. The person you committed to five years ago is not carrying the exact same worries and dreams today. Maintaining ongoing curiosity about your other half is one of the foundational tools the Gottmans found to be crucial in building relationships that last. It is also one of the easiest to let slide once life gets busy, which is exactly why it is worth returning to on purpose.
Accept Influence
Another fundamental ingredient of a positive relationship is letting your partner influence you. In practice, accepting influence looks like mutual decision-making and a genuine sharing of power. It looks like compromise, and like staying open to your partner’s perspective even when your first instinct is to defend your own.
Couples who accept one another’s influence learn from each other. They stay curious in moments when it might feel easier to dig in or lash out. This does not mean giving up your point of view. It means treating your partner’s perspective as something worth taking seriously, which is a very different experience to be on the receiving end of.
Turn Towards Instead of Away
One of the most powerful things you can do for your relationship is to recognize when your partner is making what the Gottmans call a bid for connection. A bid is any attempt to gain your attention or share a moment: a sigh, an interesting fact read aloud, a hand on your shoulder, a question about your day.
The research here is striking. In the Gottmans’ study of newlyweds, couples who were still married six years later had turned towards one another’s bids 86 percent of the time. Among the couples who had divorced, that number averaged only 33 percent. The difference was not made in grand gestures. It was made in the hundreds of tiny everyday moments that either get acknowledged or get missed.
Here is a practical tip for the relationship “masters” among us. When your partner makes a bid, start by simply acknowledging it. Then, when you can, take it one step further and respond with real enthusiasm. Relationship masters stay on the lookout for these opportunities to affirm and receive bids, and in doing so they keep building the fondness that holds a partnership together.
A Final Thought
The goal of the Gottman Method is to increase closeness and positivity in our most intimate relationships, using tools like the Sound Relationship House as a guide. One study examining the approach found that the model offers couples a general plan to deepen intimacy, manage conflict, and share what is meaningful to them.
What I appreciate most about this framework is how usable it is. You do not need to be in crisis to benefit from it. Whether you are building a relationship from the early days or rebuilding one that has weathered some storms, the house gives you a place to start and a clear sense of what to tend to next.
If you would like to explore more of the Gottmans’ tools for strengthening relationships, I warmly encourage you to visit The Gottman Institute.
References
Brittle, Z. (n.d.). Turn Towards Instead of Away. The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/blog/turn-toward-instead-of-away/
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work (Revised ed.). Harmony Books.
Lisitsa, E. (n.d.). The Sound Relationship House: The Positive Perspective. The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-sound-relationship-house-the-positive-perspective/
Marital and Family Therapist / Psychotherapist | Montreal Therapy Centre