Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage

America's Love Lab Experts Share Their Strategies for Strengthening Your Relationship

By: John M. Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, Joan DeClaire

Narrated by: Susan Denaker

Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

In Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, marital psychologists John and Julie Gottman provide vital tools - scientifically based and empirically verified - that you can use to regain affection and romance lost through years of ineffective communication.

In 1994, Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Washington made a startling announcement: Through scientific observation and mathematical analysis, they could predict - with more than 90 percent accuracy - whether a marriage would succeed or fail. The only thing they did not yet know was how to turn a failing marriage into a successful one, so Gottman teamed up with his clinical psychologist wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, to develop intervention methods. Now the Gottmans, together with the Love Lab research facility, have put these ideas into practice.

What emerged from the Gottmans’ collaboration and decades of research is a body of advice that’s based on two surprisingly simple truths: Happily married couples behave like good friends, and they handle their conflicts in gentle, positive ways.

The authors offer an intimate look at 10 couples who have learned to work through potentially destructive problems - extramarital affairs, workaholism, parenthood adjustments, serious illnesses, lack of intimacy - and examine what they’ve done to improve communication and get their marriages back on track.

Hundreds of thousands have seen their relationships improve thanks to the Gottmans’ work. Whether you want to make a strong relationship more fulfilling or rescue one that’s headed for disaster, Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage is essential listening.

©2006 John M. Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, and Joan DeClaire (P)2006 Books on Tape

So much truth in this!

I am listening tonight and plan to get the book tomorrow. I would like to go through the exercises written in the book. My parents did not show us how to resolve any conflict. They avoided it as much as possible. I am afraid that I did not teach my children either.
My oldest daughter just got married three weeks ago. I would like for her to listen to the book. My other daughter is ending her engagement.
This book would be very helpful for both of them. I am finding it very interesting!
Thank you.

Great Book

This book provided me with a lot of insight on ways i could communicate better. I found myself relating to several of the couples and their issues and found the doctors recommended ways to handle situations very useful.

Easy to listen to and simple to apply.

First seek to understand, then to be understood. There is a way to improve your relationships and this book gives you the words and techniques. it also manages your expectations very well. Reccommended!

Worth the Read/Listen

If you could sum up Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage in three words, what would they be?

If your Married and or thinking of marriage then you need to experience and embrace the concepts with one caveate (if your a man don't lose your basic nature of being a guy). Couples need to maintain and improve this interaction that was part and parcel of the courtship process. Men especially need to remember this process so that they can help their spouse stay open and build a relationship that is even larger than what brought the two lovers together. Plan, design and pursue each other to the beneift of those around them and the children watching every move they make. The premise and real world examples are to be taken seriously and imbibed deeply to ensure that both parties are understood and more fully realized. Listen and Read this book as well as the prequel to give your relationship every chance of flourishing for a liftetime. Women will identify with this more readily than men but the lesson is not to be denied or overlooked or trivialized. Pay attention to what your experiencing.

What did you like best about this story?

the excerpted real world dialogue.

What about Susan Denaker’s performance did you like?

it's just OK.

What did you learn from Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage that you would use in your daily life?

To understand more about how Women want there long-term dialogue to be [especially if they are into the NOW and that they should get any and all that they feel that they should want] don't deny the revealing of this important skill to fully realized what your marriage can be.

Any additional comments?

Learn this skill and add it to your quiver of skills to menuever through this life, but remain yourself at your core.

Excellent

I love these authors! Great and transformative info!!
I took many notes and will be applying this information to my marriage and parenting as well!

Eye opening!

What made the experience of listening to Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage the most enjoyable?

The book uses real life scenarios of couples they've had in counseling, which makes the suggestions relative to myself and my own situation. This book opened my eyes and gave me an outside perspective on how I communicate in my marriage, and even in past relationships.

What insight do you think you’ll apply from Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage?

Like I said above, this book is an eye opener. I've seen myself in the couples they have in this book, that gives me a new perspective, and will help me focus on getting to the heart of my needs, while allowing me to work on listening to the needs of my partner. Then we can work on fulfilling those needs together.

Any additional comments?

I would recommend this book to anyone who is having communication breakdown in their marriage. There are numerous types of communication breakdown that are reviewed in this book, and they do a great job of doing a "before and after" session of these conversations. I plan on listening again to the book in its entirety, to get into more details.

Great book but the audible chapters need work

Great content and insights. The authors break down common problems in marriage giving great detail and ways to improve your marriage. The chapter settings on the audible app is terrible with chapters ending midway through the next chapter on the audio portion.

Needed this book.

Needed this book, it helped a lot. A review requires at least 15 words. A review requires at least 15 words.

Unbelievable !

I found the commentary among the moment to moment conversations between couples particularly insightful and helpful. It’s truly unique from all of their other books, and especially helpful. It made me realize how much of a premium the Gottmans place on sharing one’s feelings, a skill I typically avoid out of fear of being rejected and dismissed by my wife. So surprised at only 4.4 stars when I think it’s their best book yet….will read many times.

A Game Changer

This book changed the way I speak to my wife, particularly when the conversation is argumentative, merely after hearing the first recorded and analyzed conversation in the book. The biggest thing for me was defensiveness and I saw it right away in the dialogue that they present in the book.

They use recorded transcripts of real couples talking (voiced by the narrator) and then analyze the back-and-forth relatively quickly. You can see yourself, if you're like me, in many of the conversations.

It truly helped, but it would be best if the authors were with me as I conversed (argued) with my wife, as I worry that I will fall back into old habits as I often do after reading great advice like this. I need her to read it too.