Fight Right
How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LEARN THE 5 SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL COUPLES
Conflict is the top reason couples seek help—but it's also an opportunity for greater intimacy, deeper connection, and lasting love according to this essential guide from the world’s leading relationship scientists and authors of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and Eight Dates.
“An indispensable resource that couples will use over and over again.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
How we fight predicts the future of our relationships. Most of us blunder into conflict without knowing what we are really fighting about and then quickly become overwhelmed by physiological responses we can’t control and emotions we don’t anticipate. The truth is the happiest and most successful couples fight—all the time. Conflict is human, and necessary.
Through decades of research, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, founders of the world-famous Love Lab, have identified the five common mistakes we make when we are at odds. In Fight Right, we learn the five secrets that help us to get back on track and harness conflict to build stronger, healthier relationships. With kindness, clarity, and a deep understanding of the struggles couples are going through, the Gottmans show us that we each have a unique conflict culture, borne of how we were raised and how we experienced past relationships, and they take us through all the possible combinations, from Avoiders, to Validators, to Volatiles, and how they can best work together.
Fight Right is an essential resource that will help couples escape the win-or-lose mentality in favor of a collaborative approach: calming down, staying connected, and really understanding, so that our fights can bring us closer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fighting is vital to healthy relationships, yet few couples know how to engage in it meaningfully, according to this persuasive and plainspoken guide. The Gottmans (The Love Prescription), psychologists and married cofounders of the Gottman Institute, an organization that studies marriage and relationships, seek to help readers use fights to "figure out who we are, what we want, who our partners are and who they are becoming." In jargon-free prose, they outline three conflict styles—"avoiding, validating and volatile"—and discuss how couples can handle similarities or differences in their styles, including by seeking to understand the roots of the other's approach to conflict (someone who grew up in a family where arguments led to a parent walking out, for example, might later become an "avoider"). Elsewhere, the authors break down disputes into five categories, among them the Bomb Drop (a fight that begins aggressively and is difficult to turn around) and the Shallows (in which couples "skim the surface" instead of getting at the real issue). The Gottmans' key principles for fighting fair include compromising when possible and articulating a need in positive rather than negative terms ("Can we sit down together and plan how to cut some of our expenses?" rather than "You overspent again!"). While some of the advice is common sense—most couples will know they're meant to be good listeners or focus on one issue during a conflict, even if that's easier said than done—much is novel, and the Gottmans' easy-to-remember tips ("Start softly, even if you're upset") will be especially useful in moments of heightened emotion. This is a valuable resource.
