The Gottman Doctors: "Women Tend to Be More Unhappily Married", 96% Of Non-Cuddlers Have An Awful Sex Life & Why One Night Stands Are Dangerous!

John Gottman (0:00)

Women tend to be more unhappily married than men.

Julie Gottman (0:03)

And 80% of the time, women bring up problems in a relationship.

John Gottman (0:08)

But 69% of all problems are not solvable.

Julie Gottman (0:12)

So if you rely on problems getting solved as an indicator of the success of the relationship, it's not going to look good.

Steven Bartlett (0:19)

Dr. John and Dr. Julie Gottman, world-renowned researchers and clinical psychologists who've been married 36 years and have spent the last 50 years studying love.

Steven Bartlett (0:29)

You made something called The Love Lab. What is that?

John Gottman (0:31)

We followed 3,000 couples.

Julie Gottman (0:33)

It taught us the difference between what masters of relationship do and what disasters do.

Steven Bartlett (0:39)

What advice would you give to me then? Cuddle.

John Gottman (0:41)

96% of non-cuddlers had an awful sex life.

Steven Bartlett (0:45)

Anything else?

Julie Gottman (0:45)

Yes. The hookup culture is thriving.

Steven Bartlett (0:48)

Is that a problem?

John Gottman (0:49)

Yes.

Steven Bartlett (0:50)

Why?

Julie Gottman (0:50)

Okay, so let me point out something that everybody needs to hear.

John Gottman (0:55)

And also kissing is very powerful. Men who kiss their wives goodbye when they leave for work live four years longer than men who don't.

Steven Bartlett (1:04)

In your research, you found that during conflict, couples who show four key behaviors mean that an argument is doomed.

John Gottman (1:10)

Yes, and they are criticized and defensiveness. The third one was the worst, and that was ****. That was the best predictor of relationship breakup. And the fourth was ****.

Steven Bartlett (1:21)

John, Julie, can you role play the behavior that a couple who are destined to fail would exhibit?

Julie Gottman (1:28)

Oh, yes.

John Gottman (1:30)

So.

Steven Bartlett (1:43)

John, Julie, you've both been studying the subject of love for more than 50 years. You've written books, you've done a lot of primary research, you run something called The Love Lab. I'm gonna start with you, Julie.

What is the mission that you're on and why love?

Julie Gottman (2:03)

That is the most wonderful question in the universe. Here's why. We have a world as we all know that is full of conflict, is full of antipathy, is full of violence, domestic violence, all kinds of clashes between people. And we wanted to focus on love because love is the great healer.

It heals people's hearts, it heals people's souls, it brings people together, it unifies people. But nobody has taken relationships one-on-one. Nobody knows how to have productive relationships that are calm and gentle and compassionate. And at the beginning of the research, we had no idea of what successful couples did to really solidify their relationship and sustain it. So John and his wonderful colleague, Robert Levinson, did some of that earliest research that taught us the difference between what masters of relationship do and what disasters do, so we could help as many people as possible.

Steven Bartlett (3:26)

And John, the same question for you, with all the work that you've done in your life, what is it that you're seeking to deliver to the person that consumes that work? What is it you're seeking to do for them?

John Gottman (3:38)

Well, Bob and I started studying relationships because we were so incompetent at it. And we were just two clueless guys going from one relationship disaster to another. And we were really curious about whether there were people out there who could do it well. And we found there were. And then we thought, how were they different from people who, like us, really went from one disaster to another? And we had no idea. We really had very few hypotheses when we started. So it was just curiosity. And we weren't interested in helping anybody at all. We were just curious about finding out what the differences were. And then 26 years ago, Julie and I decided to work together. And she's a clinical psychologist. She wants to help people. And I thought it was impossible to change relationships. Because if you can predict with such high accuracy that a relationship is doomed or it works, how can you change it? You know, it seemed impossible. But Julie is really an optimist and really cares about people. And so we got together and we thought, well, we need a theory if we're going to help people because every relationship is different. And so first we built a theory and then we tested it.

So that's how I got into it, really, I didn't have a mission.

Steven Bartlett (5:04)

So how did you both come to study and work together on the subject of love in particular?