John Gottman - The Man’s Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab About What Women Really Want

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Secrets from the Love Lab

THERE IS A vicious rumor going around that men dont buy books.

If you are a man and you bought this book (or borrowed it), congratulations! You are a pioneer. A stereotype-busting man among men. A soon-to-be Hero who knows how to be the man that all women wish they had. If your girlfriend or wife bought the book and left it on your nightstand, we say no harm, no foul. You did not put your own hard-earned money down for the book, but it will reward you nonetheless for any and all time you invest in it.

If you are a woman reading this book, we are glad you are. We can guess what your motivations might be. Perhaps you want to vet this guide for accuracy and then give it to the man in your life (and possibly also to your brother, son, friend, neighbor, or male pet; sorry, we cant help your pet). We want to reassure you that weve done the vetting for you, as this guide for men is coauthored by two highly qualified female clinicians who have done the checking under the hood.

We also want to speak up for the man in your life and let you in on one of his little secrets: In the vast enigmatic world that is Woman, he is dreadfully lost and confused, and as is the case with most men, loath to ask for directions. Were not being critical or disloyal. Men freely admit this. Women are mysterious. (Men, are we right?) Your man desperately wants to understand how to love you, make you happy, and ensure that you will desire and want him (and only him) forever. He wants to fight with you less. He wants to play with you more. He wants to know how your brain works, what makes your heart beat faster, and how to be the kind of man you need him to be. So be reassured, and feel free to read this book as well. But then give it to the man in your life, or leave it underneath the remote, or in his car, or stuff it in his toolbox, if thats what it takes. Or you can encourage him to go out and bravely forge his own path to the bookstore and buy a copy for himself.

Now, for the men. We know some secrets, and were going to share them with you. Weve written this book as an easy-to-read and easy-to-use guide. Weve also tried to write this book to be entertaining and whenever possible to include visuals and cartoons, since sometimes a picture is worth a thousand (or at least a few hundred) words. And who doesnt love a good cartoon?

So heres the news flash: Men, you have the power to make or break a relationship. Thats right. Research shows that what men do in a relationship is, by a large margin, the crucial factor that separates a great relationship from a failed one. This does not mean that a woman doesnt need to do her part, but the data proves that a mans actions are the key variable that determines whether a relationship succeeds or fails, which is ironic, since most relationship books are written for women. Thats kind of like doing open-heart surgery on the wrong patient.

So while you may lament that you dont know why women act the way they do, and think the way they do, and talk the way they do, and perhaps you even blame them for your lack of success with themthe truth is, it is what you do and the way you think that matters most. The bar stools of the world are filled with lonely men sitting in the rubble of their failed one-liners and wondering whats wrong with women. We dont want that same fate for you. Were not going to tell you whats wrong with womenwere going to explain where you may have gone wrong in the past. When it comes to women, men are either Zeros or Heroes. And we know which one youd rather be.

Caveat emptor: This isnt a how-to guide for getting women into bed. There are plenty of those, and most of them are based on shallow scams that do not lead to any kind of lasting or fulfilling relationship. This book will certainly help you seduce and satisfy women, but our goal is to help you succeed with women for a lifetime. All of the research studies show that men who are in happy, healthy relationships make more money, have more sex (yes, believe it or not, married men typically have much more and better sex than single men), live longer, suffer less chronic illness, and show less cognitive impairmenti.e., dont lose their mindsin their later years. So feel free to use this book to get a woman into your bed by skipping right to the chapters on romancing and making love to a woman. But if you want to keep her, and not spend your old age alone and doddering around the neighborhood in utter confusion, read the chapters on understanding a womans mind, and heart, and the chapter on loving her for a lifetime.

It would be easy if there were a sequence of buttons to push to win the heart of any woman, but theres not. Women are complex. Every woman is different, and thats why every woman is so fascinating. This book will help you to understand how to dial out the static and confusion that so frequently becomes the backdrop to a relationship. We know what matters most to women and what women want most from a man. Read this guide, and we promise that you will be able to dial in a more satisfying relationship for yourself and for her.

How Do We Know?

John Gottman, PhD, is the guy who is known for being able to predict with 94 percent accuracy whether a couple will get divorced. The scientific laboratory is his major source of knowledge.

John is a researcher, and his wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has worked side by side with John to strengthen couples relationships worldwide. Doug and Rachel are the coauthors of international, best-selling books about intimacy and passion, and Rachel is a physician who uses her clinical experience to help many women and men heal their hearts as well as their bodies in her medical practice.

In addition to being the worlds leading marriage researcher, John has also distinguished himself by being in many disastrous relationships with women before he met Julie. We want to be perfectly clear on this point: His history with women is mostly a field littered with the corpses of failed relationships. Doug was not born a Don Juan either, although he did eventually write a novel about the famous seducer, and that book has been translated and read all around the world.

So if neither John nor Doug were born blessed with a secret knowledge of women, how have they managed to stay married to amazing women for almost 30 and 29 years, respectively?

It cant be stated enough: These two are not any kind of love gurus. Everything they know about women theyve had to learn the hard way, and in Johns case, from over 40 years of studying real-life couples.

The guidance in this book comes from real-life research and real-life relationshipssome bad, some good enough, and some great. A lot of this information is new to the clinical world. In the past, clinicians who wrote about relationships had only seen troubled couples, so they relied on their fantasies of what good relationships looked like. They didnt know how men in really great, happy relationships actually treated their partners. We do.

They didnt have the Love Lab.

We do.

Inside the Lab

In a small apartment laboratory at the University of Washington, in what came to be called the Love Lab by the media, John (and later Julie) used many different methods to study couples. For example, he videotaped them talking about how their days went after theyd been apart for at least 8 hours, he watched them argue, he watched them talk about pleasant topics, and he watched them spend whole days together in this small apartment. As they discussed the events of their days or conflicts between them, he measured how fast their hearts were beating, how fast their blood was flowing, how they were breathing, how much they were sweating, and how much they jiggled in their seats as they talked, all synchronized to a video time code. He had them watch their videotape and tell him what they were feeling, and sometimes he had them watch the tape again and try to guess what their partner was feeling.