Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work 8-week class

Join me to explore the groundbreaking research of John Gottman summarized in the best-selling book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver to create a lasting, happy, and mutually fulfilling romantic relationship! 

John Gottman spent over four decades researching what makes romantic relationships succeed and fail, and distilled his findings into the seven principles outlined in this book. John Gottman studied thousands of heterosexual and same-sex couples and followed many of them longitudinally across the decades. He found that romantic relationships are highly predictable. In fact, because of his work we are now able to predict with over 94% accuracy if a couple is going to stay together or split up. This provides us with powerful knowledge of practical things we can do to help make our relationship last and things we need to prevent to keep our relationship from deteriorating.

My goal with this class is to provide couples with these tools early on, so they can build strong, lasting, happy relationships from the beginning. This class is meant for couples who are early in their relationship, such as unmarried committed couples, engaged couples, newly weds, and couples who have been together for a while and would like to strengthen their relationship. I want to help you create good habits in your relationship from the beginning and prevent the pain and heartache that result from bad habits that can lead to breakup and divorce.

This class will take place on Zoom during eight weekly 1.5 hour meetings on Wednesday evenings from 7:00 pm - 8:30 PM Central Time. Our first meeting will be on Wednesday April 10th and our final meeting will be on May 29th 2024. In our classes we will cover:

• An introduction to Gottman's work in the Love Lab and his research findings on what makes relationships work and what predicts breakup and divorce
• Enhancing love maps - know your partner and be known by your partner
• Nurturing fondness and admiration
• Turn towards each other instead of turning away
• Letting your partner influence you
• Exploring the two kinds of marital conflict and learning how to work with each of them
• Solving solvable problems
• Overcoming gridlock
• Creating shared meaning

Included in the registration fee is a packet that will be sent directly to your mailing address from the Gottman Institute prior to class. This packet includes one copy of the book The Seven Principles That Make Marriage Work, two copies of the Couples Guide For a Better Relationship, and two card decks: Open Ended Questions and Love Maps Exercise. The classes will consist of lectures and excercises couples will do together.

This class is not therapy or group therapy, but a teaching/learning environment. Participants in the class are not entering into a therapeutic relationship with the class leader. Therefore, this class is not suitable for couples who are in active relationship distress, are dealing with abuse, addiction, or serious mental illness. For couples who are dealing with these struggles, couples therapy is more appropriate.

About the Class Leader Dr. Iektje van Bolhuis

Iektje van Bolhuis, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist, who has been practicing Gottman-Method Couples Therapy since 2012. She is a Gottman Seven Principles That Make Marriage Work leader. Dr. Iektje has seen great success with couples she has worked with using the Gottman method and is passionate and enthusiastic about its principles and eager to share them with you.