The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some of my takeaways from another book by Dr. John M. Gottman, PhD. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. I did a video recently on another one of Dr. Gottman's books, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and How You Can Make Yours Last.  I feel like that one laid out some of his more foundational ideas about marriage including the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling) and 3 different kinds of stable couples.  If you haven't seen that video, it's probably worth watching first.  This current book is even more prescriptive, describing exactly how to implement 7 big principles that support a successful marriage.  These principles are born out of the extensive research that he has done on couples in his Love Lab in Seattle, Washington.  So, it's not just based on hunches, but on well researched data. In...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some of my takeaways from reading several books by Dr. John Gottman, an expert on marriages.  This is the first of 2 videos on this topic.  Dr. John Gottman is my favorite researcher and writer on the topic of romantic relationships.  One of the main reasons I like his work is that it is based on the massive amount of data that he has collected at his "Love Lab" in Seattle, Washington.  He invites couples to his lab, watches them argue, and within 5 minutes, can predict with 91% accuracy whether they will be divorced in five years.  Crazy stuff, right?   Gottman has written a ton of books — all discussing the data that he’s unearthed in his research.  What I like about Gottman’s work is that it sometimes runs contrary to conventional wisdom. So, he may go into an experiment with a specific theory — like "the key to good relationships is...

Hi, everybody! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I’ll share our new anniversary ritual – the annual state of the marriage OR our annual marriage performance review. My husband and I just celebrated our 20th year anniversary.  We are not big gift givers.  Nor are we people who have extensive rituals for anniversaries. March is a great getaway month, so we used to travel for anniversaries, but the arrival of children 16 years ago put an end to that. This year we tried something a little different than usual. But one that I think will become a part of our anniversary every year. We did a state of our union evaluation.  OK — I know this sounds a little clinical and therapeutic. But why is it that marriage is the one part of our lives where we don’t devote energy to regular review and fine-tuning?  After all, we take our cars into the shop for regular maintenance, we have annual performance reviews for our job performance, and...