Eight Dates: To keep your relationship happy, thriving and lasting

Product Information

Das Ding ist: ich glaube, wir sind absolut nicht die Zielgruppe für dieses Buch. Es gab kein Thema, was wir in den letzten 3 Jahren nicht schon mehrfach besprochen hätten. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass wir als Gen Z couple im Vergleich zu älteren Generationen schon durch social media, höhere Akzeptanz für sowas wie Psychotherapie und generell mehr Offenheit für intime Themen früher gelernt haben, dass man über Gefühle sprechen und sich selbst reflektieren sollte? Don‘t know. Wir haben das erste Gespräch geführt und dann damit aufgehört. Ich habe das Buch alleine zu Ende gelesen und es entstand bei mir kein Gesprächsbedarf. Fun and Adventure. Play and adventure are vital components to a successful and joyful relationship. It’s okay if you and your partner have different ideas about what constitutes play and adventure. The key is for you to respect each other’s sense of adventure and what it means to that partner. Of course, these are not just simple, yes-and-no kinds of questions: open-ended by their very nature, these questions are invitations for longer, more intimate conversations that should “make you fall in love, or help you decide to make a long-term commitment, or keep you in love with the person you have chosen to spend your life with.” Unsurprisingly, the most important among these conversations revolve around the following eight topics: trust and commitment, conflict, sex, money, family, fun and adventure, growth and spirituality, and dreams. Dreams. Honoring each other’s dreams is the secret ingredient to creating love for a lifetime. When dreams are honored, everything else in the relationship gets easier.

Let’s do it… or at least talk about doing it! Even if this is truly uncomfortable for you, the goal of this date is to talk about sex, and to do so in a manner that conveys what feels good for you and your partner. When things are already getting hot and heavy, no one wants to stop and say, “hey honey — I don’t really like that.” Instead, talk about what works (and what doesn’t) before you hit the sheets. The secret ingredient to creating love worth for a lifetime is honoring each other’s dreams. And you can’t honor them if you don’t know them. That’s why the last day is all about them: the nature of yours and your partner’s deepest dreams. Don’t question them or belittle them; don’t even jump into practicalities: you can’t know the future or what’s possible. But you do know your present: you’re in love with the person dreaming this dream, and your job is to find ways to support both as much as you can. Final Notes Navigating the challenges of long-term commitment takes effort—and it just got simpler, with this empowering, step-by-step guide to communicating about the things that matter most to you and your partner. Drawing on forty years of research from their world-famous Love Lab, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman invite couples on eight fun, easy, and profoundly rewarding dates, each one focused on a make-or-break trust, conflict, sex, money, family, adventure, spirituality, and dreams. Doctors John and Julie Gottman have spent over three decades studying the habits of 3000 couples. Within 10 minutes of meeting a couple, they can predict who will stay happily together or who will split up, with 94% accuracy. Based on their findings on the ingredients to a happy, lasting love life, they have now created an easy series of eight dates, spanning:Trust and commitment—Is your relationship built on trust? How do you make each other feel safe and loved? Conflict. Conflict happens in every relationship, and it’s a myth to believe that in a happy relationship you’ll get along all the time. Relationship conflict serves a purpose. It’s an opportunity to get to know your partner better and to develop deeper intimacy as you talk about and work through your differences. Conflict —Not all conflict is bad. How do you manage differences and conflict in your relationship? Eighty-percent of married couples have sex at least a few times a month. Of those, 32% have sex 2 to 3 times a week.

That said, even if your partner doesn’t want sex as much as you do (or vice versa), the Gottmans say that a way to keep the relationship spicy and passionate is to kiss… a lot. In fact, they tell couples to engage in a long, intimate 6-second kiss. “When you kiss passionately, you set off a chemical cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that release dopamine and increase oxytocin, both of which make you feel really good… in just 6 seconds you tell each other that you matter, and you choose each other all over again” (pg. 105). Readers who do not prepare for and complete the dates are unlikely to enjoy Eight Dates. Conclusion Much more than a feeling – love is an action. It requires intention and attention, and these require commitment and preparation. First off, you should buy this book if you’re in a committed relationship and looking for ways other than endless conflict and feeling talks about dishes, office crushes, and in-law conflicts.

As triggers do arise every day in everyone, it is critical to our physical and mental health to be friendly with them. Not keep our Self prisoner.

Peering down at the city of San Francisco, the place where we’ve shared the past four years and plan to spend many more, this felt like the perfect ending to our Eight Datesjourney. What happens after the dates? Are there differences we cannot accept?” (i.e. differences in emotionality, wanting time together vs. apart or alone, optimal sexual frequency, how to approach household chores and childcare, ambition and value/importance of work, etc.).Mein Hauptkritikpunkt: Es werden in dem Buch sehr viele Studien erwähnt, die aber absolut gar nicht zitiert werden??? Weder die Titel der Studien, noch die Autoren, oftmals nichtmal das Erscheinungsjahr. Einmal wurde eine Studie von 1996 erwähnt, mit dem Zusatz „die Studie wurde zwar noch nicht veröffentlicht, aber…“. Lol? Es gibt am Ende des Buches einen Anhang mit einigen Quellen, aber das ist definitiv nur ein Bruchteil (er enthält nämlich nur Quellen für 4 der 8 Gespräche). Was ist das bitte für eine Art, ein wissenschaftliches Buch zu schreiben? The book itself consists of eight date ideas, each with a suggested conversation. The date ideas are fine. They'll be fun for some people, but not a good idea for others. Ok, great. That could easily be a short listicle somewhere. As for the conversations, they are each important subjects, to be sure. Do they really benefit from being matched with the date ideas? Have the authors run experiments to determine that these eight dates each lead to more successful relationships, have they run scientifically controlled experiments with different permutations to figure out the exact ingredients that make these eight dates magically work? Maybe I missed it, but I heard no such thing. It sounded rather more like the authors discussed what they felt were the most important topics for relationship partners to discuss, then made up random ideas for dates in which to discuss each of those topics. I used to operate the same way. But my perspective on this changed a few years ago when I interviewed several divorce lawyers about the common reasons couples get divorced, aside from infidelity or money issues. An early indicator of the future success of a marriage happens during pregnancy and the birth of a child. If a husband (the study only involved heterosexual couples) is involved during pregnancy and birth, the marriage will be happier later on. A father tends to stay involved with the children through the years if his marriage has low conflict and there is continued sex. Julie Gottman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the cofounder and President of The Gottman Institute. She is the cocreator of the immensely popular The Art and Science of Love weekend workshops for couples, and she also co-designed the national clinical training program in Gottman Couples Therapy. She is Author/co-author of five books: Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage, And Baby Makes Three, 10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy, The Man’s Guide to Women, and The Marriage Clinic Casebook. Julie lives in Seattle.