Gottman Sound Relationship House

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I love a good therapeutic metaphor. (and if you’re new here, let me tell you up front, I LOVE a good therapeutic metaphor haha). I feel like when we can take bigger conceptual things like feelings and relationships and compare them to more concrete, discreet, known, objects or experiences  it helps us make sense of them and helps us to express them to others. In the spirit of that, we’re revisiting some of the research conducted by John and Julie Gottman and the associated Gottman Institute for a nine week series.

This series will cover the components of the sound relationship house. The sound relationship house compares, you guessed it, the building of healthy relationships in your life (romantic in particular but certainly others) to the components of a house.

Today we’re just going to go into a brief overview and over the next several weeks we’ll go deeper into each component and how to build or strengthen them in your life.

The sound relationship house starts at the base. Floor one explores love maps. What are love maps? Love maps are the things that you know about your partner that aren’t necessarily common knowledge. What were they like as a child? What is their favorite color? How do they view the world? Get to know your partner’s inner world and let them into yours.

Moving up, the second floor shares fondness or admiration. Essentially, telling your partner the things that you like about them! It sound simple, but I promise you it isn’t always as simple as it seems, especially when things have been hard.

The third floor is turning toward. Turning toward refers to the way we join in connection with our partners and acknowledge their needs. When times are good, it’s easy to turn toward. When things become overwhelming, it’s harder to turn toward and partners tend to turn away. This can lead to disconnection, resentment, and relationship dissatisfaction.

Once again moving up the house, the fourth floor refers to the positive perspective. We visited this a while ago when we talked about the emotional bank account. The positive perspective describes the state of being when you’re able to give your partner benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re acting with positive intention.  

Conflict management is what you’re going to tackle on the fifth floor. This is something that I find a lot of people struggle with. You may remember a post from a while back talking about how to keep conflict from becoming combat. This floor addresses that issue.

I know this house is getting really tall but we’re almost there! The sixth floor explores making your life dreams come true. How do you encourage one another? How do you support your partner? How do you provide concrete help? How do they help you?

The top most, final floor creates shared meaning. I talk about this A LOT with my couples. What are your shared goals? This explores how you know that you’re working toward the same ends and that you’re both applying importance to some of the same things. This is another that sounds a lot easier in theory than it can be in practice sometimes. Before you dismiss this, remember that these floors are easier to build when things are good, and they also keep you grounded when things are hard. You want to build the house while with these strong foundations before you weather a storm.

Now, you might be thinking, we have a foundation, and we have a bunch of floors, but where are the walls? The roof? Well, the metaphor doesn’t extend to a roof, but the walls are super important in the sound relationship house. They’re load bearing and help you to go up the floors. The walls are trust and commitment. This is the what each partner brings to the relationship and chooses to engage in. You need these walls. Often, these walls are also where individual partners can struggle because they also are impacted by your personal history and personal history with relationships.

I am really excited to walk through these floors and build these walls with you in the coming weeks! By the end of this, you should have a good idea of the components needed to build your own sound relationship house.

If you find that throughout this you’re struggling with a floor or you recognize that your foundation or your walls are weak and you’re having a tough time strengthening them yourself connect with a good relational therapist! If you’re in New York, I’d be happy to be that person for you. Click the button below and let’s start building.