Customer Reviews

The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Gottman, one of the leading authorities on relationships has produced another fantastic book on this subject. In this book he explains the basic elements of "people skills". It gives us concrete ideas about what it takes and how we can develop them. He uses information from many of his own research projects to explain the concepts and processes involved to understand the ways we interact with each other. I must admit that although my relationships were not the best until recently, this book has helped me improve these relationships quite dramatically. If you'd like to read an even more comprehensive explanation on how relationships work, read "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato. It is also an outstanding book on relationships as well as adult (and childhood) development. Two thumbs up for both books!!!

This book is excellent no matter what relationship you are working on, or if you are just trying to understand how people relate to one another. His conclusions are based on scientific research that is well respected and they really make sense. You can use the information every day and see how it works for yourself. I highly recommend this book. It really opened my eyes to how I was relating to others, vice versa, and how to improve that with little effort. It has insightful questionaires and a really great section about our emotional heritage that really helped my husband and I understand where we each were coming from. He gives you the information and then teaches you how to use it. Extremely enlightening and helpful!

A book that rises way above the loads of "quick fix" self-help nonsense out there, largely because Dr. Gottman builds his approach on both years of reliable research and carefully observed clinical work.

Also, he manages to incorporate that men are not "wrong" or "bad" for being less communicative and less emotion-focused than women, nor are women too "emotional" or too "needy". In other words, subtle gender differences (and differences within each gender) are respected and integrated into his clinical approach.

A personal note: while feminism has many upsides for women it also has potential pitfalls; e.g., women do not need to turn into verbal bullies in order to "empower" themselves. Mentally healthy guys will turn off and tune out (and eventually leave).