The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman

Through the work of his Seattle "Love Lab," John Gottman has made tremendous strides in what we know about how marriages split up and how they can be saved. The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work takes the lessons learned and puts them in convincing, readable form. The Seven Principles are not speculation or opinion, they are based entirely on physiological research done with couples. With that kind of backing, Gottman is justified in taking a few cheap shots at "Men are from Mars" author John Gray: "The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple's friendship. For men, the determining factor is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple's friendship. So men and women come from the same planet after all."