Het Tikawala's Key Ideas from The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
by John Gottman, Ph.D.

Firstly, couples in fight or flight mode -- racing heartbeat, adrenaline rush, high blood pressure, etc. are more likely to split up. These people are always in a mode to either attack or be attacked.

Gottman also uses verbal observations to predict whether the couple "criticize or complain".

Both of these sound argumentative but the main difference being the intention. While criticizing, the person's main aim is to make the other person feel inferior or bad whereas a complaint can be made politely, urging the other person to take the complaint sportingly and work for it.

It may sound simple but a key component in building a relationship is attention.

In a relationship, partners often share their personal feelings or mundane comments over silly things. They do it to start a conversation or to get attention. These comments or stories are called "bids" for attention. And how we react to these bids decides the future of a relationship

In 1990, Gottman started a research in which he studied how 130 couples reacted to each others' bids.

After six years, he compared the couples who were still together versus the couples that got divorced.

It turned out that the couples who were together reacted to each other's bids on an average of 86% of the times, on the other hand the divorced couple just responded for 33% of the times.

Gottman writes down a time when her wife was grumbling. Taking that as a bid, he reacted to that bid and asked her what happened. She replied that she was tired folding the laundry clothes. As a reaction to this, he helped her by folding some clothes for her. This tells her how important she is to Gottman and how important her miseries are to him.

He then played jazz music which reminded them of an old date in a jazz club. They then went for dinner together. And this is how accepting a small bid and reacting to it can create romantic moments for a couple and create an emotional bank for couples