The Natural Principles of Love
About this book
Abstract -In this Original Voices article we summarize the past four and a half decades of our work on relationship stability and happiness and explore the theoretical implications of that empirical research. First, we briefly review the laboratory research, clinical work, and the mathematics used to understand our results and build our theory. Then we describe the sound relationship house theory, constructive blueprints for managing conflict, and the three phases of love. We use the term love in the narrow sense of the primary emotions that draw people together to form a lasting, committed relationship between lovers, regardless of sexual orientation. Although we began with no theory at all, we were led by our data and our clinical work at the Gottman Institute.