Eight Dates: Essential Conversations For A Lifetime Of Love

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I think this book is an amazing way to date intentionally. One of my friends who I showed the book to said the book was just like couples therapy, which they were going through at the time with their partner. This book is going to be lengthy and deep like therapy - it takes weeks and months to finish the book together, and each of the 8 topics can be hours of conversation.

The answers can be found in Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, our latest book with Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD. The eight most important elements of a successful marriage are fidelity, good sex, division of chores, adequate income, good housing, shared religious beliefs, shared interests, and children. Doctors John and Julie Gottman have spent over three decades studying the habits of 3000 couples. Within 10 minutes of meeting a couple, they can predict who will stay happily together or who will split up, with 94% accuracy. Based on their findings, they have now created an easy series of eight dates - spanning commitment; trust; conflict; intimacy; sex; fun; work; money; and family values - that will lead to a happier, lasting love life. The book Eight Dates gives couples a guide to ensure their relationship will thrive. The book is divided into eight dates, each with a different theme, questions, and suggestions for what the date should look like.He groaned. I didn’t blame him. I had committed both of us to reading the book and going on eight therapist-designed dates without asking him first. Navigating the challenges of long-term commitment takes effort—and it just got simpler, with this empowering, step-by-step guide to communicating about the things that matter most to you and your partner. Drawing on forty years of research from their world-famous Love Lab, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman invite couples on eight fun, easy, and profoundly rewarding dates, each one focused on a make-or-break issue: trust, conflict, sex, money, family, adventure, spirituality, and dreams. Every strong relationship is a result of a never-ending conversation between partners. Eight Dates guides you through how to talk—and how to listen—in a way that will be beneficial for you as an individual and as a couple. Practically speaking, this book is very user-friendly. It talks about each topic, summarizes the chapter, then lays out a date night plan complete with suggestions for how to prepare, where to go, problems to look out for, questions to ask, and an affirmation to say together at the end of the date. It’s intense but also very doable. My husband and I haven’t gone through each of these dates yet, but the ones we’ve done have been really interesting and made us feel more connected.

What are the differences between our definitions of trust and commitment, and how can we resolve them? As anything that really matters, a relationship is something that needs a lot of work to be put in. Happy endings never happen by chance, they happen because two people trust each other so much and are willing to do the work to build a life together, with its highs and lows.The adoption of the Gregorian calendar occurred slowly over a period of centuries, and despite many proposals to further reform the calendar, the Gregorian Calendar still prevails as the most commonly used dating system worldwide. Holidays The positive switch is all about how couples positively interpret their negative events and their partner’s character, and whether in their minds on an everyday basis they maximize the positive and minimize the negative (in their partner and in their relationship).” A good idea for this date is to go to one of your go-to spots or activities, as it represents the time and commitment you’ve made to each other. What we learned:We’d both let fun move to the bottom of our to-do list. We’re focused on our careers right now, and had forgotten the importance of doing things just for the sake of enjoyment. On this date, we did what we do best: strategize ways to prioritize fun in the future. For example, we love working out, and we used to do TRX on Saturday mornings but the ritual faded when our favorite teacher switched studios. We recommited to joint workouts, and also decided to try hosting more group dinners for our friends. It was exciting to discuss bigger plans, too, like taking a trip to Sri Lanka.

What really makes a relationship work? How can we stay interested in our partner for ever? How can we be happier in our marriage? The dates were designed by John and Julie Gottman, along with their co-authors Doug and Rachel Abrams. John has spent the last four decades studying thousands of couples to understand what makes some relationships thrive and others fail. Julie is an award-winning clinical psychologist who’s worked with thousands of individuals and couples. They’re leaders in the world of love and relationships. Discuss how each of you experienced conflict in your respective families (as this can directly impact how you handle conflict today) They do embrace a wide range of definitions for family and spirituality along with other topics. I was very happy to see in the family section to see that not having kids was seen as a valid life option and one to be upfront about. Also in there section on spirituality, they do not use religion and spirituality interchangeably but allow for a personal definition of spirituality to be developed.In short, I’d recommend this book to any couple looking to take their relationship to the next level. Five enthusiastic stars! I used to operate the same way. But my perspective on this changed a few years ago when I interviewed several divorce lawyers about the common reasons couples get divorced, aside from infidelity or money issues. Readers who do not prepare for and complete the dates are unlikely to enjoy Eight Dates. Conclusion As we made our way through the eight dates, we shared long-forgotten stories from our childhoods, rediscovered the power of rituals, revealed our fears about money and sex, debated how many kids we wanted, and shared our dreams. By the end, we agreed it made our relationship stronger. A holiday is a day that, either by custom or by law, is set aside such that regular activities like going to work or school are suspended, or at least reduced. The term "holiday" can be interpreted differently, depending on the region. In the U.S., paid leave is typically referred to as "vacation," while national, religious, or cultural days off are referred to exclusively as "holiday." In some regions, however, such as the United Kingdom or former British colonies, the term holiday can also refer to paid leave.