The key ideas

Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, 2019

When we fall in love, we ask each other hundreds of questions, and then we stop. John and Julie Gottman, who have spent decades studying couples, offer eight dates built around eight conversations: trust, conflict, sex, money, family, play, growth and dreams. You will learn what to ask on each one and why these particular topics decide a couple's future.

Who it is for

For couples who have only just started dating, and for those who have been together for years. For anyone who feels there is nothing left to learn about their partner.

Don't assume you know who your partner is today just because you went to bed together last night.

"I think we're done"

One night Marie burst into tears and told her husband, "I think we're done." The reason was almost funny: the TV. Wesley loved falling asleep with the screen on, and Marie could only fall asleep in silence. Night after night she lay awake, waited for her husband to drift off, and only then switched the TV off. For a long time she kept quiet about how much it tormented her. We'll find out how the story ended a little later, and the ending is a surprise.

John Gottman has studied couples for more than forty years. His research apartment earned a nickname, the Love Lab. More than three thousand couples were observed there, and from the way partners talk to each other, he learned to predict who would stay together and who would split up. He wrote this book with his wife, the psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman, and with another married couple: the writer Doug Abrams and the physician Rachel Carlton Abrams. Both couples share stories from their own lives in it.

The book's idea is simple. When we fall in love, we try to show our best side and we ask each other lots of questions. Then the questions run out: it feels like you already know your partner. But people change, and the person you fall asleep next to is a little different today. So the Gottmans suggest eight dates, each one a conversation about one big topic: trust, conflict, sex, money and work, family, play, growth and faith, and dreams.

You'll learn what to talk about on each date, which questions to ask and why the authors chose these topics. And you'll see that what makes a couple strong is not perfection but the habit of getting to know each other again and again.

A date is time you give to nothing else

The Gottmans and the Abramses had kids, jobs and never enough time, like everyone else. Their solution was simple: they traded with other couples. One couple watches the other's kids for an evening while the other goes on a date, and next time they switch. The authors note that the kids even gain from this: they learn that parents aren't the only people they can rely on.

What do the authors mean by a date? It's time set aside in advance, when two people leave work and housework behind and think only about each other. A date shouldn't depend on whether there's spare money, the right mood or clean laundry. A date is planned and put ahead of everything else. The goal the authors suggest is one special date every week.

Even an hour works, as long as it belongs only to you. The authors advise putting dates in the calendar and treating them as untouchable: dress up, show up and really be there. Their conclusion sounds almost like the motto of the whole book: dates make relationships.

For each of the eight dates, the authors suggest a place and some preparation. Before you meet, each of you answers the questions alone, so you arrive with something to say rather than empty-handed. It helps if the place means something to you, like the spot where you first met. But the place only helps. What matters is the conversation itself.

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About the author

John Gottman is an American psychologist who has studied married couples for more than forty years. Julie Schwartz Gottman is a clinical psychologist. Together they founded the Gottman Institute.

All books by this author: John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman

Terms from the book

  • Ritual
  • Marie
  • Carroll
  • Love Lab
  • Ben
  • Wesley: A man in the book, Marie's husband. He got used to falling asleep with the TV on because he was often alone as a child.
  • Abrams: Doug Abrams is an American writer and editor, co-author of The Book of Joy with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Rachel Carlton Abrams is a physician and his wife. Both are co-authors of this book.
  • open-ended questions: Questions that cannot be answered with "yes" or "no". They invite a person to talk about themselves in detail.
  • Leah: A woman in chapter one, Ben's partner. She grew up in a family where her parents divorced, and for her, trust means feeling listened to.
  • negative comparisons: A phrase from the book, not a scientific term: the habit of comparing your partner unfavourably with someone else, real or imagined.
  • Pew: The Pew Research Center, an American nonprofit organisation that runs public opinion surveys.
  • kayak: A light, narrow boat paddled with a double-bladed paddle.
  • Markman: Howard Markman is an American psychologist and professor at the University of Denver who has studied couples and divorce prevention for many years.

All terms

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