The Seven Principles for Making Marriage WorkJohn Gottman & Nan Silver
The Reading Room
After the FightDaniel Wile
Hold Me TightSue Johnson
The Lexicon
The words people use about what happens between two people, in plain language. No term here is defined by another term you’d have to go look up. Where an idea comes from a practice rather than a study, we say so.
Flooding
The moment your body decides a fight is an emergency. Heart rate climbs past roughly 100 beats a minute, and the parts of your brain that listen, empathize, and solve problems go partly offline. It isn't weakness or drama — it's physiology, and it happens to everyone.
Repair attempt
Anything that reaches across a rupture — an apology, a joke, a touch, "can we start over?" In the research, repair matters more than the absence of fighting, and a repair only works if it's received. Repair, not the absence of rupture, is the variable that matters.
Pursue–withdraw
The most documented destructive loop in couples research: one partner pushes to engage — often louder as they go — while the other pulls away to keep the peace, which reads as abandonment, which fuels more pursuit. Both people are usually trying to protect the relationship; the pattern is the problem. It doesn't map onto gender, whatever the internet has told you.
Guides & Worksheets
- Guide
Start here
What this library is, how we label what's in it, and one idea worth taking with you. No account, nothing to buy.
July 2026 · 3 min read - Guide
Three things worth practicing before the hard conversation
Communication skills only work in a body that can still hear. The gate first, then the three moves, and an honest word about trying this alone.
July 2026 · 11 min read - Worksheet
Relationship Values Worksheet
A five-part exercise for naming what you want, what you bring, and what you do when a conversation goes badly, which is the part most values lists leave out.
July 2026 · 8 min read
Research
- Research
What happens in your body mid-fight
Past a certain heart rate, listening and perspective-taking go partly offline. What that means, what helps in the twenty minutes after, and where the science stops.
July 2026 · 13 min read - Research
The science we build on
The relationship field is split between science that's been measured and science that's merely famous. Which parts we build on, which claims we won't repeat, and where our own work is still unproven.
July 2026 · 12 min read - Research
Can one person change a relationship alone?
Understanding held by one person doesn't reach the other; changed behavior does. What solo work can move, what it can't, and where the evidence draws the line.
July 2026 · 13 min read - Research
The sentence you can't find when you're flooded
Mid-fight, the confiding sentence is there but unreachable. Dan Wile's doubling — offered as a tentative guess in your voice — and why that form is the only safe one.
July 2026 · 14 min read
Something here off, broken, or not sitting right? Tell us — a person reads it.
People and books appear here because we’d recommend them with nothing to gain. Some may partner with us over time; no one is listed because of it.