The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection, and Joy

Product Information

Here’s today’s small thing: Talk to your partner about curbing your expectations for each other. How can you work towards or continue a good enough relationship? Talk about the things that you’re doing well… and what you’d like to work on!

A good enough relationship isn’t sunshine and butterflies all the time though — you’ll still have disagreements with your partner… because well, that’s real life. EVERY couple argues and actually, conflict is healthy because it leads to a greater understanding. The Ethical Slut is a classic, a book that helped launch the modern non-monogamy movement. Updating a book of such historical significance is no easy task, but The Ethical Slut, Third Edition succeeds beautifully. Where the original broke radical new ground, this edition is more nuanced, a book for a more complex age. In the third edition, we see the wide variety of forms ethical non-monogamy, and indeed human sexual relationships, can take. This new version brings a new focus on consent, talks about the many wonderful and varied ways ethical non-monogamy happens, and shows an appreciation for the vast range of human sexuality. This is The Ethical Slut for a new era, and cements the book’s place as one of the cornerstones of modern non-monogamous thought.” Interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships) Just don’t expect to solve all of your relationship problems. A good amount of conflict is perpetual… meaning there are some things that you and your partner will rehash over and over again without progress. Maybe your partner likes to spend Friday nights with you out of the house — they want to go for a long walk or grab a pizza… and all you want to do is melt into the couch because you’re absolutely exhausted. Neither of you can agree, but you can manage conflict constructively.

How to Make a Prescription

JG: Yeah, I want to tell the story of the research of one of my colleagues, Paul Zak, who wrote a book called The Moral Molecule, which is about oxytocin. And if you spray oxytocin up people’s nose, they’re more trusting, they’re more generous, they’re more giving. Well, it turns out you can get that effect with a 20-second hug. JSG: That’s turning towards. Turning away is saying nothing, ignoring what your partner said. Turning against is a hostile response. Like, “Would you stop interrupting me, I’m trying to read.” Now, let me ask you, how much time did it take to go, “Wow, that’s fantastic”? BB: And she said, “This is the other side.” And I made a real mistake that day, because I said, “Oh, for sure, vulnerability is opening the heart.” And I actually told that story when I went up there. And what I’ve learned since then is you rarely open your heart without feeling weak in your knees. JSG: One thing I would recommend is pay attention to all the times your partner might be saying, “Honey, would you do this? Would you please do that? Would you please go to the grocery store?” Just little things. Notice how many times you’re doing that, or your partner is doing that. And if your partner is asking you for something, try just saying, “Okay.” Just say, “Okay.” Just try that.

JSG: Right, loneliness and negative feelings are much more powerful actually than positive feelings in their impact on us, right. So we have this resentment building inside of us, and then it’s time to talk about how we should parent our two-year-old, what’s the best way? Well, I’ve got so much resentment about my partner turning away from me that I don’t want to listen to them. I would feel like they haven’t listened to me, so why should I listen to them? So you start responding with hostility, with criticism, anger through the side door of yourself. As defined by Yale University researchers in the 1990s, emotional intelligence is "the ability to monitor one's own and other's feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions." From New York Times–bestselling authors Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, a simple yet powerful plan to transform your relationship in seven days They make insensitive remarks, failing to read the room due to low levels of empathy and other awareness. JSG: Yeah. Most of the time, “What’s on your mind?”“Well, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that.” But what’s on your heart? That’s a whole other matter. That takes you down into your inner world with…JSG: So, we think, “Well, as adults, we shouldn’t need what kids need,” but the reality is, that’s totally wrong. We have that infant, that child, that young adult, big adult, all inside of us and all of them need touch. So, it’s one of the most soothing things to be touched, it lowers stress. It lowers anxiety, it improves depression, and I’m not necessarily talking about erotic touch here, but affectionate touch. It’s fabulous. We saw in a study of ours, with new parents who were having babies, that 15 minutes of a husband massaging the shoulders of a wife reduced postpartum depression in the women who were massaged. It was incredible. So, we need touch. We got to give touch. That’s the moral. JSG: It’s not that The Seven Days is going to create permanent change forever and ever, no. What it is, is it’s a little change, a little change each day, each day, noticing that you feel different, how interesting to hear compliments about you every day, how interesting to hear thank you, when you’ve never heard, thank you for all the stuff you do. Hearing thank you is huge. Suddenly you feel seen. You feel like you’re doing enough. You’re feeling appreciated. Which is a wonderful feeling. Interesting. The next day, the next day. So all we’re trying to do is give you a taste of how things can change, but what we know is that if you continue the practices we’re giving you long-term, it’s going to make a huge, just huge change in the trajectory of your relationship, where that relationship is headed.

BB: So almost in your language from this book, almost asking the other person to reveal the map, that map you talk about is understanding each other’s inner world.JSG: And false and phony, “I don’t want to do this. This doesn’t feel like me.” Well, like you may be not working in the relationship, like you is something you’re wanting to change. BB: Yeah, no, I mean, I study those words for a living. I just wrote a book on the definition of those words and what they mean, but if you were to say to me, or my therapist says to me, “Try more this.” I’m like, “What exactly does that look like?” If you’re directing a movie and you want an actor to do this with another actor, what is the physicality of that step? What exactly do you say? Where does your right arm go? You know why? Because it feels like I just keep screwing it up, and there’s nothing more painful about trying to connect and seeing it in my eyes and his eyes, but missing in every time. JG: Over time, a lot more irritable. And so when you’re irritable, the last place you’re going to look for an explanation is yourself.