In the article “What Makes Marriage Work” Dr. John Gottman explores what factors are involved in a successful long lasting marriage, and how to minimize the factors that lead to divorce. Through using real life examples Gottman shows how in general arguments in relationships aren’t inherently bad, but to keep a relationship positive the amount of constructive interactions must greatly outweigh the quantity of destructive or negative interactions. To support this, a key idea of the article is the ratio of positive to negative interactions, or as stated “That magic ratio is 5 to 1. As long as there is five times as much positive feeling and interaction between husband and wife as there is negative, the marriage was likely to be stable over time.”
