I tried to reboot my relationship in 7 days. Here’s what happened (2024)

My partner and I will never divorce — we’re not married. However, as we stagger towards the eight-year mark Terence and I have become subject to, if not a seven-year itch then a certain energyless exasperation.

On our most recent hols he was enraged by my “spendthrift” ways. (Read: £8.95 on a charity-shop puffer jacket to combat the constant deluge and a desire not to eat his student-style pasta at every meal by occasionally dining out.) Meanwhile, I interpreted his attempts at nonstop micromanagement less as “the sharing of valuable life skills” (his term) than as gaslighting. The dog played us off against each other à la warring superpowers.

Like Longfellow’s girl with a curl, when we are good, we are very, very good. But when we are bad, we are horrid. In this sense, hitched or no, we enjoy the traditional British relationship. But what if we could leave our differences behind us, learn, grow and transcend to become a fully functional heterosexual unit? Not for nothing is Terence a management consultant, last week presenting me with the American psychologists John and Julie Gottman’s week-long divorce-proof your marriage project. Presumably their plan also works for those of us living in sin, if rather insufficient amounts of it given the jealousy of the aforementioned whippet.

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Dr G, who likes to be referred to as the “Einstein of love”, is a beardy boomer with protruding teeth and a leather cap. With his wife of 35 years, the clinical psychologist Dr Julie Schwartz Gottman, he claims to have decoded the science behind what makes love last, after 50 years studying more than 40,000 couples. Much of this data-gathering occurred at the Gottman Institute, the pair’s Seattle “Love Lab”, made famous by its appearance in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink. The duo’s latest outing, The Seven-Day Love Prescription, Tezzer’s new bible, hits the shelves at the end of this month.

Being a repressed public schoolboy, my significant other does not do emotions, but he does bow down to the great god Gladwell, and all things pseudo-scientifically statistical. Gottman’s remarks in an article that using “mathematical models integrating nonlinear differential equations, we can reliably predict . . . the future course of a relationship. And . . . provide data-driven suggestions for positively adjusting the course of a couple’s life together” is the kind of statement that turns him on. Data points, spreadsheets, actionable steps — this is the talking dirty of Tezzer’s professional existence. And if it’s a chap making these claims, so much the better, mansplaining being his other guiding principle.

Accordingly, we will be the first Brits to put the Gottman prescription to the test. “ ‘Over seven days, we’ll ask you to learn seven new habits. They’ll be easy. They’ll be quick. They’ll be fun . . . All you need to begin is a willingness to try,’ ” he admonishes, quoting the good doctors, my willingness to try anything notoriously missing in action. Still, if it can persuade Terence to stop whingeing about my profligacy — financial and planet-destroying — bring it on.

Monday, day one, involves “turning towards”. Say what? “ ‘When one person attempts to initiate a small connection by making a bid,’ ” reads Tez “ ‘— it could be physical or verbal, overt or subtle — and their partner then responds in one of three ways. Either they turn towards that bid, turn away from it, or turn against it.’ You know,” he adds encouragingly, “like the other day, when you asked whether my friend Tom was my gay lover, telling me you’d be fine with it, without looking even up from your laptop?” “I should have made eye contact?” I inquire. “Exactly,” he replies. “The Gottmans are my people. I’ve been begging for connection for years.”

It’s true. He does tend to lurk around my study door, furtively hoping to gain access, while I shout, “No!” and press on with my work. This is an ominous sign. According to Gottman figures, couples who go on to divorce respond to their partner’s bids for connection 33 per cent of the time, while those who remain together “turn towards” each other a frankly unbelievable 86 per cent of the time, how people react to such entreaties being the biggest single predictor of relationship stability. This includes when the other party calls your name from another room — a crime punishable by castration, according to Betts lore.

The 12 hours of turning that ensue are interminable: Terence forever twinkling his eyes at me, initiating regulation six-second snogs and pressing his clammy forehead against mine, by way of dropping coins in our “love piggy bank”. It’s like going out with a needy 14-year-old girl, flipping him the bird deemed a negative turning only. Finally, beaten, I agree to sit head-to-toe with him on the sofa, hound in the middle, maintaining physical contact with them both. I continue to scream in horror every time I look up and catch him gazing concertedly back at me. Still, it’s a start. And the fact that he refuses to allow the heating on does at least give the arrangement the advantage of warmth.

Tuesday — still only day two — and we are required to ask a “big question” to create “love maps” of our beloved’s “inner world”. “Please, God, no,” I catch myself musing as I spot Terence limbering up for some particularly platitudinous profundities. “What are your life dreams?” he demands, direct from the Gottman inventory. I inform him that, being English, I choose not to admit these things to myself, let alone other people.

“All right,” he replies, “if you could transform yourself into an animal for 24 hours, which would you choose? Is it a black panther?” “It’s a black panther.” “OK, if you could wake up tomorrow with three new skills, which would you pick?” We proceed to have an argument about why “flight” is inadmissible, his proposed “ability to invoice” not only dull but controlling.

Seventy-two hours into future-proofing our relationship, said relationship is at breaking point. Wednesday’s obligation to “say thank you” — aka turn oneself intolerably American — has escalated to a point of toe-curling sincerity (Terence) and blistering facetiousness (me). Apparently, couples are generally nice to each other. It’s just that, 50 per cent of the time, their other halves focus on the negative rather than the positive. By this logic, it isn’t that happy pairings do more for each other than the unhappy, it’s that they’re simply better at perceiving the support their partners provide.

There is more than an element of truth to this. My obsessive focus is the apocalyptic chaos that Terence creates: a pall of festering dirt and debris he drags in his wake, forcing me into a Fifties housewife mode. Meanwhile, he frets that my lack of financial responsibility will mean an old age supporting another pensioner with a Claridge’s habit and only an Hermès scarf collection to her name. All the while, both of us are working our arses off keeping the domestic show on the road.

And, yet, today’s assignment — to follow each other around with notepads recording every positive thing the other does, however small and quotidian, then thanking them for it, elaborating on why it’s a big deal — is the straw that breaks the (belligerent, 51-year-old) camel’s back. The day starts with the discovery of a note expressing gratitude for the “very youness of you” next to the kettle, an act that is simply too ghastly to contemplate before the day’s protective caffeine shell has been established.

Worse, so nauseatingly into this project is Terence that he has got ahead of himself and started incorporating Thursday’s behaviours (give compliments) and Saturday’s (the non-sexual mini-touch) into his repertoire. Translation: a day spent with him insisting that I am a “very special lady” while attempting foot frottage with his gnarled extremities. There are few things that repulse me more than a man playing footsie, not least a man whose toenails could be classed as offensive weapons. The dog howls, whipped into a green-eyed frenzy. I feel utterly claustrophobic, stalked in my own home by a life partner turned dodgy uncle.

Unable to take any more, I flash forward to Friday and “ask for what I need”, since, “We all have valid desires. But we don’t say them. We drop hints. We suggest. We hope our partners will ‘just know’.” “Terence,” I announce, “I need us to stop doing this anti-divorce course. It is destroying me, and thus, us.” We do, however, set up a “date fortress” (Sunday’s task), which Terence takes to be some sort of boy’s own adventure-style den and I understand to be a hot date with a Michelin star.

In fact, it’s just more bloody talking, yet another “investment” in our mutual future: a future looking less likely by the second. I plead for us to have sex instead — silently, without eye contact or gratitude regarding the other’s performance. Have we grown? Terence has grown significantly creepier. Are we still together? Just.

The Seven-Day Love Prescription

Day one: Make contact
Turn towards, not away from each other. The more turning towards there is in a relationship, the better couples are at managing their conflicts.

Day two: Ask a big question
Desires and life goals shift. Ask what your partner’s life dreams are — and see what they say.

Day three: Say thank you
When we observe our partners we have the tendency to notice the negative instead of the positive. Say thank you, little and often.

Day four: Give a real compliment
Admiration is about fundamentally valuing who your partner is, not necessarily what they do.

Day five: Ask for what you need
Suppressed needs can flare up into resentments and arguments. It’s OK to say what you want. In fact, it’s essential.

Day six: Reach out and touch
Touch is a powerful drug, it releases oxytocin, the hormone that helps with bonding and connection.

Day seven: Declare a date night
We can find ourselves sitting in the same room with the person we married or committed to, the person we love, and feel very alone. So many couples today have become “devitalised”. And it’s not just sex — it’s everything. We’ve been drained of that electric urge to be close to one another. Date night isn’t about where you go. It’s about the two of you, in a “date fortress”. No distractions.

The Seven-Day Love Prescription by Dr John Gottman and Dr Julie Gottman is published on October 27 by Penguin Life at £9.99