{"id":17397,"date":"2025-06-17T13:15:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T21:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=17397"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:20:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:20:05","slug":"7-books-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/17\/7-books-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Books (and 1 Paper) on How to Have Better Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m wrapping up the ninth month of my year long Foundations<\/a> project. This month\u2019s focus was connection<\/a>\u2014improving the closest relationships in your life. As part of my efforts this month, I read seven books, including one textbook, on the topic.<\/p>\n

For those interested, here are my previous reading lists about fitness<\/a>, productivity<\/a>, money<\/a>, food<\/a>, reading<\/a>, outreach<\/a>, sleep<\/a> and reflection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 1-Minute Summary of What I Learned<\/h2>\n

Relationships matter a lot. Not only are relationships one of the best predictors of happiness and well-being (married people are consistently much happier on average than single people), but they matter for your health. Bad relationships are associated with poorer health outcomes, and social isolation is about as bad for you as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day.<\/p>\n

How do you have good relationships?<\/p>\n

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  1. It helps to have good genes<\/strong>. Personality is associated with good relationships. People high in agreeableness, low in neuroticism and high in conscientiousness fare better. And, of course, personality is at least moderately heritable.<\/li>\n
  2. Keep it positive<\/strong>. Marriages succeed when the ratio of positivity to negativity is at least 5:1.<\/li>\n
  3. Keep your temper in check.<\/strong> It\u2019s a myth that you need to \u201clet out steam.\u201d Expressing anger tends to make you more angry. Collecting yourself before you engage is better than responding out of anger.<\/li>\n
  4. But avoiding conflict isn\u2019t great either<\/strong>. All relationships have conflicts, but it seems like how those conflicts are managed matters more than the conflicts themselves.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Notes on the 7 Books I Read<\/h2>\n

    1. You\u2019re Not Listening<\/a> by Kate Murphy<\/h3>\n
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    Our culture has a speaking bias. We give awards to the best speakers, those with the quickest wit and most incisive arguments. Listening, in contrast, is almost completely absent from our efforts at improving communication.<\/p>\n

    Murphy makes the case that this is woefully misguided. We need to listen more, and better. But what\u2019s needed isn\u2019t a special skill or technique\u2014we already know how<\/em> to listen. Instead, we need to find the motivation to truly understand what people are saying instead of merely trying to project our own thoughts and motivations.<\/p>\n

    2. Reclaiming Conversation<\/a> by Sherry Turkle<\/h3>\n
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    Turkle indicts our modern technological environment for undermining our ability to communicate authentically. \u2028\u2028Young people feel unable to talk on the phone, anxious about the improvisational nature of conversations that don\u2019t occur over text. Families claim that the dinner table is a \u201cno phone zone,\u201d but the parents pull out their devices at the first empty moment. AI chatbots replace real friends with sycophantic simulacra instead.<\/p>\n

    Twenty years ago, when I started writing online, it was easy to be optimistic about technology\u2019s role in enhancing communication. Today, it\u2019s hard not to be a pessimist. It turns out that while technology has enabled some new virtues (video calls are a genuine improvement for long-distance friends and family), it has mostly exacerbated our vices.<\/p>\n

    3. Why Marriages Succeed or Fail<\/a> by John Gottman<\/h3>\n
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    Everyone claims to know the secret to a successful marriage, but few have data. Gottman does.<\/p>\n

    Gottman has studied couples for decades, taking them into a laboratory setting to rehash a recent conflict, while capturing the details of their interactions. He finds that there are three \u201cstable\u201d styles of relationship conflicts: validators (who compromise and discuss), passionate (who fight strong but make up stronger) and avoiders (who are happier to let sleeping dogs lie).<\/p>\n

    His research finds that the key variable for marriage longevity is the ratio of positivity to negativity. Couples whose positive-to-negative ratio is at least 5:1 are most likely to stay married. His team has an impressive track-record of predicting marital success as well, with a 94% success rate in anticipating future divorces.<\/p>\n

    In addition to maintaining positivity, avoid the four horsemen of relationship malcontent: criticism (which attacks the person, instead of the situation), defensiveness, contempt (name-calling and verbal attacks meant to hurt), and stonewalling.<\/p>\n

    4. Intimate Relationships<\/a> by Rowland Miller<\/h3>\n
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    This was my textbook for the month. The data on relationships were wide-ranging and often counter-intuitive. For instance:<\/p>\n