The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
A Six-Week Gottman Couples Workshop
Details:
October 18–November 22, 2026
Sundays, 10:00–11:15 a.m.
Northampton, Massachusetts
Limited to 6 couples
Led by Mabel Vautravers, MSW, LSW, Gottman Seven Principles Leader | Advanced Training in the Gottman Method through Level III
Build the kind of relationship you want to keep growing.
What helps couples stay connected over the long haul?
Drawing on decades of research by Drs. John and Julie Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work gives couples a practical framework for building friendship, working through conflict, and deepening their sense of shared meaning.
Over six Sunday mornings at the Northampton Center for Couples Therapy in Northampton, Massachusetts, Mabel will guide a small group of couples from Northampton and communities throughout the Pioneer Valley and Western Massachusetts through the Gottman Seven Principles program.
You’ll learn the patterns that shape relationships, practice skills with your partner, and find ways to apply what you’re learning in everyday life.
What You’ll Explore
The Seven Principles program focuses on three central aspects of lasting relationships: friendship, conflict management, and shared meaning.
Enhance Your Love Maps – Learn more about your partner’s inner world—their experiences, perspectives, interests, hopes, and changing priorities.
Nurture Fondness and Admiration – Practice noticing and expressing the qualities you appreciate in one another to help keep appreciation and affection active in your relationship.
Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away – Learn to recognize and respond to the everyday bids for attention, connection, and support that shape a couple’s relationship over time.
Let Your Partner Influence You – Explore what it means to take your partner’s perspective seriously and make room for their influence in decisions and disagreements.
Solve Your Solvable Problems – Learn ways to approach problems that can be worked through, while recognizing the difference between solvable disagreements and deeper recurring patterns.
Overcome Gridlock – Explore the deeper hopes, values, and meanings that can keep couples stuck in recurring conflict—and develop greater understanding around them.
Create Shared Meaning – Consider the rituals, traditions, roles, goals, and values that give a relationship a sense of purpose and identity.
What You’ll Do Each Week
Each session combines teaching, hands-on practice, and group discussion.
Learn – Mabel introduces the week’s material and teaches relevant Gottman principles and skills.
Practice – You’ll work with your partner to practice a skill together and explore how it applies to your own relationship.
Share and Discuss – The group comes back together to share experiences and take part in discussion, creating opportunities to learn from the material and from other couples.
Between sessions, couples will be encouraged to practice the skills together. There is no required homework.
What You’ll Take With You
This workshop is designed to be more than information about relationships. You’ll practice the skills together, reflect on your own relationship, and try out what you’re learning in real time.
Through hands-on exercises, you’ll practice new ways of listening, understanding, and working through disagreement together. You’ll also have opportunities to share your experiences and learn from other couples in the group.
Between sessions, you’ll be encouraged to keep practicing the skills together, so you can begin to make them part of your everyday relationship.
Who Is This Workshop For?
This workshop is for couples at any stage of their relationship who want to better understand their patterns, strengthen their friendship, and develop practical skills for communicating and working through conflict.
You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit. The workshop can be useful whether you’re generally doing well and want to keep growing together, finding yourselves caught in recurring disagreements, navigating a major transition, or simply wanting a better understanding of how relationships work.
The workshop is designed to be useful for couples with a wide range of relationship concerns and experiences. You don’t need to have a particular problem or be at a particular stage of your relationship to participate.
You just need to be willing to learn, reflect, and practice together.
A Small Group of Six Couples
With only six couples participating, this is a small-group learning experience rather than a large lecture or webinar.
You’ll learn alongside other couples while having space to reflect, practice the material with your partner, and participate in group discussion.
The focus is on learning and practicing the principles together.
Meet Mabel Vautravers, MSW, LCSW, Gottman Seven Principles Leader, advanced training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy through Level III
“The work of relationshinip is some of the hardest, sweetest, most treacherous, and most rewarding work we will ever do. Humans need connection as much as we need food and water—which is why it can be so painful when our relationships are in jeopardy. Few of us have the tools necessary to mend a relationship when it begins to buckle under life’s pressures. Using the Gottman Method’s research-backed approach as the foundation of our work, we’ll discover how to help you and the people you love find your way back to one another.”
Mabel is deeply passionate about relationship therapy, which they view as their life’s calling. In working with them, you will find not only their natural warmth, humor, and curiosity, but also their deep investment in their clients’ healing. Mabel is a Gottman Seven Principles Leader with advanced training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy through Level III.
They blend behavioral, humanistic, and psychodynamic approaches to therapy, offering guidance that is both practical and deeply reflective. Mabel is especially interested in helping couples understand the deeper emotional patterns, protective strategies, and stories that shape the way they relate to one another.
Mabel provides in-person couples therapy at NCCT and online couples therapy throughout Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as working with international couples. They also provide private intensive couples therapy retreats at NCCT.
Why the Gottman Seven Principles?
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is based on decades of research by Drs. John and Julie Gottman into the patterns that distinguish relationships that thrive from those that struggle.
The program gives couples a framework for understanding friendship, conflict, communication, and shared meaning—and practical opportunities to put those ideas into practice together.
Rather than simply talking about relationships, you’ll learn a concept and then have the opportunity to practice it with your partner.
Choose Your Rate
We offer three participation rates so that more couples can take part in the workshop.
$525 – Reduced Rate
A limited number of reduced-rate spaces are reserved for couples for whom the standard rate would create a financial barrier.
Please choose this rate if you have a genuine financial need.
$625 – Standard Rate
Our standard participation rate, reflecting the full cost of offering the six-week workshop.
$750 – Sustaining Rate
For couples who are able and willing to contribute more. Choosing the sustaining rate helps us maintain a limited number of reduced-rate spaces and make the workshop accessible to couples with greater financial constraints.
Every couple receives the same workshop, materials, and experience regardless of the rate selected.
Please choose the rate that reflects your circumstances and what you are comfortably able to contribute.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Seven Principles workshop?
Is this couples therapy?
Mabel will teach the Gottman Seven Principles, guide couples through exercises and discussion, and help participants practice the skills together. The workshop is designed for learning and skill-building rather than individualized couples treatment.
Do we need to be married to participate?
How many couples will participate?
What happens during each session?
The format gives you a chance to learn the concepts, practice them with your partner, and hear how other couples experience the material.
Is there homework between sessions?
Is this workshop appropriate if we're dealing with relationship problems?
The workshop is designed to be useful for couples with a wide range of relationship concerns and experiences. You don’t need to be in crisis—or have a particular problem—to participate.
If you’re unsure whether a workshop or couples therapy is the better fit for your relationship right now, contact us, and we can help you determine which option makes the most sense.
Where is the workshop held?
Six Sunday Mornings. Six Couples. One Framework for Understanding Your Relationship.
Over six weeks, you’ll learn the Gottman Seven Principles, practice them with your partner, and have the opportunity to learn alongside a small group of other couples.
Workshop Details
Dates: October 18–November 22, 2026
Day: Sundays
Time: 10:00–11:15 a.m.
Length: Six weeks
Format: In person
Location: Northampton Center for Couples Therapy, Northampton, Massachusetts
Group Size: Maximum of 6 couples
Leader: Mabel Vautravers, MSW, LCSW
Program: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Participation Rates: $525, $625, or $750 per couple
If you’d like to ask a question before registering, please contact mabel@northamptoncouplestherapy.com