What is the Same Moon about and why did you write it?

At its most basic, The Same Moon is a journey toward redemption. While learning a new language and culture in Japan, I learn to accept my own fallibility and to forgive myself for it.

I wrote it to share this story, which I hope brings comfort to others who have struggled, and also to offer a glimpse into the culture of small-town Japan. (The town I lived in had fewer than 7,500 people scattered among several villages.)

The nutshell of the story is this: After marrying young and quickly divorcing at age twenty-four, I ran away from the disappointments and embarrassment of my Minnesota life to teach English in Japan. I had spent a magical summer there as a high school exchange student, and the Japan of my memories had become my “happy place.”

My plan was to spend a quiet year reflecting, healing and figuring out what to do with my wrecked life while enjoying the culture of Japan.

Instead, I was drawn into serving tea to my male coworkers, performing with the local koto (zither) group, advocating for my female students and colleagues, and embarking on a controversial romance with a local salaryman.

It wasn’t the Japan I was seeking, but it turned out to be the Japan I needed.

I wrote pieces of the story when I was living in Japan in 1994-96, and they became the project I needed to complete a master’s in mass communication/print journalism that I had left unfinished. My adviser suggested I turn them into a book, but then life happened, as it does.

About five years later, I entered a master of fine arts program in creative writing/nonfiction. Again I needed a topic. This time I went back in time and focused on the summer I had spent as an exchange student—and juxtaposed the development of my cultural understanding with the evolution of the Japanese art of woodblock printing.

After finishing my MFA, I continued growing my thesis for a few years before realizing it wasn’t the story I really wanted to tell. Although ukiyo-e gets some cameos in The Same Moon, it is now only a small piece of the whole book.

What sort of cross-cultural challenges did you face in Japan?

When I was teaching English in Japan in the mid 1990s, my biggest cross-cultural struggle had to do with the way women were treated. It pained me to see my colleagues cast in what I regarded as subservient roles, simply because they were women. (In our conversations, they shared that they saw things differently—different roles for different people.)

The activity that made me craziest—probably because of its regularity—was tea serving. In one of my offices, the women set aside their work to serve tea at least four times a day. The men would either keep working or would take a break. Although no one ever asked me to help, I believed that to fit in as a woman I needed to assist … although my tea service contained touches of rebellion, which I describe in The Same Moon.

From my experience, I found that breaking up my day in this way was a distraction. I was less productive for being interrupted just when I got into a project. I couldn’t help but think this adversely impacted my female colleagues’ work as well.

More than that, though, because I was working with young people—primarily with junior high school students—I became concerned that my female students would feel limited in what they could do with their lives. Their names were put at the bottom of class lists, they walked last through the graduation ceremony … and of course they observed their female role models serving tea all the time.

The heart of the challenge for me became, how can I be respectful of the culture that is hosting me while being true to my own beliefs and encouraging others around me?

How did you find a new purpose for your life?

Once I got my feet on the ground and was able to look past my own frustrations with tea serving and other cross-cultural challenges, I really began to consider the future of my female students and my colleagues. Having recently been through a divorce and having experienced feelings of powerlessness, I began seeking ways to help the women and girls around me feel empowered to make their own choices.

When I created lesson plans and sample sentences, I made sure the female characters were working high-powered jobs or having exciting adventures.

When I taught, I called on the girls more than the boys.

When girls reacted with shyness—characteristic of that age and in that culture—I waited the extra time it would take them to overcome their shyness or embarrassment and answer the question.

When I was getting ready to leave Japan, and many local groups invited me to speak, I took the opportunity to create a platform. I wrote a standard speech about what I had observed and experienced, addressing my concerns that my female colleagues and students were being held back. I also shared my dream that they would feel empowered to choose whatever future they were called to, regardless of gender.

This issue gave me the opportunity to look beyond myself and plant seeds to encourage change, if not for my generation, for the next generation.

What effect has divorce had on your relationships and perspective in life?

Divorce is a very complicated experience.

It would be easy to say, “I wouldn’t wish divorce on anyone.” But I am thankful for mine, because in my marriage, I couldn’t see a way forward. We simply didn’t fit. The phrase “unequally yoked” echoed through my mind at the time, and in some ways it summed up our situation. We were like two oxen pulling in different directions. He had his, I had mine, and neither of us felt called to follow the other. We couldn’t make forward progress.

Going through the experience of divorce taught me lessons I might not have learned any other way. Most importantly, it brought me the gift of compassion. Growing up, I was the kid who did things right. Life came pretty easily to me overall—I had a good group of friends, I followed the rules, mostly, and I found success: piano performance, writing and academic awards, study abroad opportunities, scholarships, leadership roles and so on.

Then, just a year out of college, I found myself in a situation that didn’t fit. I felt as if I’d lost my life. Although it had begun with great excitement and fun, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the relationship work in the long-term.

It was my wakeup call. I had seen personal disasters happen to other people on many occasions and had thought, “How did she get into that situation?” Or “How did he not see that coming?”

Now I knew. Sometimes we simply can’t see past our headlights. And all of a sudden we’re on some back road, buried up to our axles in mud.

So there I was, the young woman who had always done things “right,” who now had failed—in my mind—in a spectacular way. After saying vows to stay with this man forever, and saying them in front of God and everyone—scores of family and friends, many of whom had traveled far to witness this event—I came to the realization that I needed to break them. I believed it was what I needed to do to live the life God had set before me.

It was one of the most humbling moments of my life. And one of the most illuminating. It opened me up to better love those who make mistakes and to forgive those who have hurt me.

I have never been the same since, and for that I am thankful.

Do you have any examples of Serendipity or Divine Providence in your journey?

My sense is that God is popping into our lives all the time, whether he is turning our gaze in a new direction or sending an angel to speak to us. I think often we’re just too distracted to notice.

I describe one example in The Same Moon:

We were in the midst of our marital discord when I visited the university student health service. As often happens to me when things get stressful in my life, I start believing things are going wrong with my body. This time, I was worried I was getting skin cancer.

Although it’s been more than a quarter century, I can still picture the lovely red-haired nurse who arrived in my exam room. In the course of examining my moles, she said everything I needed to hear, speaking with calm authority:

“You need to keep your focus, because no one is going to live your life but you. People will always want to take pieces of you, but you must maintain your priorities and be true to who you need to be. Don’t worry whether everyone understands what you need to do, as long as you know why you are doing it.”

I listened, rapt. Who was this woman?

At the end of the appointment, she opened the door to leave the exam room but, before exiting, stopped and turned back to face me. “You are making excellent progress,” she said, and then closed the door.

Alone in the silent room, I knew I had received an important message—advice and encouragement. I had a sense I had been in the presence of an angel.

Another example took place when I was beginning to send The Same Moon manuscript to agents and publishers. I had applied for a job teaching college English in Minnesota—it was my dream job, the one I had imagined since I was a young child. On my flight from Portland, Oregon, I was in the middle seat, and I noticed the passenger beside the window had pulled a thick manuscript out of his bag.

“Are you a writer?” I asked him, thinking we’d talk shop.

“No,” he said, “I’m an editor at a publishing house. Are you a writer?”

I was stunned. What would I learn from this man?

He introduced himself as David Kopp, and in our conversation I learned that he was in charge of Crown Publishing, the Christian imprint of Penguin Random House. He invited me to send my manuscript his way—a dream come true! He also sent me a few of the books his publishing house had recently released.

I could see that my manuscript was a different genre—very little of my faith was included in that earlier version of The Same Moon—and, not surprisingly, he wrote back wishing me luck, explaining that my book was not a fit for his imprint.

But the conversation was an “aha!” moment for me. I couldn’t stop wondering why I had left my faith out of my story. As a result of that conversation, I realized it was a mistake. I had focused too much on making my book palatable for a secular audience and, in the process, had denied part of my story and, in fact, a very important part of my identity. I went back and wove the thread of my faith into the story.

I didn’t get the dream job, but in retrospect it seems the reason for that journey was to meet someone who would help me become a more genuine writer, a more fully integrated human.

You have become famous for your ability to predict with 90 percent accuracy if a couple will get a divorce. How is that possible?

Dr. John Gottman: We have systematically observed thousands of couples having conflict and other conversations with one another, with synchronized physiology, and then followed these same couples for as long as 20 years.  We have interviewed couples about their relationship history and philosophy. Our ability to predict has emerged from the extensive data we have collected over the past 46 years of careful research.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: Over the last 46 years we have observed over 3,000 heterosexual, gay, and lesbian couples as they discussed a conflict and the events of their day by videotaping them, measuring their physiology, and also interviewing them. Then we’ve repeated these procedures every one to three years, some for over 20 years, while tracking who divorced, who stayed together unhappily and who remained happily married. By analyzing the mountains of data we collected, second by second, we were able to identify specific relationship factors that could predict the future of their relationships.  Eventually we found that based on one lab visit, we could predict a couple’s relationship quality six years down the road with over 90 percent accuracy.

What is the most important thing a couple can do to have a happy, healthy marriage?

Dr. John Gottman:The single most important thing a couple can do to have a happy, healthy relationship is to “attune” to their partner’s emotions when the partner is upset. Attunement requires non-defensive listening and understanding.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: To have a happy healthy relationship, each person needs to non-defensively and compassionately LISTEN to their partner and try their best to empathize with them. We call this special skill “attunement.” Nothing beats empathy.

Why is communication so vital in a relationship?

Dr. John Gottman: With effective communication, a couple builds trust. Trust occurs when both partners are looking out for–and care about the interests–of each other, when they have one another’s back.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: We human beings are pack animals. We survive best when we work together to satisfy each other’s needs. Over millennia we have developed powerful ways of communicating with each other through language, touch, and non-verbal behavior. Communication using these methods allows us to express our needs and to respond to others’ needs. We are also storytellers.  Communicating our life experiences with our partners allows us to share our triumphs, strivings, values, and deeper meanings as we move through time together.

Is it important for a couple to have similar beliefs, upbringing and values for a relationship to be successful?

Dr. John Gottman: No. In selecting a lifelong partner, we aren’t searching for our clone. We’re looking for someone very different from us, but very interesting and engaging.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: No, that’s one of the great myths out there about what creates successful relationships. If we paired up with our clone, we’d rapidly get bored. Genetics and other research have shown that we pair up best with someone different from us.

What is the most interesting thing you have discovered through your work–and how did it lead you to write Eight Dates?

Dr. John Gottman: Research has demonstrated that dating websites are all based on the wrong matching algorithms. Furthermore, these websites pair people and then they’re done. Conversations on early dates tend to be very tense, polite, and superficial. We wanted to guide people to have dates that would help them get to very deep levels with one another. Then they can decide–based on these meaningful conversations–whether to move forward or not. We also discovered that these dates are powerful for existing relationships, probably because in many relationships people don’t really know how to go deep with one another to explore important areas of love.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: The most interesting thing we found in our research was that the big predictors of relationship success are very different than those used to match up partners on dating sites. We had already written about how to have successful relationships, but we still hadn’t addressed how to find the right mate in the first place. That’s what this book is all about. Finding the right partner for a potential lasting romance is about being able to communicate well and understand one another when discussing the big issues, e.g., how we like to handle money, sex, fun, adventure, conflicts and so on.  We’ve found that very few couples have these “big” conversations early on. And if they do, perhaps they can be helped to make better romantic choices. We’ve also seen lots of couples who don’t ever have these conversations, even after years together. These conversations can help spark and deepen their intimacy, too.

What is the Love Lab, and how did you come up with the idea to create it?

Dr. John Gottman: The Gottman Love Lab is set up to collect synchronized video, emotional, and physiological data from a couple. These data are subjected to sophisticated mathematical analyses that allow us to pinpoint a couple’s strengths and challenges. Based on 46 years and thousands of couples, we can now help couples effectively strengthen their relationships.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: John and his colleague Robert Levenson wanted to understand what predicts whether a relationship will succeed or fail. By studying observational methods, physiology, and mathematics, plus creating and testing questionnaires which took decades, they established the workings of the Love Lab. Now, the Love Lab is a place where a couple comes to have their relationship assessed either for a research study or for their own personal knowledge and help.

If you could give one piece of advice for all couples, what would it be?

Dr. John Gottman: We now understand how to help people get the love they need. It’s no longer a mystery.  We can help a couple find peace, intimacy, and joy in their love relationship. There are social skills that can make all the difference, and aren’t very hard to learn, so have hope.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: Listen, listen, and listen. Be sure you understand what your partner is saying and meaning before responding, and when you respond, try to do so with kindness. Treat your partner like they are someone you love.

What prompted you to write Eight Dates?

Dr. John Gottman: We were addressing an unmet need. On dates, people don’t seem to know what to talk about to deepen the conversation and explore important areas of growth in the relationship. We felt that a directed date might be the answer. So we tested various directed dates and discovered eight dates that actually were quite powerful for couples.

Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman: We’ve seen individuals struggling to find the right mate for years. These days, with internet fostered hookups and matchmaking sites, partners may meet for a date or two, or maybe just 10 minutes.  They end up leaving and feeling alone, sometimes even despairing that they’ll ever find THE ONE.

We believe that the problem lies in partners not knowing what to look for in a potential lifelong mate. Are they attractive? Smart? Sensitive? Maybe. But can you talk with them about deeper issues? Maybe yes, maybe no. That’s what prompted us to write this book. This book guides both new partners and old to have those conversations, with clear questions to discuss and even suggestions for fun and comfortable settings in which to talk. After going on these dates, partners will have a much better portrait of whether this person is right for them. In addition, for stale relationships that have been ongoing for years, these dates can reinvigorate and reignite connection, love and passion.

 Can Eight Datesbe used by couples in long-term relationships?

Dr. John Gottman: These dates are simply magical. Empirically tested on 300 couples (same-sex and heterosexual), they are effective for new relationships and for renewing intimacy in existing relationships. New couples on dates often resort to tense, polite, and superficial chats. During those kinds of dates it’s impossible to tell whether this person is THE ONE, or whether the relationship is doomed. These eight dates help new couples go very deep with one another so they can know whether this relationship has potential–or not. For long-term couples, these dates also have the amazing power to renew understanding, empathy, and emotional intimacy.

*******

This interview is credited to Drs Johns & Julie Gottman, authors of Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love / Workman Publishing (c)  2019.