Book excerpt: From the country’s foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life—with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work. Gottman provides the tools you need to make your relationships thrive. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman: - Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls “emotional connection” - Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional “bid,” the fundamental unit of emotional connection - Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others’ bids - And more! Packed with fascinating questionnaires and exercises developed in his therapy, The Relationship Cure offers a simple but profound program that will fundamentally transform the quality of all of the relationships in your life.