Why John Gottman Threw Maslow Out the Window (And What It Reveals About Love)

Wednesday, April 29, 2026.

There is a story John Gottman once told me that I have never forgotten.

He was riding a New York subway reading Abraham Maslow, growing increasingly irritated, until — in a burst of exasperation — he threw the book out the train window.

“The only book I ever threw out a window,” he told me.

Now, one should always be suspicious of stories that arrive already shaped like parables.

Still, this one has the smell of truth.

Because it captures something larger than an anecdote.

It captures a quarrel.

Not just between two psychologists, but between two ways of imagining what saves a human life.

Maslow thought people rise.

Gottman thought people repair.

That is almost a theological beef.

And if I had to compress their disagreement into one sentence, it would be this:

Marriages rarely fail from insufficient self-actualization; they fail from repeated failures of ordinary mercy.

That was, in essence, what Gottman was throwing out the window.

Or thought he was.

The Psychology of Tuesday Night

Maslow gave us the great upward staircase — needs unfolding toward meaning, creativity, transcendence.

Wonderful.

Also, one suspects, not much help when your spouse says in a flat tone, “You never listen to me,” and your pulse jumps to 108.

This is where Gottman became subversive.

He shifted the center of gravity in psychology.

Away from heroic inner growth.

Toward ordinary relational discipline.

Repair.

Softened startups.

Turning toward bids.

Limiting contempt.

The future of many marriages, he was suggesting, may be decided less by depth psychology than by tone of voice.

That sounds almost insulting in its modesty.

It is also probably true.

Because much of adult love turns out to be governed by astonishingly small things.

A shrug.

A sneer.

A pause before defensiveness.

Civilization, one begins to suspect, may rest on whether somebody says, “You may have a point.”

Which is a very unglamorous revelation.

And therefore probably a profound one.

Maslow’s Beautiful Miscalculation

Maslow often implied flourishing individuals create flourishing relationships.

Gottman often implied flourishing relationships help create flourishing individuals.

Different causal arrows.

Different anthropology.

And not a trivial difference.

If secure attachment organizes emotional resilience — as later argued by John Bowlby and Sue Johnson — then love may not merely accompany development.

It may help generate it.

Love first.

Growth second.

That turns the pyramid upside down.

And perhaps that was what irritated Gottman on the subway.

Not Maslow’s grandeur.

His sequencing.

Hence, out the window!

What Both Men May Have Missed: Virtue

But there is a third voice lurking here, older than either.

Aristotle.

Because perhaps the deepest issue is neither needs nor technique.

But character.

Patience.

Generosity.

Restraint.

Admiration.

These are not simply relationship skills.

Nor merely psychological needs.

They are virtues.

And virtue has a way of disappearing when marriage gets reduced either to self-development or conflict management.

One can have all the repair skills in the world and still be mean.

One can speak grandly of transcendence and still be selfish.

Aristotle would have regarded both problems as failures of character.

And he may have been right.

What if enduring love is not principally built from actualization or technique, but from practiced goodness?

That possibility enlarges the whole debate.

Gottman’s Distrust of Growth Talk

I have long suspected Gottman also distrusted what self-actualization became in American hands.

Which was often not wisdom.

But self-absorption with better vocabulary.

A surprising number of divorces have been justified in the name of personal growth, often while accompanied by artisan bread.

He had seen too much righteous individualism.

Too much “finding myself” conducted at someone else’s expense.

So he moved attention toward maintenance.

And here he did something almost morally radical.

He made maintenance sound noble.

Not drudgery.

Care.

He made ordinary mercy into a science.

Which is no small accomplishment.

Where Maslow Still Wins

And yet —

I would not let Gottman have the last word.

Because procedure can become thin.

Marriage is not customer service.

Validate.

Repair.

Repeat.

That can become sterile after a fashion. Life partners also want awe.

Shared ideals.

Erotic aliveness.

Meaning.

They want enlargement in the presence of another.

Maslow understood this.

And interestingly, so did Gottman, despite himself.

His later emphasis on shared meaning — rituals, symbols, purpose — edges toward what Maslow later called self-transcendence.

And what scholars like Annette Mahoney have explored through sanctification research: the way couples sometimes experience the bond itself as carrying sacred significance.

That matters.

Because marriages do not live by conflict management alone.

They live partly by reverence.

An unfashionable word.

I am keeping it.

A Note About Neurodiverse Love

One place where both frameworks can flatten reality is mixed-neurotype relationships.

Here missed bids are not always indifference.

Sometimes they are translation failures.

A sensory threshold.

A processing lag.

A mismatch in signaling.

And if one treats these only behaviorally, one can confuse difference with disregard.

That can be tragic.

Because admiration often dies not from cruelty, but misinterpretation.

And that is a different wound.

One requiring tenderness more than technique.

So Did Gottman Throw Maslow Out the Window?

Yes. More than rhetorically.

But the deeper irony is this:

He spent much of his life quietly smuggling Maslow back onboard.

Through shared meaning.

Through transcendence.

Through everything in his work that exceeds technique.

Which is why the feud is somewhat overstated.

They were arguing less about whether humans need meaning than about whether meaning survives contempt.

A fair question.

And maybe the synthesis is simple:

• Maslow tells us why human beings reach.

• Gottman tells us why they endure.

• Aristotle reminds us both may depend on virtue.

That is quite a trio.

And if one has ever been married, one may suspect all three belong in the same carriage.

Even on the subway.

FAQ

Did Gottman really throw Maslow’s book out a subway window?
He recounted it as anecdote. Whether literal or slightly mythologized, it captures a real intellectual revolt.

Did Gottman reject self-actualization?
No. He challenged whether personal growth alone predicts durable love.

Was Gottman anti-romantic?
Surprisingly, no. His work protects romance by protecting the conditions under which tenderness survives.

How is this different from attachment theory?
Attachment theorists often go further, arguing secure bonds are developmental necessities, not merely relationship enhancers.

Can self-actualization damage a marriage?
Distorted into self-justification, yes.

What may both Maslow and Gottman underemphasize?
Virtue — character traits like humility, generosity, and restraint.

Final Thoughts

We often imagine mature love depends on finding the right person.

Gottman spent a career suggesting it may depend just as much on becoming the kind of person who can repair.

That is less romantic.

And perhaps wiser.

But I confess I love the image of Maslow sailing out a subway window.

Because perhaps Gottman threw him out only to spend a lifetime quietly inviting him back.

And that may be how good intellectual quarrels end —

not with victory, but with deeper companionship.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.

Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. Simon & Schuster.

Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (2000). The timing of divorce: Predicting when a couple will divorce over a 14-year period. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(3), 737–745.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown.

Johnson, S. M. (2004). The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. Brunner-Routledge.

Mahoney, A. (2010). Religion in families, 1999–2009: A relational spirituality framework. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(4), 805–827.

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.

Maslow, A. H. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Viking.

Wahba, M. A., & Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow reconsidered. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15(2), 212–240.