The Noble Art of Poop Detection: How John Gottman's Oddest Idea Might Be His Most Important

In the grand architecture of marriage research, John Gottman has given us more useful tools than perhaps any other scientist: the Four Horsemen of Divorce, the Magic Ratio, Emotional Bids.

But tucked among these masterpieces, half-hidden behind his sheepish smile, is one of his most profound insights: poop detection.

It sounds decidedly unserious.

But inside the Gottman Method, poop detection isn’t a joke — it’s a relationship survival skill, a first-line intervention against the slow death of intimacy that claims so many partnerships.

It is not the fireworks of romance that keep marriages alive.
It is the small, nearly invisible art of noticing when something smells wrong before the whole house suffused with a foul odor.