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Julie and John Gottman are among the OGs of marriage therapy and research. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, one of John’s early works, is among the bestselling marriage books of all time. And the Gottman Institute, which houses the research facility known as “The Love Lab,” is considered the gold standard for relationship research. The Gottmans, who have been married to each other since 1987 (he’s 81 and she’s 72), have a new book, Fight Right, about how couples can learn to disagree lovingly. TIME asked them to comment on some of the most common pieces of marriage advice. They didn’t hold back.

If you fight with your partner, you’re not meant for each other.

Julie Gottman: That is pure, unadulterated myth. For one thing, people have different personalities and different lifestyle preferences, so when they live together, those are going to manifest. What we have found from our research about really successful couples is that they fight frequently. What they tend to do is go much deeper underneath the surface of a fight, asking questions of one another that are meaningful, that get down to core issues, perhaps background history that’s gotten triggered in some way or if it conflicts with what we call an “ideal dream,” the values that are most important to you and how you want to live those values and live those passions. When people slow down to ask questions of one another, they end up with greater connection and greater compassion from understanding their partner better.

Every marital argument has a solution; you just have to find it.

John Gottman: Well, that’s a myth, because 69% of all conflicts are not resolvable; they come from those personality differences. People tend to argue about the same issues over and over, and those issues don’t have a solution. But the master couples find a way to accommodate those differences in personality—even to laugh about them—but find temporary solutions to the differences. It’s not so much a matter of resolving the issue as learning to understand the differences and accept those differences, and maybe even be enriched by them in a relationship.

In every fight, one person is right, and one person is wrong.

Julie: That’s the way people sabotage connection during a fight—by fighting to win, as opposed to fighting to understand. The purpose of a fight is to understand that person’s perspective and where it comes from, to give it some empathy, validate it, understand it better, and then move towards a solution. If you turn it into a contest or a competition, then one person wins, and the other person feels resentment, feels upset, feels angry because they lost; it doesn’t feel like a connection.

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