Ways to Help Your Marriage Succeed
Most married couples walk down the aisle full of optimism and hope. They know conflicts and problems will arise, but they’re certain they’ll be able to keep their relationships healthy and on track.
John Gottman discovered something that can help. A psychologist at the University of Washington, Gottman has identified four common patterns of interaction that tend to get couples into trouble. If you learn to pinpoint and control these patterns, you can greatly improve your chances of having a happy relationship.
The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse
Gottman calls these interactions The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. In order of least to most dangerous, they are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Each of them paves the way for the one that follows.
Criticism
Criticism actually starts with complaining; it can be difficult to tell them apart. A complaint is a negative comment about something that we wish was otherwise. Complaining can be a healthy thing in a marriage. After all, it’s usually better to express anger and disagreement than to keep it bottled up.
But if your complaints go unheeded (or you don’t clearly express them) and you spouse just keeps repeating the offending behavior, your frustration may pick up steam. You begin blaming your partner, making personal attacks and accusations, and being critical of his or her personality, rather than of a specific deed. This is criticism. If it becomes habitual, criticism can put a relationship into a downward spiral.
Complaints usually begin with the words I or we. “We don’t go out as much as we used to,” is a complaint. Criticisms tend to be general, global statements that begin with “you never” or “you always”, as in “You never take me out anymore.”
Contempt
The thing that separates contempt from criticism is the intention to insult and psychologically abuse your partner. Contempt is fueled by negative thoughts about your partner. He or she is stupid, disgusting, incompetent, a fool. That message gets across along with the criticism. While you are upset, you forget your partner’s good qualities and why you even fell in love in the first place.
Recognizing contempt is fairly easy. Among its most common forms are insults, name-calling, hostile, snide humor, mockery, subtle putdowns, and dismissive body language.
Defensiveness
When one partner acts contemptuously, the other, feeling attacked, often responds defensively. Now both feel victimized and neither is willing to take responsibility for setting things right. In effect, both plead innocent.
These are some of John Gottman’s examples of defensive interactions.
Denying responsibility:
YOU: “It wasn’t my fault.”
YOUR PARTNER: “It was your fault.”
Making excuses:
“I couldn’t help being late. If you’d gotten the car fixed the way you said you would, I wouldn’t have been late.”
Cross-complaining:
YOUR PARTNER: “We never go out anymore!”
YOU: “You never want to make love!”
Hot Potato:
YOU: “You don’t listen to me.”
YOUR PARTNER: “Well, you don’t listen to me.”
Stonewalling
By this point, one partner has stopped responding to the
accusations of the other. Each confrontation degenerates into one partner
screaming that the other is shutting them out. “You never say anything.
You just sit there. It’s like talking to a stonewall.”
Stonewallers may think they’re being remain neutral, but stonewalling is a
very powerful act that conveys disapproval and emotional disengagement.
It’s hard to heal a marriage if either spouse refuses to communicate.
There Is Good News
Again, these patterns of communicating are present in all marriages, but in
some their effect is dangerous. If they are a
destructive force in your relationship, let me teach you teach you to detect them and defuse them so that you can stop the downward spiral of
reactions that can destroy a marriage.
