If you live in the Pacific Northwest, there is a good chance that you’ve heard of the ‘Love Lab’ in Seattle, Washington. The lab, an apartment where couples spent time together while their behavioral interactions were recorded and quantified by researchers, was built in the 1980s. The research conducted at the lab was an extension of John Gottman and Robert Levenson’s work from the 1970s that centered on marital stability and divorce prediction. Years later, Julie Schwartz Gottman, a clinical psychologist, joined the research team. Together, this husband and wife team founded the Gottman Institute. With four decades of scientific research data and countless hours working with couples in the therapy room, John, Julie and their collaborators developed The Gottman Method of relationship therapy to help couples:
Break through and resolve conflict when they feel stuck.
Generate greater understanding for each other.
Increase closeness, affection and respect.
Conflict
Do you find that you and your partner have chronic issues that you just can’t seem to resolve? Most couples come in for therapy in a state of gridlock with regard to these kinds of persistent conflict issues. They’ve been fighting about the same underlying issue for years and can’t seem to find resolution. Gottman research suggests that 69% of conflict in a relationship is perpetual, meaning that most conflict will never be fully resolved. Instead of trying to help couples resolve conflict, the Gottman Method aims to help couples manage it through better communication.
Masters of Relationships versus Disasters of Relationships
Are you a Master or a Disaster? Over time, Gottman researchers found that couples fit into two broad categories – the Masters and the Disasters of relationships. Couples in these two categories approach their relationships in significantly different ways. The Master couple is one who is happy and who manages to stay together over significant periods of time. The Disaster couple is one who breaks up, or who stays together and is unhappy. In happy relationships, the couple’s approach to conflict is gentle. In fact, Masters exhibit key behaviors during conflict that are not seen in the Disasters. Masters tend to:
Use a soft start up when beginning a difficult conversation
Accept influence from one another
Have a ratio of 5 positive interactions (i.e., empathy, humor, honest curiosity, validation, etc.) to 1 negative interaction (i.e., criticism, contempt, denial, anger, stonewalling, defense, etc) during conflict
Frequently communicate that they accept one another
Stay calm physiologically (when your heart rate is at ~100, you are in fight or flight mode, which means empathy and frontal lobe processing are not likely)
Preempt negativity
Deescalate and repair things if they do get negative, and
Move gently toward compromise.
By contrast, Disasters of relationships rarely use these behaviors, and they frequently rely on behaviors that prolong disconnection and rupture. The Gottmans have found that four behaviors in particular, known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are predictive of divorce when present in a relationship. The Four Horsemen include criticism, defense, stonewalling and contempt. These four behaviors are corrosive to love. Contempt is the most corrosive of the four. The Disasters of relationships tend to not only fail to exhibit the connecting behaviors that the Masters show, but they usually have at least one horseman present.
Why Relationships Fail
Gottman research data suggests that the major cause (80%) of divorce is because couples become emotionally distant and drift apart. Over time, there is a failing of their friendship and intimacy that leads to disconnection and dissatisfaction.
8 predictors of divorce (or continued misery).
What does your conflict look like? Here are 8 things that you may be doing wrong.
Is there more negativity than positivity in your relationship? Positive behaviors and emotions are necessary during conflict (and in every day life). This doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for negativity in your relationship. This simply states that positive behaviors and emotions are critical, even during conflict.
Are you engaging in any of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: stonewalling, criticism, defensiveness, or contempt? These show up during conflict when there is a pattern of negativity escalation. This leads to turning away from bids for emotional connection. Remember, contempt has been shown to be the most corrosive. Some contemptuous behaviors are obvious, but contempt is present whenever one partner is elevating themselves in some way above the other.
Do you disengage emotionally or withdraw during conflict (or at other times)? This also leads to turning away from bids for emotional connection, which is toxic.
Do you fail to make repair attempts? Miscommunication, hurt feelings, and arguments are inevitable. Your goal should not be to avoid fighting with your partner. What is more important is that you learn how to repair your ruptures (not avoid them). Rupture and repair, when done well, can build emotional intimacy.
Are you swimming in negative sentiment override? Negative sentiment override (NSO) is when people start to see everything their partner does as negative. The Gottman researchers see this a lot in failing relationships – behaviors that are neutral or positive to a nonbiased observer are interpreted as negative by a partner who is in NSO. In fact, in NSO, you are statistically likely to interpret 50% of your partner’s positive behaviors toward you as negative! In NSO, if your partner comes home in a bad mood, you are likely to take it personally or label your partner as a ‘crabby person’.If you are in NSO, there is something happening in the relationship that is causing it, so you aren’t likely to just snap out of it. Instead, therapy should be designed to help you rebuild your friendship with your partner. Otherwise, if you aren’t in NSO, you would be able to consider other factors as contributing to your partner’s negative behavior – “they must be stressed out from work”. In contrast, if you are in positive sentiment override (PSO), you will interpret most of your partner’s behaviors as positive, including the negative behaviors.
After conflict, do you replay the negative interactions in your head and stay upset long after the fight? Do you have a narrow bandwidth of tolerance for “unpleasant” emotions or conflict? Some people get really physiologically stressed out when they are in conflict, or when their partner is angry, disappointed, distressed etc. This stress can cause them to try to ‘fix’ their partner’s emotions, come at their partner aggressively, shut down, or flee. All cases are attempts to escape the emotion that is causing their own internal stress and anxiety. This reactive way of approaching conflict makes their partner feel attacked, invalidated or abandoned emotionally, which causes a rupture. The rupture is unlikely to be repaired when one or both partners separate physically but continue to rehearse their narrative of what happened during the fight in their head. Rehearsing the distressful thoughts prolongs their own physiological stress and keeps them distant and isolated from their partner.
How stressed out physiologically do you get when you are in conflict with your partner? Keeping calm during conflict is very important because once your autonomic nervous system becomes aroused, you enter a state of alarm and defense. This state severely limits your ability to process information, listen to your partner, laugh or be affectionate, be empathetic, or be creative. You will want to be able access to these abilities during conflict if you want to be a relationship Master.
If your partner comes to you with a complaint, do you escalate the negativity or are you able to accept your partner’s influence? The research shows that heterosexual men often have a hard time accepting the influence of their female partners. When presented with a complaint, men are more likely than women to emotionally disengage, or become belligerent, contemptuous or defensive in response. Obviously, whether you are male or female, these behaviors are corrosive to emotional intimacy and should be replaced with emotional responsiveness, interest, and compromise.
Goals of a Gottman Therapist
Gottman Method therapy focuses on emotion and on changing negative interaction patterns. It is designed to help you shift negative interactions during conflict (such as emotional escalation or disengagement), and on replacing the four horsemen with their antidotes. The goal is to help you make conflict more regulated, constructive and functional. It also focuses on emotional repair, and on building safety, love, bonding, friendship, trust, and intimacy.
Controlling negative affect is important during conflict, and in your relationship in general. But, so is building positive affect. Gottman research shows that positivity must be built and maintained intentionally as part of the therapy (it doesn’t just automatically fill the empty spaces once you two step out of conflict). This is another focus of the Gottman Method – to improve your friendship and your attachment to one another. A Gottman therapist can help you:
Down-regulate negative affect and its escalation during conflict
Increase positive affect in conflict
Increase positive affect outside of conflict
Turn toward each other for bids of emotional connection
Build emotional intimacy
Build other aspects of your friendship (such as courtship, romance, play, fun, adventure, etc).
Some couples are a mismatch with regard to “meta-emotion” – which is how people feel about feelings. If there is a mismatch, it is important that you two take some time to understand your partner’s relationship to feelings like pride, contempt, anger, joy, excitement, humor, fear, sadness, love, etc. It also is important to understand your partner’s trauma and emotional triggers. Just because you don’t feel the same way about something doesn’t mean that your partner’s experience is invalid. Your partner’s feelings won’t change just because you don’t understand or disagree. If you fail to express interest, compassion, and/or acceptance of your partner’s feelings, he/she is likely to stop sharing them with you. When that happens, you partner will start feeling very lonely in the relationship and the two of you will grow more and more distant. Tune into your partner’s emotions because sharing these vulnerabilities will build emotional intimacy, which will then keep your physical intimacy and your relationship satisfaction alive.
A final goal of a Gottman therapist is to help you build a shared meaning system together. This means identifying and communicating your sense of purpose, priorities and values, philosophies, ethics, values, goals and missions, cultural and family traditions, etc. This allows you to build a solid base and adds purpose to your lives together.
