Blogosaurus Vex

March 14th, 2009

I was going to write about my thoughts on marriage but decided that, after merely two and a half years of it (plus two and a half years of sinful cohabitation – WWJD?) I’m probably not enough of an authority to try telling others what to do.  So instead I thought I’d collect a few little tidbits of marital research for your perusal, from John Gottman’s work¹ .

In marriages headed for divorce, look for the following patterns of interactive behaviour that characterize “dysfunctional” relating between partners:

During the discussion of an area of continuing disagreement, there is more negativity than positivity.  In marriages that will wind up stable, the ratio of positivity to negativity during conflict resolution is about 5 to 1; the balance of positivity to negativity is overwhelmingly in favor of positivity, even during the conflict discussion.

Four negative behaviours, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are most corrosive: defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling, and criticism.  Emotional disengagement, the presence of underlying tension and sadness, and the absence of positive affect are also predictive of divorce.

The conflict on “perpetual issues” in the marriage is “gridlocked” or characterized by emotional disengagement rather than dialogue.

Repair attempts fail.

There is harsh start-up of conflict discussions (usually by the wife, but the etiology of this harshness is in a nonresponsive husband during nonconflict conversations).

There is repeated refusal by the husband to accept influence from his wife.

There is an absence of de-escalation attempts.

There is little positive affect (interest, affection, humour) expressed.

A few points that may be helpful or interesting:

“Affect” means emotion.

Perpetual issues are explained thusly: “Even in the best marriages, while some minor fraction of marital problems does get solved, over time most marital problems do not get solved at all; instead they become what we call perpetual issues.  What turns out to be important is the affect that surrounds the way people talk about (but do not really solve) these perpetual marital problems.”

The classic expression of contempt is eye rolling.

Repair is “…the spouses acting as their own therapist.  They comment on the communication itself, or they support and soothe one another, or they express appreciations to soften their complaints.”

Expressing negative affect is not itself a problem (in stable, happy marriages, anger can be expressed and in fact it is natural to respond to anger with anger), but failing to effectively repair afterwards is.

The “four horsemen” (contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling) alone can predict divorce with 85% accuracy.  Why isn’t is 100%?  Because of effective repair.  If the threshold of effective repair is sufficient, even couples with FH measures above median can stay stable and happy.

1. Gottman, J. A. (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A scientifically based marital therapy. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. [↩]

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