If you are familiar with marriage and family research and literature you have probably heard of the Gottman Institute. In “love labs” the Gottman Institute has studied thousands of relationships.
The interesting tid-bits they discovered have become priceless in saving marriages. They found that when a difficulty arose in a marriage, couples often made it worse with their poor responses. They found that these marriage crushing responses could be put in roughly four categories. These bad responses, if unchanged, could predict relationship failure with 90% accuracy. For this reason, they are nicknamed the FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE. What are they?
1. Criticism- Attacking your partner’s character or personality with the intent to make them seem wrong. Often they use generalizations about a person to label them as having a flaw. “You always… You never… You are so…”
2. Contempt- Attacking your partner’s sense of self in order to insult or abuse them. This can be done by the tone of your voice, with sarcasm, insults, or with body language.
3. Defensiveness- Seeing yourself as a victim and fending off an attacking. Usually this person fails to see a partner issue as a chance to connect.
4. Stonewalling – Withdrawing from the relationship to avoid conflict. Usually this is done with the intent to keep things calm or neutral. Instead it leaves the relationship icy.
If you are a human, one or more of these likely stuck out to you. Take responsibility for your behavior now by finding out what it would take to change these responses. Watch this short clip by the Gottman Insititute to learn the ANTIDOTES to these four horsemen.
