Marriage expert John Gottman has outlined ‘the four horsemen’ to look out for which may bring an end to your relationship.
The author of the book ‘The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work’ has researched marriage for over 40 years and claims he can listen to a couple for five minutes and determine, with 91% accuracy, whether they’ll divorce.
According to Gottman, the four behaviours that indicate relationship apocalypse is on the way are:
Criticism
“Complaints are fine. Criticism is more global — it attacks the person, not their behaviour. They didn’t take out the garbage because they forgot, but because they’re a bad person.”
Contempt
““Name-calling, eye-rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor. In whatever form, contempt – the worst of the four horsemen – is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust. It’s virtually impossible to resolve a problem when your partner is getting the message that you’re disgusted with him or her.”
Defensiveness
“Defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner. You’re saying, in effect, ‘The problem isn’t me, it’s you.’ Defensiveness just escalates the conflict, which is why it’s so deadly.”
Stonewalling
“Tuning out. Disengaging. This doesn’t just remove the person from the conflict, it ends up removing them, emotionally, from the relationship.”
So there you are now. If you can avoid all these negative behaviours we’re sure you’ll be grand. Click here for more relationship insight.
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