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But in their day-to-day lives, they have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones.
their motto tends to be a helpful “Yes, and …” rather than “Yes, but …”
Emotional intelligence has become widely recognized as an important predictor of a child’s success later in life. The more in touch with feelings and the better able a child is to understand and get along with others, the sunnier that child’s future, whatever his or her academic IQ.
The more emotionally intelligent a couple—the better able they are to understand, honor, and respect each other and their marriage—the more likely that they will indeed live happily ever after.
the biggest myth of all is that communication—and more specifically, learning to resolve your conflicts—is the royal road to romance and an enduring, happy marriage.
Conflict resolution is touted not only as a cure-all for troubled marriages but as a tonic that can prevent good marriages from faltering.
with all kinds of psychotherapists. Most therapists got very high
Active listening asks couples to perform Olympic-level emotional gymnastics even if their relationship can barely walk.
conflict resolution isn’t what makes marriages succeed. One of the most startling findings of our research is that couples who have maintained happy marriages rarely do anything that even partly resembles active listening when they’re upset.
At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.
Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.
“positive sentiment override,” or PSO,
This means that their positive thoughts about each other and their marriage are so pervasive that they tend to supersede their negative feelings.
Betrayal is, fundamentally, any act or life choice that doesn’t prioritize the commitment and put the partner “before all others.”
betrayals can devastate a relationship as thoroughly as a sexual affair. Some common forms of deceit include being emotionally distant, siding with a parent against one’s mate, disrespecting the partner, and breaking significant promises.
that betrayal lies at the heart of every failed relationship.
The key is learning how to better attune to each other and make friendship a top priority.
repair attempt. This term refers to any statement or action—
silly
otherwise—that prevents negativity from escalatin...
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The success or failure of a couple’s repair attempts is one of the primary factors in whether their marriage is likely to flourish or flounder.
most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other’s mind—but it can’t be done. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, or values. By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage. Instead,
they need to understand the bottom-line difference that is causing the conflict—and to learn how to live with it by honoring and respecting each other.
The research shows that if your discussion begins with a harsh start-up, it will inevitably end on a negative note, even if there are a lot of attempts to “make nice” in
between.
Statistics tell the story: 96 percent of the time you can predict the outcome of a conversation based on the first three minute...
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Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.
Horseman 1: Criticism. You will always have some complaints about the person you live with. But there’s a world of difference between complaint and criticism.
a criticism is global and expresses negative feelings or opinions about the other’s character or personality:
Horseman 2: Contempt. The second horseman arises from a sense of superiority over one’s partner.
sarcasm and cynicism are types of contempt.
So are name-calling, eye-rolling, mockery, and hostile humor. In whatever form, contempt is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust.
Horseman 3: Defensiveness.
This is because defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner. You’re saying, in effect, “The problem isn’t me, it’s you.” One common form of defensiveness is the “innocent victim” stance, which often entails whining
and sends the message: “Why are you picking on me? What about all the good things I do? There’s
no pleasin...
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Horseman 4: Stonewalling. In marriages where discussions begin with a harsh start-up, where criticism and contempt lead to defensiveness and vice versa, eventually one partner tunes out.
Rather than confronting his wife, he disengages. By turning away from her, he is avoiding a fight, but he is also avoiding his marriage. He has become a stonewaller.
It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable “out.”
people stonewall as a protection against feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed, a sensation we call flooding.
Recurring episodes of flooding lead to divorce for two reasons. First, they signal that at least one partner feels severe emotional distress when dealing with the other. Second, the physical sensations of feeling flooded—the increased heart rate, sweating, and so on—make it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving
discussion.
Frequently feeling flooded leads almost inevitably to emotional distancing, which in turn
leads
to feeling ...
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A crucial part of a couple’s pattern is whether their repair attempts succeed or fail. Repair attempts, as I described on this page, are efforts the couple makes (“Let’s take a break,” “Wait, I need to calm down”) to de-escalate the tension during a touchy discussion—to put on the brakes so that they can prevent flooding.
The presence of the four horsemen alone predicts divorce with an 82 percent accuracy rate. But when you add in the failure
repair attempts, the accuracy rate reaches into the 90s.
when the four horsemen are present but the couple’s repair attempts are successful—the result is a satisfying marriage.
Some people leave a marriage literally, by divorcing. Others do so by staying together but leading parallel lives. Whatever the route, there are four final stages that signal the death knell of a relationship.
