The Man's Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab About What Women Really Want

by John M. Gottman

Her research found that the causes of women’s anger could be rooted in one or more of three categories: powerlessness, injustice, and the irresponsibility of other people.

So if you are not listening to your woman (or you refuse to relinquish control of the remote), she is going to get angry because she will feel powerless. If you don’t treat her as an equal in the decision making process or if you betray her trust, she is going to feel injustice and she is going to get angry. If you don’t do your fair share of work around the house or don’t show up when you say you are going to (irresponsibility of others), she is going to be angry with you.

His research showed that when men are angry they are more likely to use physical aggression, passive aggression, and revenge to handle their anger. He found that women stay angry longer, are less likely to directly express their anger, and become more resentful than men. Women also tended to use indirect aggression rather than direct aggression, meaning that if a woman is angry with you, she is more likely to get silent than to yell at you to your face. (This may or may not be true for the woman in your life.)

We’re going to let you in on two secrets we discovered in the Love Lab. First, men get more emotionally flooded and overwhelmed than women do in a conflict situation. And second, once flooded, only men who are able to reduce their heart rates are able to decrease the amount of criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling they contribute to the conflict.

If your goal is to have less conflict with the woman in your life, avoid responding to her with stonewalling, defensiveness, criticism, or contempt. It’s self-defeating and a recipe for disaster.

Her discussion of her day didn’t start out as a conflict with you. But things can take a rapid turn in this direction when you fail to offer the connection and understanding a woman wants when she is upset about anything.

Flooding is the real enemy of constructive dialogue and productive conflict. While flooding has been described before, we now understand it much better because of recent research from the Love Lab. Flooding has three major components: (1) the shock of attack and the need to defend, (2) emotional shutdown, and (3) the inability to self-soothe. We also now know that flooding is the key variable in low-level domestic violence (fights that get out of control and turn into physical aggression).

So what can you do when you get emotionally flooded? (And even the most enlightened man gets flooded when he feels criticized or attacked.) The Heroes have three simple strategies that have been scientifically proven to reduce their heart rate. The first is to breathe and the second is to count to 10. Breathing and counting to 10 are ways of downregulating or self-soothing. When you take a deep breath you stimulate the vagus nerve, which in turn reduces your heart rate and lowers your blood pressure. If you still feel no noticeable decrease in your desire to attack your woman verbally (or even physically), then the third strategy is to take a break. There is a difference, however, between taking a break and taking flight. You can’t just abandon your woman in the middle of a heated conversation. You have to say something to the effect of, “You know what, I’m having a hard time listening to you right now, and I will come back in 30 minutes so we can continue to talk.” If you don’t do this, she is going to be hurt by your flight and will worry that you’re abandoning her and will never return.

So if you didn’t feel any empathy for her during a recent argument, you were probably in DPA. You were flooded.

In our research, we showed that after conflict a man’s heart rate did not lower when he thought about his wife’s negative qualities. Surprisingly, it also didn’t lower when he spent 20 minutes thinking about his wife’s positive qualities. Guess what lowered the heart rate of our participants: reading a magazine. What you need when you’re emotionally flooded is a distraction. You need to think about anything but the person you are in conflict with and the conversation that caused the emotional flooding.

Think about your golf game. Think about baseball. Think about England. Think about anything that has nothing to do with your conflict, and you will soon be able to think clearly. Doing something physical can also help. You can take a walk, read a book, listen to music, go for a run, do some yoga, or meditate.

Approximately 80 percent of domestic violence stems from the absence of a way to calm down.