There is a world-renowned marriage counselor named John Gottman. And John Gottman has been studying marriages his entire career. That's all he does is study marriages. He has a whole team of people that studies them. And he claims that he can predict whether or not a couple is going to get divorced with a 91% accuracy rate within the first 10 minutes of meeting them if they show the signs of fruitless fighting. Do you want to know what those signs are?
It's scientifically proven that if you show all these signs, your marriage is in trouble. Well, the first sign is what we call harsh startup. Harsh startup means “we need to talk.” The harsh startup is “you did it again.” The harsh startup is beginning the conversation abruptly, negatively, and with a hostile attitude.
The next sign is actually four things. Gottman calls it the four horsemen: defensiveness, contempt (which we've already talked about), criticism, and stonewalling. Those are the four horsemen that together make up the next sign of divorce.
What is stonewalling? Stonewalling is when one person in the couple is just not responding. Stonewalling is “Yeah… Mhm… Okay… Yeah… Sure…” Maybe looking out the window. You're having a conversation, but they're not looking at you. They're not really telling you how they feel. You don't really know what's going on inside of them. It appears like that person doesn't even care.
The next sign is very much related to the previous four. It's called flooding. Flooding is when you have so many feelings that you can't even speak them. They're so flooded with feelings, they can't tell you how they feel. It's not that they don't have a feeling—they've got so many they can't pick one.
And flooding is dangerous because it leads to the next sign: physiological distress. If you've been allowing the conflict in your marriage to go on for so long, the anger to not get resolved for so long, you're going to start having physical problems. You're going to start having ulcers, backaches, neck issues. You're going to start drinking more. You're going to start having physiological problems—failing from the inside.
The last two signs of marriages in distress that lead towards divorce are bad memories and failed repair attempts.
Bad memories means you interpret history negatively. You're only remembering the negative things from the past. It's like, “Yeah, I remember our wedding. Yeah, he was late. He was late to that. He's still late today.” You forget all the good things and you remember all the bad things. You're reinterpreting history negatively. Bad memories lead to bad things in your relationship.
And the last thing is failed repair attempts. This is critical. Everybody fights—even good marriages fight. Fighting in a marriage is not a problem. The problem is: what are you going to do about it? The critical thing is being able to repair what you did. Fighting isn't a problem—not being able to repair it is.
Repair attempts can be simple. It can be as simple as coming to a common understanding. It can be as simple as communicating that you're on the same side. But you've got to have the ability to get back on track again. You’ve got to have the ability to repair.
Most marriages never really solve their problems. Yes, it's sad news, but it's true. Gottman discovered that you will spend most of your marriage fighting about the same issues over and over. You're never going to see child-rearing the same way. You're never going to see your in-laws the same way. You're never going to manage money the same way. You're never going to do lots of things the same way. You’ll come to a common enough agreement to live with the difference between the two of you. But for most things that you fight about, you never truly come to a common understanding.
So why do people fight? You fight because you want to be connected. You feel disconnected and you're fighting to be reconnected. You think you're fighting about money. You think you're fighting about her parents. But you're not. You're fighting because “I need to feel connected to you, and I don't.”
And if you feel reconnected, the subject you're fighting about doesn't become as important. In psychology, we say the thing is never the thing. What that means is: you think you're fighting about something—you're not. You're fighting about whether or not you feel connected. And once you do feel connected, the “thing” doesn’t seem so important anymore.