July 12, 2012

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The killers of our relationships

I remember the arguments I heard my neighbor having with his wife (not me, my neighbor). He would approach her and say something like, “The house looks like a tornado went through it. Are you ever going to clean it?” Her response, “Well, I’ve been busy watching the kids and doing laundry and it’s not that big of a deal anyway. Nobody is coming over. Maybe if you would help a little!” He rolls his eyes and says, “Whatever, you never do what you say.” while she grumbles under his breath an unintelligible phrase that sounds something like “control freak.” Sometimes they’d go back and forth for what seemed like hours, while other times it would end fairly quickly. However, it typically ended with both of them retreating and giving each other the silent treatment for a period of time. The longer the silence, the more passive-aggressive acts toward each other occurred. I’m sure you wouldn’t do this but I’ll bet you’ve witnessed your neighbor’s make these exchanges and thanked God that you weren’t like them.

This is an example of unhealthy communication and if it continues will lead to a situation where one or both partners feel unsafe, dread coming home, and even when things are going well, is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. If you were to begin measuring what your body does in a situation like this you would find that around this person your heart begins to race, your blood pressure elevates, and your adrenaline raises to the point where you cannot effectively solve problems.

 

The good news is that even in the most toxic relationships, repair attempts get made. A repair attempt is simply anything one does to try to improve or mend the situation. In his marriage lab, researcher Jonathon Gottmann identified two components that predict divorce, so if you   notice these in your relationship they must stop immediately.

 

Before we get there though, let’s analyze what went wrong in this exchange. First of all, the husband approached the wife with what Gottmann calls a harsh start-up. Instead of offering to pitch in and help and giving his wife the benefit of the doubt, he immediately approaches with criticism and implied accusation. When approached this way, the typical response is defensiveness to which he responds with eye rolling and both resorting to put-downs. Gottmann refers to this activity (eye rolling and put-downs) as contempt. Contempt is doing anything that is designed to make the other person look inferior or even stupid. When treated this way the argument typically escalates until stonewalling occurs and the silent treatment begins. Well, it is silent until someone thinks of another barb that can be thrown or some little way they can passive-aggressively get back at their partner. Gottmann refers to criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling as “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” and it usually will lead to the end of a marriage or, at least, a volatile and unhappy union.

The good news is that at any point in this exchange either partner can take a deep breath and make a repair attempt. A repair can be an apology for their part in the argument, an acknowledgement that anger is escalating along with an appeal for both to calm down, take a break, and try again in an hour, a hug out of nowhere, etc. In healthy relationships with the right timing, these attempts work.

Back to the two things that you must not allow yourself to do in a happy marriage; contempt and refusing a repair attempt. Communication styles where these are present are huge predictors of divorce. As a matter of fact, in happy marriages there were absolutely no incidences of contempt observed.

 

Now it isn’t fair of me to mention that all it takes to achieve a happy marriage is to just quit doing some things and start doing others without acknowledging that we all have baggage from out past that lead to our harshnish, defensiveness, assaults of contempt and stonewalling. That is why in marriage counseling the therapist may want you to work on your individual issues first or refer you to a seminar like “Breakthrough” before actually tackling the marriage relationship itself.

 

I encourage you to examine where you are in this communication cycle and if you are struggling to make it work in healthy ways, please contact me for help.   dfitzsimonslscsw@gmail.com