Predicting Divorce & Myths about Marriage

I'm excited that this week we have begun my favorite part of the marriage class: learning about principles that strengthen marriage!

The first time I took this class was Spring of 2012. I began the semester in April in Los Angeles, and we moved to Maui (the place where we had honeymooned five months earlier) about a month later. Here's us in Maui in our first year of marriage:

Aw, look how young and naive we were!
We really didn't have a clue.

Living in paradise was awesome, but that move definitely caused me to fail my classes that semester. Can't say I regret it though! And that may have even been a blessing in disguise, because now I get to work on strengthening my marriage all over again, and with a better perspective!

In fact, as I read this week's chapters, I was so happy (and pleasantly surprised) to notice a huge improvement in my marriage from when I took this class three years ago!

And because learning these things helped me so much in my marriage, I want to share with you all the most important things that I have learned from John Gottman's book, "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work."

This week I'll be focusing on the first two chapters of the book, which cover "The Truth about Happy Marriages" and how the author, John Gottman, is able to predict divorce.

There is so much good information in these two chapters that I really encourage you all to get the book and read it for yourselves (you can get it here), but I will go ahead and give you a brief overview of what I've read anyway. 

First of all, in chapter one, Gottman debunks myths about marriage such as:

1. Neuroses or personality problems ruin marriages.  MYTH

Gottman says: "We all have our crazy buttons—issues we’re not totally rational about. But they don’t necessarily interfere with marriage. The key to a happy marriage isn’t having a 'normal' personality but finding someone with whom you mesh."

2. Common interests keep you together.  MYTH
3. Marriage should be 50-50 with each partner giving and taking in equal amounts. MYTH

Gottman says that this quid pro quo mentality is unhealthy in a marriage and that spouses should not be keeping tally of their contributions versus their partner's.

4. Avoiding conflict will ruin your marriage. MYTH

"Couples simply have different styles of conflict. Some avoid fights at all costs, some fight a lot, and some are able to 'talk out' their differences and find a compromise without ever raising their voices. No one style is necessarily better than the other—as long as the style works for both people. "

5. Affairs are the root cause of divorce. MYTH

6. Men are not biologically "built" for marriage. MYTH

7. Men and women are from different planets.

I know that I previously believed in at least a couple of these myths, so it was very interesting to read how little they actually have to do with marital success.

I will not go too much more into detail about the contents of chapter 1, however, because I found chapter 2 to have much more practical insight and advice.

In Chapter 1, Dr. Gottman says that he can predict divorce with 91 percent accuracy after watching a couple interact for just fifteen minutes! That is pretty amazing, if you ask me. So what are the signs that he looks for when observing couples?

Again, I will not go into great detail about it all here (seriously, go read the book!), but Gottman lists six signs and four "Horsemen."

The First Sign: Harsh Startup
"When a discussion leads off...—with criticism and/or sarcasm, a form of contempt—it has begun with a 'harsh startup.'" "The research shows that if your discussion begins with a harsh startup, it will inevitably end on a negative note, even if there are a lot of attempts to 'make nice' in between."

The Second Sign: The Four Horsemen 

Horseman 1: Criticism

Horseman 2: Contempt

Horseman 3: Defensiveness

Horseman 4: Stonewalling

The Third Sign: Flooding
"Flooding means that your spouse’s negativity—whether in the guise of criticism or contempt or even defensiveness—is so overwhelming, and so sudden, that it leaves you shell-shocked. You feel so defenseless against this sniper attack that you learn to do anything to avoid a replay. ... And the way to do that is to disengage emotionally from the relationship."

The Fourth Sign: Body Language

The Fifth Sign: Failed Repair Attempts

"Repair attempts... are efforts the couple makes ('Let's take a break,' 'Wait, I need to calm down') to deescalate the tension during a touchy discussion--to put on the brakes so flooding is prevented. Repair attempts save marriages not just because they decrease emotional tension between spouses, but because by lowering the stress level they also prevent your heart from racing and making you feel flooded."

The Sixth Sign: Bad Memories
"When I interview couples, I usually ask about the history of their marriage. I have found over and over that couples who are deeply entrenched in a negative view of their spouse and their marriage often rewrite their past. When I ask them about their early courtship, their wedding, their first year together, I can predict their chances of divorce, even if I’m not privy to their current feelings."

This chapter was such an important one to me in my marriage. When I took this class the first time, my husband and I were having huge blow-up fights on a monthly basis. We were still very much in love and were very good friends, but those fights were really hard on us, and we weren't sure our marriage would make it. We both had a lot to learn about each other, and a lot of bad habits in our interactions and communication that we needed to break. For example,  I used to struggle with criticizing and contempt a lot, and to make things worse, whenever I wanted to express my feelings over a problem, I usually used a harsh startup.

Me and my husband this year at the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. (April 2015)

I am now much more careful about how I broach sensitive topics, and I am careful to make any complaints I have without criticizing. We are also much better now at making repair attempts, and I'm happy to say they are usually successful!

The main thing I took away from these chapters was this: fights are not a sign of a bad marriage. Conflicts are a part of any and every marriage, but successful marriages avoid the four horsemen in their fights, and they have cultivated enough love, friendship, and "positive sentiment override" to allow for repair attempts to be successful.

That's it for this week, folks! Read Gottman's book, and check back next week for more insights on marriage!