This Behavior Has Been Found To Be The Number One Predictor Of Divorce. Here's How To Avoid It.
It’s not always easy, but it’s highly possible.
by The Candidly Team
There are four behaviors that are so destructive to couple relationships that research organization The Gottman Institute refers to them as the “four horseman of the apocalypse.”
Of the four, there is one that is most threatening.
It’s the horseman known as contempt.
(The other 3 by the way are criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling, which you can learn all about HERE).
In 40 years of research on couples, the institute’s co-founder Dr. John Gottman has crowned contempt the strongest predictor of a relationship ending in divorce. He has called it “sulfuric acid for love.” Gottman’s research has even shown that couples who experience a lot of contempt in their dynamic are actually more likely to get sick with infectious illnesses like colds and flus.
By digging into what constitutes contempt and seeing how oozily it can infiltrate a relationship, we can learn ways to quickly identify it. And more importantly, to actively avoid it.
How Contempt Eats Away At Healthy Relationships
Contempt isn’t about feeling annoyed at the milk being left out for the fifth time that week or another evening made late by lost keys. But it also isn’t about feeling genuine hurt or anger about something our partner is doing. It’s about how we convey our feelings after letting them muster in a way that turns clean, straight-forward reactions into undercutting disrespect and disdain.
As Gottman, co-founder Dr. Julie Gottman once put it, “kindness doesn't mean that we don't express our anger, but the kindness informs how we choose to express the anger.” Contempt is the opposite of kindness in that we tend to express statements to our partner with:
Meanness
Mocking
Condescension
Cynicism
Eye-rolling
Sneering
Nasty jokes
Name-calling
Statements of contempt tend to come from a place of superiority. Some examples might include:
Yeah, right. YOU are gonna remember to do the dishes later? That’s never gonna happen. I’ll just do them myself now … as usual.
You can never find anything yourself. I’m so sick of having to follow you around like you’re a child making sure you don’t lose anything. Grow up.
It must be nice having someone remember everything we have scheduled all week and getting us ready so you can just be lazy and relax all the time.
Whether we cringe at or relate to having a contemptuous tone in what we say to our partner, the biggest threat it presents is not just that it generates an atmosphere of negativity and nastiness, but it also completely undermines the positive feelings we need to connect with and express in order for the relationship to thrive.
How To Steer Clear Of Contempt
1. Create a culture of appreciation.
This sounds like a massive undertaking, but the idea is just to consistently notice things our partner does that we appreciate rather than zooming in on every annoyance and shortcoming. For example, you might take note of:
How quietly they got out of bed because they knew you could sleep in today.
How patiently they talked to your daughter while helping her with her shoes.
How they texted you to check in at 2:45, knowing you were nervous about a meeting you had at 2.
How cute they looked while making that horrendous pun.
In addition to just noticing, we should make sure to outwardly express our genuine feelings of fondness and appreciation. There’s no harm in casting a positive outlook on our partner, not so we can live in some rose-colored fantasy but to shine light on the positives that are already there. Just as cynicism and disrespect create a culture of contempt, gratitude and recognition create a culture of kindness.
Be affectionate. State compliments. Say thank you. These don’t have to be grand gestures or exaggerated statements - just simple acts that tip the balance toward mutual warmth.
Gottman also advises that when we sit down to address a conflict or something that didn’t go well between us and our partner, we start by voicing five specific things we appreciated about each other before diving into anything that’s gone badly.
2. Express needs directly.
Obviously, issues are going to come up and there are going to be things we don’t appreciate that we wish our partner would do more or less of. The key thing is to focus our lens inward. Instead of just thinking what is our partner doing wrong, we should ask ourselves what do we need to make things right?
One of the reasons, our frustrations might morph into contempt can have to do with a feeling that we’re not getting our needs met. “Over time, if we don’t voice our own needs, we can build up feelings of resentment,” said Hanna Stensby, a Gottman Institute trained marriage and family therapist and founder of Flourish Mindset. “Additionally, when we feel unappreciated, we can feel resentment. These feelings of resentment, if directed towards our partner, can become contempt.”
Saying our needs out loud isn’t a cakewalk for many (most!) of us, which is why we created a helpful guide for how to actually do it. But the main takeaway is to use “I” statements. Follow this Gottman formula known as a “gentle start up,” where we approach our partner when neither of us are heated, and use a non-blaming, first person statement where we fill in the following blanks:
“I feel _____” about “_____” and “I need_____.”
So for example, we might say:
“I feel lonely and hurt about not seeing you as much lateIy in the evenings and I need to feel like our time together after work is a priority.”
3. Think small.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by setting big, unrealistic goals like “I must always be grateful and never be critical in order to not hit my own relationship apocalypse.” The idea is not to gloss over anything negative but to learn how to better communicate about the bigger, harder things.
But it’s also about starting small. We often underestimate the enormous difference it can make to focus on the little, tiny acts that take place throughout the day. By giving a 6-second kiss, paying a compliment, saying a thank you, NOT saying that sarcastic remark, all of it equates to us feeling closer and more sparkly with our partner. It also keeps those crumby interactions from adding up and overtaking our relationship.
3. Keep track of your ratio.
We are not talking about keeping a mental chart of all the good and bad things we have done in comparison to what our partner has done. Don’t do that. Never do that.
We are talking about paying attention to the overall ratio of good-to-bad interactions we seem to be having in a given day. According to Gottman, the “magic ratio” for couples to be happy and stay together is 5 to 1, which means they should have five positive, kind, connected interactions for every one negative interaction between them.
Sounds doable, no? But it’s much, much easier when we consistently treat contempt as an unwelcome third party in our relationship.
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