Becoming Parents-Staying Partners 5 John Gottman

John Gottman has been described as “arguably the most prominent and readily understandable current researcher of what makes intimate partnering succeed or fail.” His coding system for the assessment of marital relationships, based on his work, lead to approximately 80 percent accuracy in the prediction of marital outcome over a four to nine year period. (New Therapist, 2001). In an interview available on-line, and several books he shares these ideas.

He and his colleagues observed some 1000 couples in marital action to try to identify pointers to matrimonial survival.

What you blame it on
Couples often present for therapy deeply involved in the “blame game”. Things are going wrong and each tries to convince me that it is the fault of the other. This is understandable, but not helpful.

John Gottman found a big difference between happy and distressed couples was the way in which each partner explained the behaviour of the other and then responded - that is attributional style (i.e. what they attribute each other’s behaviour to). In general happy marriages have fewer attributions, and those that occur tend to be relationship enhancing. Negative behaviour in partners tends to be explained as fleeting, situational and unstable, whereas positive behaviour is seen as stable and enduring. In other words partners “blamed” less, and where they did, gave full weight to situational factors, rather than looking for inherent faults in their partner.

For example “My partner is a good person, S/he is losing his/her temper because of stress.” The attributing partner responds according to this understanding, with a consequent positive impact on the other.

One mom, who we’ll call Jill agreed that I share her first big disappointment in their relationship. Her partner Bob had invested all his available capital in starting up a business. Bob worked long and hard, but everything he earned was going into funding start-up and running costs. It became clear he was going to have to give up the venture, lose his initial investment and take whatever employment he could find. Gill’s family had always been very cautious and quite judgemental of failure. Was Bob an idiot who’d taken wild risks and failed to do his homework and was going to mess up in everything he attempted. Or was it just possible that he was a promising entrepreneur, who was remaining motivated and positive despite endless setbacks and who simply didn’t have the back up he needed this time round? At a friend’s wedding, where the groom seemed singularly unpromising, the minister had said, “Treat your husband like a king and you’ll be a queen.” It struck a chord. Gill realised that given the shaky state of anyone’s self esteem on closing a business, her view of Bob was likely to be pivotal in how he saw himself. How one sees oneself impacts on how one presents to the world, so there’s a kind of self fulfilling feedback loop. Gill decided she’d far rather be committed to a promising entrepreneur, than an idiot. She attributed the failure to temporary external difficulties that got in the way of his success and focused on what they’d both learnt. She was able to see in him the person she admired, the feeling between them was positive and he was all the more likely to succeed next time round.
Something that struck me about the couples in longstanding happy marriages interviewed by Judith Wallerstein was the way in which each partner gave the other credit for the success of the marriage.

By contrast, in distressed marriages constant negative attributions escalate already negative interactions.

Pursuing, distancing and soothing
Gottman’s research indicated that physiological arousal and emotion also played an important role in couple relationships. Basically in distressed couples there is frequently increased demands by one partner (usually the woman) for emotional contact and increased withdrawal by the other - withdrawal largely motivated by the desire to reduce unpleasant physiological arousal. A destructive pattern emerges leading to isolation

Another way one can look at this idea from John Gottman and his team, is to say that there is a pursuer, who needs closeness, and a distancer, who fears negative emotional arousal and engulfment, and a cycle that pushes them more and more into these roles. They get involved in “The more! “ (a term I borrow from my colleague Ruth Steiner). The more the pursuer tries to connect in a state of upset (negative emotional arousal), the more the distancer withdraws, the worse the pursuer feels, the more he/she tries, angrily or in distress, to engage, the more the distancer experiences negative emotional arousal and withdraws, the more isolated the pursuer feels and so on.

By contrast happy couples set up a pattern of interactions, which generates positive feelings. Mundane everyday interactions are characterised by “turning towards”

For example The more he helps out with the dishes, the more she feels supported and the more she tells him he’s great for washing them, the more he wants to wash them, and the more he does, the more she thinks he’s great and wants to spend time chatting to him while he does them, and the more he enjoys doing it - you get the picture! The finding that the generation and maintenance of positive or negative affect in couple relationship was critical, has lead Gottman to call his the “bank account model of marriage”.

Meeting needs to creat a positive emotional climateThe book “His needs. Her needs” uses this model, while there are a number of problems with this book (such as stereotyping), it does capture simply the importance of needs, and meeting of needs in relationships. Harville Hendricks of Imago therapy fame captures this same idea, in his Re-romanticising exercise, designed to help couples create a positive emotional climate, i.e. generate a positive emotional bank balance. What he has couples do is draw up lists of simple “do-able” things their partner does, used to do, or could do, that make them feel loved. He then has them swap lists and undertake to do a certain number of things on the list for eachother each week. Importantly they should not “keep score”, but rather focus on the giving.

Fighting and Repair
Also crucial was the ability to have a recovery conversation after a fight. We should not avoid fighting, but rather develop the art of repair and recovery after a fight. This is the focus of Gottman’s therapy. The nature of these ”repair attempts” is critical. Attempts by couples to resolve difficulties have both a verbal and non-verbal component, with the non-verbal being most powerful. In distressed couples repair attempts have a predominantly negative emotional tone, no matter how positive the verbal content. In happy couples partners match the content to the tone. Partners are more able to process the content of these congruent messages. In addition happy couples have a number of strategies for ending negative interactions [for example humour], while distressed couples stay locked in conflict [or exit in destructive ways, like stonewalling (sulking)].

In repair attempts happy couples use a number of key strategies,
• “soothing behaviours” that reduce arousal and defensiveness,
• “respectful influence” where partners use positive feeling to de-escalate conflict while still attempting to gently and respectfully influence their partner, and
• “editing” the ability to break cycles of negative feeling.

Gottman identified 4 patterns of behaviour which he terms the horsemen of the apocalypse” prevalent in difficult relationships:
• criticism of the partner (most common in women),
• defensiveness,
• contemptuous attitude and
• stonewalling or silence (most common amongst men).

In contrast to are
• affection,
• validation,
• empathy and
• humour.
Fondness and admiration are also important antidotes to criticism and contempt. They sooth the other person and decrease withdrawal, putting the emotional bank account in good stead. Soothing behaviours were found to be highly predictive of long-term outcome of couple relationships.

Communication:
You may have heard of active listening and good communication skills. Often couples come to therapy to “learn to communicate better”

Active listening encourages us to use I messages rather than You messages
“I am getting frustrated with all the mess in the house” is more respectful, makes everyone take responsibility for their own feelings and is less likely to rouse defensiveness than “You’re a messy pig”.

Active listening also involves mirroring or repeating back to the other person what they’ve said. In particular one should reflect back the feeling you are picking up, while being tentative and respectful. You are basically checking out that you have understood correctly, and at the same time letting the person know you understand. It’s a way of conveying empathy, and it works well in many kinds of interactions (including those with our children). Most people respond well to being understood.

For example:“I’ve had the worst day ever. The car broke down. The repair man they sent was rude. He took two hours to repair the car and I missed that important meeting. It’s like I can’t rely on anyone. I don’t know how I keep going”
“Sounds like you had a really bad day and it’s left you feeling angry that you have to cope alone. You feel like giving up.”
“Well maybe not that bad, but boy am I glad to be home”.

These techniques are often taught as communications skills to aid marriages. In fact Gottman himself believed they were very important, but later realised couples just weren’t doing this. Gottman finds even when couples do do them, they are not enough.

In the context of a friendship or a therapy relationship simply reflecting your understanding is what’s expected, it is enough. In a marriage it’s not that simple.

Firstly it’s difficult to reflect when you’re the subject of the tirade. Even when you can do it, in a couple relationship real empathy means showing you understand by doing something about it, or at least engaging in a process of talking about it and why you can’t do anything”.

Big Issues:
When they followed couples up after a four year period to talk about the major issue in their marriage, Gottman and his colleagues found that 69% of the time they had the same problems and were talking about them in exactly the same way with consequent marital instability. But 31% had solved the problems. He calls the solvers “masters” in marriage and looked at how they did it. What they discovered was a pattern of really being gentle in the way they approached solvable problems – “a softened start up, particularly guys accepting influence from women, but … it was a balance. They both were doing it.” He found that couples tended to soften the way they presented issues and give appreciations while disagreeing. They could also hear some feedback, especially if the partner was using humour. Most of us have absorbed the idea that communication is important in a marriage, and that we should express our feelings. But how we do so is important. We cannot blast our partner with criticism and expect it to be ok.

In terms of unsolvable or perpetual problems, they found two kinds of couples. They found a lot who had adapted to their problems, not that they liked it, but they were coping and were able to establish a dialogue with one another about it. They used a sense of humour and managed to be affectionate even while disagreeing, they soothed one another and de-escalated the conflict.

In fact the research of John Gottman and his colleagues indicated that happy couples allow room for each partner’s view of the world.

On the negative side, were those grid-locked in the problem. There was no compromising.

Compromising:Compromise is essential in any relationship. I’ve had a number of dynamic professionals tell me that a marriage should be “win win”. They don’t want to compromise. Of course “win-win” is wonderful, but I think to believe that sometimes we do need to give up on some things, for the sake of the relationship, for the sake of our partner, and, often, once a baby arrives, for the sake of the child or children. We need to balance generosity and the joy of giving on the one hand with the resentment that can come when we give too much.

Gottman draws on the work of couple therapist Dan Wile on compromise. It seems to be supported by Gottman’s research. He suggests that sometimes people compromise too soon. Basically they take a stand that is not what they really want, it is already a compromise. In other words they compromise without talking first, even when they feel strongly about something. By the time they do talk each of them has already compromised once, though their partner doesn’t know about it. Nor do they know their partner has already compromised. They both come across as more stubborn then they actually are, feeling hurt that their generosity is not appreciated, when really it is simply not visible.

Honour your dreams:
Gottman feels that while compromise is necessary, it can become a problem if people are giving up “their ideals, the romance and passion of their selves. They’re giving up something really essential”. He feels that’s the secret to ending the gridlock on perpetual problems - is to realise that there’s a reason why we can’t compromise sometimes. A person may be holding on to an ideal that is essential to who they are as a person. He adds that

“if you can make the marriage safe enough, you can take those fists and really open them up, and there’s a dream inside of each fist, there’s a life dream. When people see what the dream is and what the narrative is behind it, the history of this life dream, usually both people want to honour their partner’s dream”.

Honouring may mean supporting it, understanding it, financially supporting it, or talking about it.

Harville Hendriks points out how we start romantic love in idealisation, the fantasy that our partner will love us in a way we’ve never been loved before and meet our deepest needs. This has it’s roots in our own infancy, and may lead us to idealise our partners in ways that obscure who they really are, as well as lead us to avoid taking responsibility for our own happiness. However neither Harville Hendricks and his Imago approach, nor Judith Wallerstein or John Gottman’s research suggest we should give up our ideals and lower our standards.

Harville Hendricks encourages couples to commit to a life long journey of understanding one another and their partner so that they can work toward healing both their childhood hurts.

Gottman points out that research had found that people who really want to be treated well and want romance and passion get that, and people who have low standards get that.

Judith Wallerstein was amazed at her discovery of marriages that remained romantic and passionate over decades.

Gottman says

“It’s better really to ask for what you want in a relationship and try to be treated the way you want to be treated”.

Copywrite Belinda Farre (2007)

References:
New therapist May/June 2001
Carrere (2000) Journal of Family Psychology
Gottman, J.M. (1996). What predicts divorce: the measures. Erlbaum.
Wallerstein, J.S. and Blakeslee, D. (1996)The Good Marriage