How To Destroy A Marriage (and how not to)

Did you know that 69% of conflicts in a marriage are never resolved?

That’s a lot higher than you thought!

What if I told you there was a man that developed a model that could predict divorce, with 85% accuracy, after only listening to a 15 minute conversation.

You’d want to know how that model was developed, right?

His name is Dr John Gottman — a doctor of clinical psychology with over 40 years of studying 3000+ relationships and founder of the Gottman Institute.

Today I’ll share one of his most important findings.

Okay…

If 69% of conflict isn’t resolved, how does anyone have a healthy marriage?

The trick is how you deal with conflict.

Avoid gridlock.

Gridlock occurs most often when one or both partners exhibit an unhealthy attachment style. This leads to one or both partners feeling unable to share the values, dreams or life goals that are the reason behind their decision in an argument.

It’s hard to compromise, in conflict, on your personal values.

For additional information on attachment styles.

The trick is to have continual conversations about 1) personality differences that lead to conflicts 2) your life dream and how it relates to your partner’s.

For example, you’re having a money conflict — 70% of divorces stem from money issues. You believe that spending $5000 on a new stove will allow you to cook better food, eat healthier and host a dinner party every once in a while.

Your partner sees the new stove and thinks, “that could be the two new bikes we’ve been talking about, a personal trainer for a couple months and a vacation with another couple for a weekend.”

If we took the time to examine the underlying motives, values and dreams for each purchase we’d find them to be almost identical. Live healthier and spend time with friends.

Obviously these dreams won’t always align.

But you can see how, without opening a dialogue, this can become a recurring conflict that may never be resolved.

Here are a couple tips to help you during your next disagreement:

• Actively work on existing attachment issues. This is a whole post by itself but will go a long way to bettering your relationship.

• Take timeouts during arguments. An elevated heart rate and adrenaline make you a bad problem solver and affect your ability to process information.

• Be positive even in a conflict. Successful couples show positive to negative problem solving ratio of 5:1 during an argument. Examples of positives: showing interest, asking questions, general kindness, displays of affection, empathy.

• Repair conflict. Be humble, say you’re sorry and that an argument didn’t go well. “Can we start over?” Everyone gets defensive, occasionally.

• Create a shared meaning system. Work with your partner to build a system of shared values, strive build something bigger than yourselves. What do you want to leave the world with?