How to Predict a Divorce with 91% Accuracy

there is a world-renowned marriage counselor named John Gottman and John Gottman has been studying marriages his entire career it's all he does is study marriages he has a whole team of people that studies them and he claims that he can he can predict whether or not a couple is going to get divorced with a 91% accuracy rate within the first 10 minutes of meeting them if they show the signs of fruitless fighting do you want to know what those signs are it's scientifically proven that if you show all these signs your marriage is in trouble well the first sign is what we call harsh start up harsh start up beans we need to talk the harsh start up is you did it again the harsh start up is beginning the conversation already abruptly already negatively and already with a hostile attitude well the next sign is actually four things a Godman calls it the four horsemen its defensiveness contempt which was already we've already talked about criticism and stonewalling those are the four horsemen that together make up the next sign of divorce now what a stonewalling stonewalling which is is when one person in the couple is just not responding stonewalling is yeah mm-hmm okay yeah sure maybe looking out the window you're having a conversation but they're not looking at you they're not really telling you how you feel how they feel you don't really know what's going on inside of them peers like that person doesn't even care the next sign is very much related to the the previous four it's called flooding flooding is when you have so many feelings that you can't even speak them so those so flooded with feelings they can't tell you how they feel it's not that they don't have a feeling they've got so many they can't pick one and flooding is very dangerous cuz it leads to the next sign the next sign is physiological distress if you've been allowing the conflict in your marriage to go on for so long the anger to not get resolved for so long you're gonna start having physical problems you're gonna start having ulcers back aches neck aches you're going to start drinking more you're gonna start having physiological problems they're going to start failing from the inside the last two signs of marriages that are in distress that leads towards divorce are bad memories and failed repair attempts what does bad memories means what it means is you interpret history negatively you're only remembering the negative things from the past it's like yeah I remember our wedding yeah he was late he was late to that it's still late today you forget all the good things and you remember all the bad things you're reinterpreting history negatively bad memories bad sign leading to bad things in your relationship and the last thing is failed repair attempts this is really critical everybody fights even good marriages fight fighting in a marriage is not a problem the problem is what are you going to do about it and the really critical thing is to be able to repair what you did fighting isn't a problem not being able to repair it is and repair attempts can be simple it can be as simple as coming to a common understanding it can be as simple as communicating that you're on the same side but you've got to have the ability to get back on the beam you've got to have the ability to get back on track again I've got to have the ability to repair most marriages never really solve their problems yeah I know that's sad news but it's true Gottman has discovered this that you will spend most of your marriage fighting about the same issues over and over and over again you're never gonna see child rearing the same way you're never gonna see your in-laws the same way you're never going to manage money the same way you're never gonna do lots of things the same way you'll come to a common enough agreement to live with the difference between the two of you but for most things that you fight about you never do come to a common understanding of them so why do people fight you fight because you want to be connected you feel disconnected and you're fighting to be reconnected you think you're fighting about money you think you're fighting about her parents but you're not you're fighting because I need to feel connected to you and I don't and if you feel reconnected to each other the subject that you're fighting about doesn't become as important in psychology we say the thing is never the thing and what I mean by that is you think you're fighting about something you're not you're fighting about whether or not we feel connected and once we do feel connected the thing all of a sudden doesn't seem so important you

Channel: Dr. Mark Baker

Views: 129,852

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Id: wDisYcdEjcQ

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 16 2014