Gottman's Work

To further my research into 'what are the secrets of a long-term relationship' James provided me with a lead to the work of John Gottman.

Gottman studied many couples and his theory aims to predict; divorce or martial stability, relationship satisfaction and adaptibility to childbirth or retirement (Tell, Pavkov, Hecker & Fontaine, 2006). The main conclusion behind Gottman's theory was that positivity towards one's partner needs to outway the negativity. Furthermore, he believed that the presence of some negatives in a relationship are more detrimental than others. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" represent the most detriment negatives as; criticism, contempt, defensiveness and withdrawal (Holman & Jarvis, 2003).

Gottman describes critism as the change from complaining about their partner, which is essentially about their behaviour to critising them, which is essentially about their personlality. This occurs overtime as complaints (which Gottman describes as healthy for a marriage) go unheard and the individual places blame onto their partner, eg. 'your selfish'. Secondly, contempt includes insults and psychological abuse against one's partner. There is no longer mutual attraction and compliments are very rare. Thirdly, defensiveness results as a response to compempt (It is natural to to defensive as one hurls insults at you). However, this is of course further damaging to the relationship. Lastly, withdrawal occurs as one is exhausted and overwheled by the insults and/or defensiveness and so they no longer respond at all. This results in complete communication break down. At this point of the sequence the relationship is in a downward spiral, this does not mean the end but that a great deal of work is needed (Gottman & Silver, 1994).

Here are some links to help understand his work:
http://ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=22065978&site=ehost-live
this link is an article which looks at Gottman's work in relation to culture. It also has a great diagram describing Gottman's work

http://ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pbh&AN=9403017691&site=ehost-liveThis link is really good because it is written by Gottman himself. If also has a quiz you can do to test for relationship.

References

Gottman, J., & Silver, N. (1994). What makes marriage work? Psychology Today, 27, 38-45.

Holman, T., & Jarvis, M. (2003). Hostile, volatile, avoiding, and validating couple-conflict types: An investigation of the Gottman's couple-conflict types. Personal relationships, 10, 267-282.

Tell, S., Pavkov, T., Hecker, L., & Fontaine, K. (2006). Adult survivors of child abuse: An
application of John Gottman's sound marital house theory. Comtempory Family Therapy, 28, 225-238.