9.15: Marital Communication (Ob19)

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Advice on how to improve one’s marriage is centuries old. One of today’s experts on marital communication is John Gottman. Gottman (1999) differs from many marriage counselors in his belief that having a good marriage does not depend on compatibility. Rather, the way that partners communicate with one another is crucial. At the University of Washington in Seattle, Gottman has measured the physiological responses of thousands of couples as they discuss issues of disagreement. Fidgeting in one’s chair, leaning closer to or further away from the partner while speaking, increases in respiration and heart rate are all recorded and analyzed along with videotaped recordings of the partners’ exchanges. Gottman believes he can accurately predict whether or not a couple will stay together by analyzing their communication. In marriages destined to fail, partners engage in the “marriage killers”: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Each of these undermines the politeness and respect that healthy marriages require. And stonewalling, or shutting someone out, is the strongest sign that a relationship is destined to fail. Go to http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio‐archives/episode/261/the‐sanctity‐of‐marriage and listen to Act One: What Really Happens in Marriage to hear Gottman talk about his work.