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I thought I’d share some useful advice about relationships and marriage. It will be familiar reading to those who have taken sociology of the family. Enjoy.
“John Gottman’s FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
John Gottman, Ph.D., is a well respected psychologist and marriage researcher who reports that an unhappy marriage can increase your chances of becoming ill by 35% and take four years off your life! He believes “working on your marriage every day will do more for your health and longevity than working out at a health club”. Although many of us believe that anger is the root cause of unhappy relationships, Gottman notes that it is not conflict itself that is the problem, but
how we handle it. Venting anger constructively can actually do wonders to clear the air and get a relationship back in balance. However, conflict does become a problem when it is characterized by the presence of what Gottman calls the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” : criticism,contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
1. CriticismCriticism involves attacking your partner’s personality or character, rather than focusing on the specific behavior that bothers you. It is healthy to air disagreements, but not to attack your spouse’s personality or character in the process. This is the difference between saying, “I’m upset that you didn’t take out the trash” and saying, “I can’t believe you didn’t take out the trash. You’re just so irresponsible.” In general, women are more likely to pull this horseman into conflict.
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2. Contempt.
Contempt is one step up from criticism and involves tearing down or being insulting toward your partner. Contempt is an open sign of disrespect. Examples of contempt include: putting down your spouse, rolling your eyes or sneering, or tearing down the other person with so – called “humor.”***
3. Defensiveness.
Adopting a defensive stance in the middle of conflict may be a natural response, but does not help the relationship. When a person is defensive, he or she often experiences a great deal of tension and has difficulty tuning into what is being said. Denying responsibility, making excuses, or meeting one complaint with another are all examples of defensiveness.***
4. Stonewalling.
People who stonewall simply refuse to respond. Occasional stonewalling can be healthy, but as a typical way of interacting, stonewalling during conflict can be destructive to the marriage. When you stonewall on a regular basis, you are pulling yourself out of the marriage, rather than working out your problems. Men tend to engage in stonewalling much more often than women do.***
All couples will engage in these types of behaviors at some point in their marriage, but when the four horsemen take permanent residence, the relationship has a high likelihood of failing. In fact, Gottman’s research reveals that the chronic presence of these four factors in a relationship can be used to predict, with over 80% accuracy, which couples will eventually divorce. When attempts to repair the damage done by these horsemen are met with repeated rejection, Gottman says there is over a 90% chance the relationship will end in divorce.***
If your relationship is filled with these four issues, take notice, change yourself, work together, make improvements. Don’t delay!
As Gottman has made clear, with work and an investment in overcoming these challenges marriage can improve and become successful. If left unattended divorce is often inevitable.”
Excerpted from an article, “Marriage and Healthy” by Poonam Sharma, Ph.D.;
further information and research can be found in Dr. John Gottman’s book, “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”
Apologies for the crappy formatting, as this was from a .pdf and they suck when put into raw form.
*Update* – Video of Gottman speaking about the Four Horsemen.
Today, let’s look at one of the prime methods of baffling the masses. The power of positive thinking and the credulous ‘Positive Psychology’ that buttresses the fatuous assertions made by the followers of the cult of happiness. While not a exclusively in the domain in religious, the deluded (religious and otherwise) use ‘positive thinking’ to lie to their flocks and ensconce the cancerous idea that somehow if they just work a little harder and be a little happier wealth, fame and fortune will fall into their laps.
This of course, is bullshit.
Your earning potential in life is determined by a host of factors including where you where born, what your parents do, and their socioeconomic status. All of these factors have exactly nothing to do with your attitude or work ethic, but figure prominently on the general trajectory your life will follow. I hypothesize that this is why the cult of Happiness is so pervasive in the US is because it rides shotgun to the other great American Myth that with enough individual hard work you can “make it”.
Both mythologies are meant to distract people from the well worn paradigm of the wealthy plundering society exclusively for their benefit. Real societal change – that brought on by mass social movements – is carefully guarded against. While working at non unionized Wal Mart, being paid less than a living wage and living off of food stamps (that would be the American government subsidizing Walmart btw. Socialism!!1!1!!!), if you just work a little harder and be a little more positive you’ll prosper. Fixing the systematic problems in society is the furthest idea from your mind as you just manage to scrape by, from day to day. If the endemic poverty doesn’t silence you, the self-blame and shame will.
The converse is where the truly toxic shit kicks in, if you are somehow(?) not prosperous the problem must be all in *you*. Not the society around you, not the cultural norms, not the fucking status quo that mandates working poverty for so many Americans – no no no – the problem must be with the individuated, atomized, you.
This is fucking brilliant social engineering, no? Keeping the common people blaming themselves as opposed to organizing and effecting social change, all the while your class continues to ravage the countries wealth and resources.
Barbra Ehrenreich talks about this phenomena in her book Bright Sided and in the talk that follows starts her explanation of the cult of happiness via her own experiences with breast cancer. Further into the talk she describes the effects in the workplace and society as a whole. The book and the talk are well worth your time, faithful readers. I’ve excerpted the review from the book and the talk from a Harvard Book Store .Enjoy.
Ehrenreich’s quarrel is not with feeling upbeat but rather with the “inescapable pseudoscientific flapdoodle” of life coaches and self-improvement products claiming that
thinking positively will result in wealth, success and other joyful outcomes. Such magical thinking has become a means of social control in the workplace—where uncheerful employees are ostracized—and prevents action to achieve social change. With life coaches, business motivators and evangelical preachers promoting delusional expectations—“God has a plan” for those who have lost jobs and homes in the current economic crisis, says Christian preacher Joel Osteen—positive thinking can claim partial credit for a major role in such recent disastrous events as the Iraq war and the financial meltdown.
Ehrenreich’s many interviews include meetings with psychologist Martin Seligman, whose “positive psychology,” she finds, offers little credible evidence to make it any different from the wishing-will-make-it-so thinking of writers from Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People) to Rhonda Byrne (The Secret). The author’s tough-minded and convincing broadside raises troubling questions about many aspects of contemporary American life, and she provides an antidote to the pervasive culture of cheerfulness—reality-based critical thinking that will encourage people to alter social arrangements in ways that improve their lives.
Positive thinking summarized:
“[…] the new science of positive psychology is founded on a whole series of fallacious arguments; these involve circular reasoning, tautology, failure to clearly define or properly apply terms, the identification of causal relations where none exist, and unjustified generalisation. Instead of demonstrating that positive attitudes explain achievement, success, well-being and happiness, positive psychology merely associates mental health with a particular personality type: a cheerful, outgoing, goal-driven, status-seeking extravert.”
Dealing with positive psychology and its converts can be most irksome at times because, like religion, they don’t smell the bullshit they are peddling. Let’s look at the concise way Chris Hedges sums up this toxic phenomena in his book Empire of Illusion.
“There is a dark, insidious quality to the ideology promoted by the positive psychologists. They condemn all social critics and iconoclasts, the dissidents and the individualists, for failing to surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the corporate herd. They strangle creativity an moral autonomy. They seek to mold and shape individual human beings into a compliant collective. The primary teaching of this movement, which reflects the ideology of the corporate state, is that fulfillment is to be found in complete and total social conformity, a conformity that all totalitarian and authoritarian structures seek to impose on those they dominate. Its false promise of harmony and happiness only increases internal anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. The nagging undercurrents of alienation and the constant pressure to exhibit a false enthusiasm and buoyancy destroy real relationships. The loneliness of a work life where self-preservation is valued over authenticity and one must always be upbeat and positive, no matter what one’s actual mood or situation, is disorienting and stressful. The awful feeling that being positive may not, in fact, work if one is laid off or becomes sick must be buried and suppressed. Here, in the land of happy thoughts, there are no gross injustices, no abuses of authority, no economic and political systems to challenge, and no reason to complain.
Here, we are all happy. “
– Chris Hedges, The Empire of Illusion, p. 138 -139.
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