If you have ever found yourself in a heated argument with your partner, does that mean you are going to break up? If you are in a stable relationship, the answer is most likely NO. But according to John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington, if things in your marriage had already been going downhill for some time, one of those arguments could turn out to be the final one.
Gottman says couples can spot certain “red flags” in the way you and your partner behave towards each other, and that these could predict what is going to happen.
According to the psychologist, there are two main behaviour patterns that serve as telltale signs that all is not well in a couple. One of them usually ends in an early divorce (just a few years after the wedding), while the second can drag a marriage along for many years, which amounts to a long, drawn-out break-up.
These are the two types of behaviour that usually end in divorce.
1. The couple gets stuck in a negative cycle
An early divorce is usually easy to predict when a couple gets stuck in a negative cycle and is unable to repair the relationship.
For these couples, slipping into negativity is like walking into quicksand. It is easy to get in but hard to get out.
Both friendship and intimacy end up deteriorating, and the partners become each other’s adversaries instead of allies.
When neither partner does their bit to clear up and resolve the conflict at hand, the relationship deteriorates beyond repair, and it does not take long to conclude that it no longer makes sense, because there is nothing left. Not even friendship. Even intimacy becomes uncomfortable.
2. The couple only agrees to disagree
Some couples stay married for many years because they have accepted that they will never agree on anything. According to Gottman, around middle age these couples begin to feel that their lives are empty. These marriages can last as long as 16 years after the wedding, and the partners would probably not consider divorce because of the children.
But when their children reach their teens, they end up comparing their own lives with their children’s, thinking: “When I was that age I had so many dreams, and now I’ve ended up stuck in a marriage that doesn’t fulfil me.”
Gottman compares them to those couples who sit through a dinner without talking to each other. He calls them “hostile-detached” couples, and says they can last a long time. Often, he adds, there is also an affair, and in many cases that is what triggers the separation.
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Featured image: William Hogarth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
