#3: Barreling Over the Falls (Part 1 - Introduction)

Tonight's class was entitled, "Barreling Over the Falls: Life in the Middle of the Relationship Apocalypse." As an experiment, I'm going to try posting a lot of what we talked about in class on the blog. I will do it in various segments, and I'll also include videos, quotes, etc. that were not shared in class but that might add to your understanding of the principles we discussed.

We started off tonight's class by discussing the work of Dr. John Gottman, who is identified on the cover of his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (which, by the way, I highly recommend) as the "Country's Foremost Relationship Expert." Sounds kind of cocky, but he really is very good at what he does. For a clip in which he explains one of his methods of observing couples (the "Love Lab" that I briefly referenced in class), click here. Anyway, we began class by reading the following quote from Malcom Gladwell's book blink:

“[Dr. John] Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a man and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. If he watches a couple for fifteen minutes, his success rate is just under ninety percent.”

That's pretty amazing stuff. During the course of his 30+ years of studying couple interactions, Dr. Gottman has been able to determine many behaviors that help relationships to thrive. He has also isolated the types of communication that are most likely to usher in the end of a relationship, which he has aptly labeled "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." We will begin our discussion of these "certain kinds of negativity, [which] if allowed to run rampant, are so lethal to a relationship" (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, p. 27) in the next post.