Featured Image Credit: The Gottman Institute
Topics: Reddit
Gerrard Kaonga
Marriage can be difficult, but one marriage expert has claimed that he can predict the divorce likelihood of a couple after just a few questions for a test.
Even more shockingly, he claims to have a 91 percent accuracy rate.
Sounds a little far-fetched but psychologist and professor John Gottman, who has spent his entire career studying marriages, stands by it.
Gottman has written scores of books on relationships and currently teaches in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington.
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Suffice to say, he isn’t just some random quack off the internet.
Psychologist Dr. Mark Baker has said he is convinced by Gottman’s findings and in a video that has begun to recirculate on Reddit, he explained Gottman’s test and broke it down.
Baker, who made the video in 2014, has divided users on whether it truly can predict with such a high degree of accuracy.
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“[Gottman] claims that he can predict whether a couple is going to get a divorce with a 91 percent accuracy rate within 10 minutes of meeting them if they show the signs of fruitless fighting,” Baker said.
Explaining the kind of information Gottman would be attempting to extract from the couples, Baker said there were essentially six signs of trouble.
These six signs are:
1) Harsh Startup
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2) Defensiveness, Contempt, Criticism, Stonewalling
3) Flooding
4) Physiological Distress
5) Bad Memories
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6) Failed Repair Attempts.
While some of these may seem self-explanatory, Baker broke them down further and gave examples of what they would look like.
For Harsh Startup, he said it was the way in which couples addressed one another if there was a problem.
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Typical phrases used can often be too aggressive or have a hostile attitude like ‘you did it again’ or ‘we need to talk’.
Looking at number 2, Baker said Gottman refers to it as the Four Horsemen. A combination of things that together indicate a sign of divorce when a couple attempts to communicate with one another.
Flooding is when a person is overwhelmed with emotions to the point they can’t adequately explain how they are feeling to their partner.
This can prove to be particularly dangerous as it can lead to physiological distress, which Baker explained as being when someone lets issues fester in a relationship to the point they start manifesting in physical problems like ulcers, neck aches and back aches.
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Bad Memories refers to when a person only remembers the bad parts of a relationship, even when recalling particularly good moments in the relationship.
And finally, Baker said an inability to repair issues, like the ones listed prior, can often spell disaster for a marriage and result in divorce.