Understanding and Resolving Conflict with the Gottman Method
Jul 15, 2024
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In the beginning, you and your partner seemed to be on the same wavelength for just about everything. You couldn’t believe how well you matched.
What you may not realize is that the chemistry of new love deactivates sections of your brain — so you can’t see negative aspects of your partner or your relationship. Love might not be blind, but it is, in a sense, kind of dumb.
Eventually, as you settle into your relationship and the hormones that shut off your prefrontal cortex simmer down, conflicts arise. Suddenly the partner who used to be on the same page with you is reading an entirely different book.
“What’s wrong with them?” you wonder. “What’s wrong with you?” they counter. Now you’re in conflict and you don’t have the slightest clue how to get out of it.
Maggie Vaughan, MFT, PhD, and our team at Happy Apple in New York City help couples navigate conflict and steer toward resolutions through a variety of evidence-based theories, including couples therapy that incorporates the Gottman Method.
Analyses have revealed that a person who receives couples therapy is 70%-80% better off after therapy than someone who never underwent the process. You want your relationship to last and succeed. Can the Gottman Method help you?
While cold hard facts and numbers might not seem romantic, they’re essential to the Gottman Method. Rather than basing relationship strategies on their own biases or utopian fantasies, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, husband and wife, started by observing and following thousands of couples for decades at a time.
Through watching and listening to how more than 3,000 couples dealt with conflict, they identified strategies and behaviors that helped some couples succeed and thrive in their relationships. They also identified usually subconscious strategies and behaviors that sabotaged couples and ended their relationships.
Research they conducted alone and with colleagues revealed that couples’ interactions are about 80% stable and predictable over a three-year period — they don’t change without intervention. About 69% of relationship problems never get resolved; they become perpetual problems that are based on personality differences between the partners.
The first part of the Gottman Method involves a detailed assessment of you and your partner as a couple, including your individual personalities and how you interact. Then, your therapist integrates research-based interventions into your treatment. The goal of the Gottman Method in couples therapy is to:
Going through the training together helps you to understand each other better as individuals, to listen actively, and to respond thoughtfully. You learn techniques that help you defuse anger, redirect toward soothing tasks, and re-engage with humor and affection.
The Gottmans didn’t rely on data solely to devise their relationship assessment and treatments. They’ve also used data to evaluate the effectiveness of their methods.
Various components of the Gottman Method — including their work with parenting — have undergone randomized clinical trials. The trial periods include follow-ups to determine that learning new strategies and techniques persists over time.
The average couple waits about six years before seeking couples therapy. However, half of all marriages that end in divorce do so within the first seven years.
If you’re still together, it’s not too late to unlearn behaviors and thought patterns that are sabotaging your relationship. When you see the team at Happy Apple about couples concerns, you learn new skills and coping techniques that improve your present relationship and also help you function with less conflict in the world outside your relationship, including with your extended family.
It’s never too early to start to learn the Gottman Method, either. When couples get counseling in the beginning of their relationship, or before they’ve encountered significant conflicts or challenges, they’re more likely to stay together and be happier for it, too.
Improve your relationship and bring more humor and affection into your life with the Gottman Method. To learn more, contact Happy Apple today by phone or online.