Couples Therapy: The Gottman Method

Most couples don't come to therapy because they've stopped caring about each other. It's usually quite the opposite. They care intensely about each other and about the relationship—or else they probably wouldn't have come.

They come because they have reached a number of stuck points in their relationship. They're having the same argument over and over without getting anywhere. Small disagreements turn into larger fights. One person tries to engage while the other withdraws or shuts down. Resentment accumulates.

Or perhaps there isn't much fighting at all. The relationship has simply become distant. Somewhere between work, children, responsibilities, phones, and everyday life, two people who once felt deeply connected have begun to feel more like roommates—sometimes even adversaries.

Gottman Method Couples Therapy offers a practical, research-informed way of understanding what happens to relationships when they become stuck and what couples can do differently.

What Is the Gottman Method?

The Gottman Method was developed by psychologists John and Julie Gottman, and one of the reasons we like it at Waypoint is that it is based on data.

Rather than beginning with a theory about how couples ought to behave, John Gottman and his research colleagues began by observing how real couples actually behaved over time. Couples were invited into what became known as the "Love Lab," an apartment-like setting outfitted so researchers could observe and record their interactions. They watched couples interact normally, but also asked them to discuss difficult or contentious subjects.

Researchers then carefully coded what they observed. They looked at positive and negative interactions, bids for connection and how partners responded to them, how couples disagreed, and—very importantly—what happened after things went wrong. Did they escalate the conflict? Did they withdraw? Or did they find ways to repair the connection?

But the researchers didn't stop when the couples left the lab. They followed couples longitudinally, checking in with them over the years to see what happened to their relationships. Over time, this gave the Gottmans a large body of data connecting patterns they had observed in couples' interactions with the later course of those relationships.

One of the important insights to come out of this work is that healthy couples are not couples who never disagree. Conflict is part of any intimate relationship. Some conflicts can be resolved. Many others cannot.

The goal, therefore, isn't to eliminate conflict. It is to learn how to manage conflict without allowing it to damage the relationship.

The Four Horsemen

The Gottmans identified many behaviors that contribute to the health—or lack of health—of a relationship. Among the most important were four communication patterns they called the Four Horsemen. When these patterns become pervasive in a relationship, they are warning signs of serious relationship distress.

They are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.

Criticism means attacking your partner's character rather than addressing the problem itself. There is an important difference between saying, "I was frustrated when the dishes were left in the sink," and, "You're so inconsiderate. You never think about anyone but yourself."

Defensiveness means refusing to receive your partner's feedback and fighting back rather than listening. Defensiveness doesn't occur in a vacuum, however. Introducing a subject harshly—particularly by attacking or criticizing—practically invites the other person to defend themselves. The couple can quickly find themselves in a cycle in which each person's reaction provokes the next reaction from the other.

Contempt goes beyond criticism. Contempt communicates disgust or superiority. It can take the form of ridicule, mockery, sarcasm, sneering, or talking to your partner as though you occupy a position above them and they are somehow beneath you.

Stonewalling occurs when one person simply shuts down. They may stop responding, withdraw emotionally, leave the interaction, or appear indifferent. Sometimes this is deliberate, but often the person has simply become so emotionally overwhelmed that they no longer know how to participate productively in the conversation.

The important thing is that couples can learn to do something different.

Gottman Method Couples Therapy gives couples tools for managing conflict, but it also helps them begin to see conflict differently: to turn toward one another and attempt repair, to listen rather than immediately become defensive, and to speak with respect and affection rather than criticism or contempt.

Some Problems Can Be Solved. Others Have to Be Managed.

One of the more useful—and sometimes relieving—ideas in Gottman therapy is that not every recurring disagreement is evidence that something is wrong with the relationship.

Some relationship problems are solvable. Others aren't.

One person likes to save money while the other is more comfortable spending it. One needs considerably more time alone. One is spontaneous while the other needs plans. Partners may differ in how they approach sex, parenting, household responsibilities, extended family, religion, leisure, or career.

Years of arguing may not make those differences disappear.

So the question sometimes has to change from:

"How do we finally settle this?"

to:

"How do we talk about this in a way that allows both of us to feel heard, respected, and loved?"

You may have to negotiate some issues repeatedly throughout a long relationship. That doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is failing. The task is to learn how to have those conversations without turning the disagreement into evidence that your partner doesn't care about you, respect you, or love you.

Friendship Matters More Than We Sometimes Realize

Many couples initially bond over the giddy wine of early romantic attachment. Everything about the other person seems fascinating. We want to know what they think, what they feel, where they came from, what they hope for, what they fear.

But couples who make it successfully over the long term eventually settle into something deeper and more durable: something like a deep, abiding friendship.

A lot can get in the way of that friendship. Life becomes stressful. Children can be stressful. Finances can be stressful. Work consumes time and attention. We gradually drift away from one another—and sometimes we even begin to see the other person as one of the causes of our distress.

The Gottmans use the term Love Map to describe our knowledge of our partner's inner world. Strengthening the relationship can therefore mean becoming curious about your partner again.

What is worrying them lately? What are they looking forward to? What feels meaningful to them now? What has changed? What do they want the next five or ten years of their life to look like?

If you've been together for twenty years, you may know an enormous amount about the person your partner was twenty years ago. Friendship requires continuing to get to know the person they are becoming.

Fondness and Admiration

Romantic relationships change with time.

The intense infatuation of a new relationship isn't designed to remain at exactly the same intensity forever. Long-term love has to become something capable of surviving ordinary life: laundry, mortgages, illness, children, work deadlines, aging, disappointments, and Tuesday evenings when nobody feels particularly romantic.

That makes a deceptively simple question important:

Do I like this person?

And another:

Do I admire them?

Fondness and admiration are important concepts in the Gottman Method. Couples who are struggling can become so focused on disappointment that they gradually stop noticing what they value in one another.

Rebuilding connection doesn't require pretending the problems aren't there. It means making sure the problems haven't become the only things you can see.

Starting Difficult Conversations Differently

The way we begin a difficult conversation has a great deal to do with where that conversation goes.

Suppose you're angry because your partner has once again left a sink full of dirty dishes. You begin with:

"You never clean up after yourself. I'm tired of having to be your maid."

You may have a legitimate complaint. But you've introduced it in a way that makes it much more difficult for your partner to hear it. Before the two of you can even discuss the dishes, your partner is defending themselves against an attack.

A Gottman gentle start-up approaches the same problem differently:

"I feel overwhelmed when I come into the kitchen and the sink is full of dishes. Would you put them in the dishwasher when you're finished?"

Notice that the complaint hasn't disappeared. You're not being asked to pretend you aren't angry or that the dishes don't matter. You're communicating the same problem without making your partner the problem.

You're also doing something else important: you're telling your partner what you want.

We're often quite good at telling people what they're doing wrong. We're sometimes much less good at telling them what we actually need from them. If all your partner knows is that you're unhappy, you've left them to figure out for themselves what would make things better.

Couples Therapy Creates Space for the Relationship

For some couples, one of the benefits of therapy is surprisingly simple: it creates a place to talk.

There is always a reason not to have the difficult conversation tonight. The children need something. Somebody has work to finish. You're tired. You're going somewhere. One of you picks up a phone. Tomorrow seems like a better time.

Tomorrow can turn into months.

For some couples, the therapy appointment may be the only hour that week when they sit face-to-face, put everything else aside, and give their sustained attention to the relationship.

The therapist can slow the conversation down, help each person communicate more clearly, and notice patterns that are very difficult to see when you're caught inside them. Sometimes people even say things in couples therapy that their partner has genuinely never heard before. Having a structured space—and another person helping to hold that space—can make difficult things easier to say and easier to hear.

Couples Therapy Isn't Only for Relationships in Crisis

Unfortunately, many couples don't seek therapy until the relationship is in serious trouble.

By then, they may be trying to repair years of accumulated resentment while simultaneously learning relationship skills they never developed in the first place.

Therapy can still be useful then. But you don't have to wait until you're considering separation.

Couples therapy can be useful when two people love one another and intend to remain together but recognize patterns they don't want to continue. It can be a place to strengthen communication, rebuild friendship, address recurring disagreements, restore intimacy, or deliberately think together about the kind of life you want to build.

The goal isn't simply to get through the present crisis. It's to build a relationship better equipped to handle the next one.

Does Successful Couples Therapy Always Mean Staying Together?

No.

The goal of couples therapy isn't to keep every couple together regardless of whether the relationship works.

I think about success in couples therapy fairly simply: if a couple stays together and they should stay together, that's a successful outcome. If they split up and they should split up, that's also a successful outcome.

Sometimes therapy helps people repair a relationship. Sometimes it helps them recognize that the relationship needs to end. In either case, therapy can help two people understand more clearly what has happened between them and make thoughtful decisions about what comes next.

Gottman Method Couples Therapy at Waypoint

At Waypoint Psychotherapy, we use Gottman-informed couples therapy because it gives couples a practical, research-informed framework for understanding what is happening in their relationship and learning how to respond differently.

You don't need to wait until you're on the verge of separation to come to couples therapy. You may be having the same arguments repeatedly, feeling increasingly distant from one another, struggling to repair after conflict, or simply recognizing that the way you're relating to one another isn't working anymore.

The work is not about creating a relationship without conflict. It's about learning how to handle conflict without allowing it to destroy connection—and strengthening the friendship, fondness, admiration, and shared life underneath it.