Gottman method: what it gives you and where it stops

What is the Gottman method?

The Gottman method is a couples therapy built on watching couples closely and coding what they do, second by second. It grew out of an apartment laboratory at an American university where couples were recorded while they talked, argued, ate and sat about, and what they did was matched against what became of the relationship years later¹. That is an unusual amount of direct watching in a field that otherwise relies on what people report about themselves afterwards, and it is why the vocabulary is so good.

• The Sound Relationship House. The theory the therapy is built on, with friendship as the foundation.
• The four horsemen. Criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.
• Bids and turning. One of you reaches for the other, and the other turns towards, away or against.
• Repair. Whatever either of you does to come back after it has gone wrong.

Does the Gottman method work?

The watching was good. The evidence that the therapy changes what happens to you is thinner, and the 2 claims get mixed up constantly. Predicting an outcome and changing one are separate achievements. A model that sorts couples accurately after the fact does not show that altering those behaviours alters where they end up.

• The accuracy claim. The Institute states that the team could predict whether a couple would divorce with an average of over 90 per cent accuracy, and that the predictions replicated across 7 longitudinal studies¹.
• The independent test. When the models were applied to 85 young married or cohabiting couples from a higher-risk American sample, the major findings of the original newlywed study were not replicated, and 2 of the 22 processes examined were significantly associated with whether the couple stayed together².
• Who it has been tested with. Most of the coding came from heterosexual American couples, and there is published outcome work on the method with gay and lesbian couples³.

One study on one population does not demolish a method, and that is my reading rather than a settled conclusion in the field. Its own authors went no further than saying the models need more replication before clinical advice rests on them. What it does mean is that the 90 per cent figure should not be quoted at you as a reason to trust anybody, and I am wary of it even when it is quoted in my favour.

Why do the right words make the argument worse?

The label arrives in the middle of wanting something from your partner, and it arrives as a move.

What you want, at the moment you reach for the word stonewalling, is to be felt. Underneath the accuracy there is something nearer to panic: the person you live with has gone somewhere you cannot reach, and you want them back in the room. What comes out is a diagnosis. Your voice goes flat and clipped, your chest tightens, and your partner hears a verdict where you meant a request. So they go further away, which makes the word more accurate, which is why you say it again.

This is what the vocabulary does to couples who have read well. You end up both correct about each other and no closer. Being understood is what you were after, and naming it precisely is what stops it arriving.

Where does the Gottman method stop?

It stops at the reason, at the edge of the population it was built on, and where one of you is steering the other.

Contempt is a fact about a Tuesday evening. The coding tells you it happened and how much of it there was, and it does not tell you how these 2 particular people arrived at a Tuesday evening like that. For that you need an account of what each of you learned to expect from somebody close, which is Bowlby’s territory rather than the laboratory’s, and I have written about attachment style separately.

Then there is language. A marriage conducted in the second language of one or both of you runs differently: a phrase that sounds soft in one language lands hard in another, and whoever is working in their second language is spending effort simply on being in the conversation. The method says almost nothing about that, and in Copenhagen it is half of what sits in front of me.

The horsemen also describe behaviour between equals. Where one person is steering what the other is allowed to think, better speaking and listening makes the steered partner easier to manage, which is the opposite of help. That is a different situation with a different name, and I have written about gaslighting in a relationship.

Which parts of the Gottman method are worth using?

The four horsemen, the bid and repair are the parts worth having in an ordinary week. I am not a certified Gottman therapist and I do not work to its protocol. I use those 3 pieces of its vocabulary inside my own way of working, which draws on emotion-focused therapy for couples in Greenberg’s sense.

• The four horsemen. One of you says the word stonewalling, both of you know what is meant, and the separate argument about what just happened does not have to be had.
• Turning towards a bid. Little else gives a couple something this small and this specific to change on a Wednesday.
• Repair. In my room the couples who argue badly and repair well are in better shape than the couples who argue politely and never come back to it, which is my clinical judgement rather than a finding.

Take the tools and hold the certainty loosely. I have written about the four horsemen, and what they miss.

How do you use the Gottman method without making things worse?

You use the vocabulary on yourself before you use it on your partner. The words arrive long before the discipline to use them well, and there is a stage most reading couples pass through where each of you names what the other is doing and neither of you stops doing it.

• Name your own horseman. Say which one you are doing, while you are doing it, and leave the sentence there.
• Leave theirs alone. Correctly diagnosing your partner in the middle of an argument is a move in the argument, and they will hear it as one.
• Turn towards one bid. Answer one small reach from your partner today, out loud, and let it be the dull one about the shopping.
• Watch the repair. After an argument, notice who comes back first and how, and come back sooner yourself next time.
• Do one unexpected thing. Change something you always do, at the point where your partner is still braced for the usual.

The load is not even here. Where one of you has done more of the reading, the vocabulary is mostly in your hands, and so is most of the restraint. I have written about why the same argument keeps coming back.

These steps are not enough, and are the wrong instrument, where naming a horseman has become the newest weapon between you, where one of you is frightened of the other, or where one person is steering what the other is allowed to think. What has to be established first, and separately, is whether this is 2 people caught in a bad pattern or one person managing another. I cannot tell those apart from a description of the arguments alone, and the person inside it is the last to be able to tell, which is why it needs looking at closely rather than deciding quickly.

Questions people ask

Do I need a certified Gottman therapist, or will any couples therapist do?

What matters more than the certificate is whether the therapist can hold both of you without taking a side. A certified practitioner gives you the protocol as designed, which suits some couples well and makes others feel they are being processed.

What happens in a first couples session if we have already read the books?

I ask what each of you hoped the reading would settle, because the answer to that says more than the labels do. Nothing is decided in a first session, and you are not asked to commit to a course of work in it.

How do I get my partner to come to couples therapy at all?

Ask for one session rather than for therapy, and say plainly what you want from it. A bounded hour is a different proposition from an open-ended commitment, and it is the open end that most people are refusing.

How long before couples therapy changes anything?

Changes in how you repair show up before the pattern underneath them shifts. As a suggestion rather than a rule, 6 to 8 sessions is enough to see whether the work is moving, and I would rather say that at the start than after a year.

Does couples therapy work if English is our second language?

It works, and it is worth saying out loud which of you is working harder to be in the room. A phrase that sounds soft in one language lands hard in another, and that gap is doing some of the damage you have been blaming on each other.

If you want to go beneath the skills to the feelings that drive them, EFT couples therapy is the approach I use with couples.

Sources

1. The Gottman Institute, Research
2. Kim, H. K., Capaldi, D. M. and Crosby, L., Generalizability of Gottman and Colleagues’ Affective Process Models of Couples’ Relationship Outcomes, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2007
3. Garanzini, S. and colleagues, Results of Gottman Method Couples Therapy with Gay and Lesbian Couples, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2017

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.