Do you ever fight with your partner?


 


Do you ever fight with your partner about parenting?


 


(Pretty much all of the couples I work with do both of those things.)


 


And these arguments tend to follow a pretty well-defined formula:


 



Child misbehaves.
Parent A gets overwhelmed, criticizes the child and snaps at Partner B for not doing more to help.
Parent B and says that clearly Parent A's 'better parenting approach' isn't working, since the kids are still misbehaving - this is contempt.
Parent A knows they don't want to parent the way they were raised, and also knows they aren't doing things totally in alignment with their values right now. Parent A has done a lot of work to try to heal themselves, but worries that it isn't happening fast enough to protect their children. And isn't it better than the bribing and punishing that Parent B is doing? They're being defensive.
Parent B stonewalls - they are overwhelmed and shuts down, refusing to talk about the issue.
Both partners walk away feeling frustrated, wonder how on earth it got to this point, and feel hopeless that it will ever improve.



 


If your fights look like this, I'm here to let you know that there is hope!


 


Last year I did Levels 1 and 2 (of 3 levels) of Gottman Method training. The Gottman Method is basically the only evidence-based framework for couple's therapy.


 


Drs. John & Julie Gottman describe the main ways they see couples struggle in their communication, and named them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - you saw all of them in the example above.


 


How many of the Horsemen show up in your fights?


 


(Criticism is almost always the first Horseman to arrive. Interrupt that, and you can communicate in entirely different ways.)


 


If you wish there was a better way to communicate about these challenging issues with your partner so you could actually get on the same page and parent as a team, today's episode will show you how to do that.