Couples don’t just stop caring for each other. What normally occurs is the way they communicate dissolves. Slowly, over time.
For nearly four decades, John Gottman observed couples fight in a lab at the University of Washington—heart rate, tone, face expression—all of it—to see what made firmer bonds than others. And one of his findings, when presented, completely throws people: roughly 70 percent of marital conflict never gets resolved. The same argument goes on for years between couples.
And then you sort of sit with that, and that eases some pressure. The point was never to finalize the debate. It’s learning how to have it without destroying each other along the way.
The Advice Everyone Gives Doesn’t Actually Hold Up
Ask most people how to communicate better during conflict and you’ll hear some version of “practice active listening,” meaning repeat back what your partner said before you respond. Gottman’s lab tested this directly and got a result nobody expected. Stable, happy couples almost never used formal active listening while actually arguing. He described it as something close to emotional gymnastics, a skill that asks too much of people at the exact moment they’re least capable of doing it (source).
That doesn’t mean listening is irrelevant. It means the scripted, textbook version taught in a lot of workshops falls apart the second real feelings enter the room. What actually mattered in his data was something much smaller and easier to remember: how the conversation opened, and whether either partner tried to repair things once it started going wrong.
How You Open the Conversation Predicts Almost Everything
Gottman’s team got so good at reading the first three minutes of a conflict conversation that they could predict, with striking accuracy, how the rest of it would go. A harsh opener, sarcasm, an eye roll, a flat accusation, tends to drag the whole conversation down with it. A softer opener buys both people a little more room before they get defensive.
So instead of “you never help around here,” try something closer to “I’ve felt pretty stretched thin lately and could use more help with the house.” Same complaint. Completely different odds of your partner actually hearing it instead of bracing against it.
Learn to Spot the Four Habits That Predict Real Trouble
The four patterns Gottman identified that repeatedly emerge in couples moving toward serious trouble are as follows: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. According to his research, contempt was by far the strongest predictor of divorce (more than any others), including eye rolling, mockery and sarcasm.
None of these simply manifest out of thin air. They usually only appear when a person has been ignored for long enough that they have given up on being heard the normal way. Even just verbalizing the pattern in the moment, “I think I just got defensive – can I try that again?” is often sufficient to steer a conversation back at least from where it was headed.
Talk About What You Felt, Not What They Did
There’s a reason so many communication approaches lean on statements that start with “I” instead of “you.” Saying “I felt left out when the plans changed without telling me” is a lot harder for your partner to argue with than “you always change plans behind my back.” The first describes your experience. The second is an accusation, and accusations invite defense.
Marshall Rosenberg built an entire framework, Nonviolent Communication, around this same idea: naming what you observed, the feeling that came up, the need underneath it, and a specific request, all without blame woven into the phrasing. It’s been studied well outside of couples work too. A scoping review of NVC training in healthcare settings found it reduced the kind of language that triggers defensiveness between people under real stress, not just in theory but in practice (source).
Know When to Actually Stop and Walk Away
There’s a physical side to conflict that a lot of couples ignore completely. Once your heart rate climbs high enough during an argument, your brain gets worse at listening and worse at thinking clearly, full stop. Gottman calls this flooding. Trying to push through it usually just makes things worse for both people.
A better move, agreed on ahead of time while things are calm: pick a signal either partner can use to call a real pause, and commit to actually coming back to the conversation after twenty minutes or so once heart rates settle. The point isn’t to dodge the topic. It’s coming back to it as two people who can actually hear each other again instead of two people still running on adrenaline.
Practice This Somewhere Low Stakes First
Waiting until a real fight to try a new way of talking rarely goes well, because the middle of an argument is the worst possible time to learn a new skill. A randomized trial testing an online version of Gottman’s psychoeducational program had couples practice these tools outside of live conflict, and the results were significant. Constructive communication improved for both partners, and destructive habits like demand-withdraw and mutual avoidance dropped by more than half in some cases (source).
A simple version of this at home: pick fifteen minutes a week, talk through something smaller and lower stakes, and practice opening softly and speaking from your own feelings instead of their behavior. Building the habit somewhere calm makes it far more likely to show up automatically once a real fight starts.
Signs You Need More Than a Communication Exercise
In some cases, there is nothing wrong with the technique. When conversations turn hostile no matter how softly you open them, when one partner continually shuts down and refuses to engage, or if the same old resentment keeps flaring over and over again despite what you’re really fighting about, that’s typically pointing towards something that a communication tool on its own won’t reach.
If conflict has gotten stagnant for too long, or these exercises help somewhat but not nearly enough, our couples counseling team at CH Wellness Center can help you examine the underlying issues. Get in touch to book a session.