Five things that could kill your relationship

According to relationship expert, John Gottman, there are 5 things that can predict accurately if you relationship will last or will end. If you identify these five signs, you should be careful because you are in the path to destroy your Love:

1. Criticism. It is not a matter of expressing that you feel uncomfortable with some behaviors or actions of your partner. It is a matter of expressing judgement or disapproval to the person itself, their personality or character.

2. Contempt. You are not feeling respect for your partner, you regard him/her with disdain, as inferior or worthless and treat him/her with sarcasm/ cynicism to the point you demean him/ her.  Watch out if you use sentences like "you always..." Or "you never", they are good indicators for the presence of contempt.

3. Defensiveness. If you react overly sensitive or in a very strong way when your partner make a complaint, suggestion or observation, you are being defensive.  You may react blaming your partner, responding with a counterattack or having an innocent-victim attitude. You deny your responsibility in whatever started the conflict, loosing an opportunity for improving your communication.

4. Stonewalling. After several episodes of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, the response might be stonewalling, that is the refusal to cooperate, to resolve the conflict, to listen to the other point of view or to compromise.  Stonewalling may include to ignore the other person, or punish him/her with the silence treatment which is by the way a form of abuse because its objective is to control the partner.

5. Finally, if repair attempts don't work, you relationships might be facing the worst scenario. Repair attempts are statements/ actions that a person say/ take to prevent the situation from getting out of control or escalating in an harmful way. For example saying "I'm sorry", hugging the other person, show empathy, etc. 

If you detect these signs in your relationship, there is 90% of probability that you will breakup in the future.

In my next posts, I will tell you what you can do to improve some of these issues.