Signs that Your Relationship Is Falling Apart
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2019
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fr. Mike discusses four signs that your relationship is in danger of falling apart, especially when it comes to stonewalling. Stonewalling, as used in the context of this episode, is when we refuse to communicate or cooperate with someone. Psychologist Dr. John Gottman calls it one of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, or one of four types of expression that indicate that your relationship is falling apart. The other three are defensiveness, criticism, and contempt.
As Christians, we should always pay attention to the one who is communicating with us. After all, we would expect at least that much from them when communicating with them. Loving someone means seeing them. By seeing, here we mean literally looking them in the eyes when they talk to you, but also understanding them and seeing them as a person made in God’s image.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I have a couple of favorite psychologists because what Breeze doesn't have a couple of favorite |
| 0:09.7 | psychologists and one of them is a man named Dr. John Gottman. |
| 0:12.9 | Dr. John Gottman, he had a pioneer, he did a pioneered like the study of micro, what |
| 0:20.8 | he called micro expressions. |
| 0:22.0 | At one point he mapped the entire human face, all the muscles in the human face and then |
| 0:26.0 | did all the muscular combinations that would be basically all the facial expressions the |
| 0:31.7 | human being could possibly have. |
| 0:33.1 | One of the things he found was that across the board as human beings we have some of the |
| 0:39.2 | same basic facial expressions for the same basic human emotions, whether that being the |
| 0:43.7 | developed world or in some remote tribe that had never seen the developed world ever. |
| 0:48.4 | We always have the same kind of expressions for joy, for disgust, for contempt, for sorrow. |
| 0:53.6 | It's really fascinating how united we are as human beings. |
| 0:57.5 | But he also was able to diagnose four facial expressions, or four expressions, or four elements |
| 1:03.3 | and a couple's or any human relationship that he called the four horsemen. |
| 1:09.1 | So the four horsemen, he called them the four horsemen of the apocalypse because he saw |
| 1:13.7 | them on a regular basis in a couple's interactions with each other, particularly when it comes |
| 1:18.1 | to marriage. |
| 1:19.4 | He said, oh man, this spells impending doom. |
| 1:22.6 | This is things do not look good, things are pretty bleak. |
| 1:25.5 | He actually maintained that he could, by watching a couple, have a conversation for more |
| 1:30.0 | than 15 minutes or for about 15 minutes, he could determine whether or not they were on |
| 1:33.6 | the brink of divorce or not. |
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