10 warning signs that your relationship is approaching critical failure
Part 1 of 10: Overwhelmingly Negative Communication Patterns
This 10 part series is all about the most critical warning signs that can spell trouble for your marriage or long-term relationship (LTR).
Once you understand these factors, you’ll get a clearer picture of how healthy your LTR or marriage may be at the moment, and your risk of separation or divorce.
First things first, here’s a way to organize these signs in your head.
We’ll call 8 of these signs “internal factors” and the last 2 “external factors.”
What do I mean by this?
This first sign is an internal warning sign.
Warning Sign 1: Overwhelmingly Negative Communication Patterns
All relationships have conflict at some point. This becomes a red flag when your patterns of communication are more negative than positive.
Lots of criticism and defensiveness are especially bad and will threaten how long your relationship lasts.
In fact, these two behaviors have been proven by top marital researchers as predictive signs of divorce. Yes, you read that correctly - predictive.
In one of the original research studies in this area, researchers Carrère and Gottman were able to predict the chances that a couple would later divorce by simply observing a marital conflict in action.
In fact, just the first three minutes of a relationship conversation had astonishingly high predictive power for revealing which couples would later divorce!
How to Course Correct
Focus on correcting your behavior and not your partner’s. Commit to doing YOUR part which may change the entire vibe in the relationship.
Pro tip: recognize when your negative communication patterns are happening in the moment!
And when they do, replace criticism with expressing your unmet needs. And replace defensiveness with willingness to admit your own mistakes or faults.
In this way you’re not only helping the relationship communication, but also leading by example for your partner as well.
Stay tuned for Part 2!