Gottman's Sound Relationship Home Essay

When our friends and family marry, the ultimate goal is “Till Death Do Us Part”, however, contrary to popular belief half of marriages end in divorce. This statistic has been proven to be accurate for the last 40 years. Due to the large number of divorces, they are a lot more acceptable than they once were. Now becoming a societal norm. Divorces are now a part of everyday life. This ethical shift has impacted a lot of people, mostly the children. Figuring out why most Americans are choosing divorce over marriage counseling will depend on many generalization factors.

Gurman, A. S. (2008). Clinical handbook of couple therapy (4th ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

During treatment Cognitive-Behavioral Couple Therapy (CBCT) and Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) will use feedback sessions to help assess how the couple is doing in a positive way (Gurman, 2008). Both CBCT and IBCT both use conflict and emotional expressions as avenues for couples to express their affection and understanding for one another (Gurman, 2008). Both CBCT and IBCT also have the same value system of creating a general closeness and intimacy between partners (Gurman, 2008). Regardless of the differences, the two therapies have the general

Pratz’s first main point is that marriages can be predicted to either succeed or end in divorce within the early stages of courtship or initial years of marriage. She offers that the early stages of distress are what determine a couple’s fate. Pratz includes Ted Huston, a professor of human ecology and psychology at the University of Texas, and his Process of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships Project as her main source throughout the article. Pratz states, “through multiple

Gottman couples therapy is an integrative approach that focuses on emotion, behavior, cognitive, and narrative approaches with in a systemic framework (Gottman & Gottman, 2013). This therapy is based on extensive research about how stable relationships work and how unstable relationships fail. The goal of Gottman therapy is to help couple process their inevitable fights, moments of miscommunication, or hurt feelings and to enable them to repair the relationship (Gottman & Gottman, 2013). Moreover, the goal is to “heal the wounds crated by regrettable incidents” (Gottman & Gottman, 2013, p. 95).

And how can we, exactly? Well now, Gladwell walks us through how Gottman determines the success or failure of a couple. First, he talks about the complex and intricate coding system that Gottman created, the SPAFF, that has twenty separate categories, which correspond to every emotion a married couple could possibly make during a conversation (21). Gottman uses the SPAFF codes to assign an emotion to every second of the couple’s interaction. So, when a 15 minute conversation is broken down in this way, it could end up looking like this: angry for 6 seconds, defensive for 10 seconds, whining for 5 seconds, and so on. Gottman discovered that typically, the couples who stayed together had more positive emotions compared to negative emotions during these 15 minute conversations. The couples that ended up divorced had a higher ratio of negative emotions to positive ones instead (26). When Gottman sat down, watched 15 minutes worth of married couple’s conversations, and then analyzed them using the methods Gladwell described to us, he was 90% accurate at determining which couples would

The two therapy techniques that are being questioned this week are Emotional Focused Couple Therapy and Hope Focused Couple Therapy. Both techniques are effective in marital and couple therapy and both systems can be utilized effectively, however, I think comparable to other techniques the results depend on the people and the therapist. Hope focused therapy is centered around the brain and how couples perceive where their marriage is and where they want it to go. Watson (2017) states, “The approach is oriented around hopefulness and strengths, helping couples assess their strengths and create a positive narrative around them and their relationship to combat the discouragement and hopelessness that couples typically bring into counseling,”

Marriage and family therapists are very much needed and are growing in demand. The stigma of seeing a therapist for marital and family problems is disappearing thus making people more likely to seek help for issues they cannot resolve on their own. There has also been an increased recognition of the field of marriage and family therapy (http://www.bls.gov). Over half of managed health care providers and employee assistance programs employ or contract with MFTs and 91% of graduates in 1992 from COAMFTE accredited programs were employed not long after graduation (http://www.aamft.org). According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics the field of marriage and family therapy is expected to see a growth of 30% by 2016 making it one of the fastest growing of all occupations (http://www.bls.gov).

But it is not the traditional type of counseling that most couples do. They still attend a 'Couples Retreat' and the one that they go to has a 90 percent success rate with repairing marriages.

Dattilio (2005) adopted concepts from key contributors like Gerald Patterson and Marion Forgatch (1987) - significant developers of one of the most prominent behavioral parent training programs. Other key contributors include Neil Jacobson and Andrew Christensen who developed behavioral couple therapy in the early 1970’s with the outlook for improving couple functioning and emphasis on partner acceptance (a model that was later coined integrative behavioral couples therapy (Gehart, 2014, p. 277). Norman Epstein and John Gottman were also key influencers of Dattilio’s (2005) perspectives; their concepts of cognitive

Marriage and Family Therapy is a brief solution-focused form of psychotherapy used to treat a wide array of problems ranging from depression and marital problems, to alcoholism and schizophrenia, in a couple and family system context. Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) are trained and licensed mental health professionals who are capable of diagnosing and treating mental and emotional disorders whether cognitive, affective, or behavioral, within those systems. They are required to have a master’s or doctoral degree with specialized marriage and family therapy training. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) also requires MFT’s to have a minimum

Although various models for couples therapy differ on the means and approach to individual sessions, they do share a common core of themes regarding the utility and practicality of individual sessions as a component of couples therapy. These commonalities include assessing and ensuring safety, skill building, information gathering, and building therapeutic alliances.

To measure their satisfaction, the RDAS evaluates and differentiates the couple’s dyadic adjustment in both distressed and nondistressed relationships (Gangamma et al., 2012). Lower scores on this scale indicate greater relationship distress while higher scores indicate greater relationship satisfaction (Gangamma et al., 2012). Thus, both of these measures may aid the therapist in determining each partner’s perception of unfairness and satisfaction within their relationship (Gangamma et al., 2012). These measures also provide the therapist with a greater understanding of where each partner stands in regards to their relationship. Moreover, this greater understanding of the relationship can help the therapist determine a good starting point for contextual couple’s

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2011 there were 2,118,000 marriages in the United States and almost half as many divorces (2013). The CDC also reports that only half of all first marriages will reach their twentieth anniversary. Divorce is a topic everyone is familiar with and it has almost become a normal part of life. While it is assumed that more divorces occur now than in the previous generation, the CDC actually reports that divorce rates have dropped over the past twenty to thirty years, though this could be due to the increase in individuals who live together without ever getting married or those who simply separate and cannot afford to become legally divorced. However, it has become a more

“DIVORCE” – Just the sound of such word in any married couple or children’s ear can cause great agony that can even become terminal. Research and personal experience, has proven that in today's society, divorce is more common amongst newlyweds. Since 2009 the rate of divorce has increased to approximately forty percent, There are three out of every ten marriage that ends up in divorce before it reaches the stage of maturity, and the most prevalent results are – lack of communication and infidelity.