6. Describing your marriage in a negative way

No. 6 on the list of things that predict divorce is having an overall negative opinion about your marriage. In 1992, Gottman and other scientists at the University of Washington developed a method called the “oral history interview,” in which they asked married couples to talk about various aspects of their relationship.

By looking at the conversations, the experts were able to identify some of the things that predict divorce. In 2000, they put 95 newlywed couples through this type of interview, and the results showed that their scores on certain measures predicted the weakness or strength of their marriage.

Those measures included: how much the couple describes their relationships as chaotic; negativity; how much each spouse elaborates on what the other is saying; disappointment in the marriage; fondness for each other; and how much each partner emphasizes unification in the marriage.