1. Criticizing Their Character Instead of Addressing the Behavior
There’s a real difference between saying “I felt hurt when the dishes sat there all week” and saying “You’re so lazy, you never help around here.” The first names a behavior. The second attacks who a person is. Relationship researcher John Gottman identified this pattern, known as criticism, as one of four communication styles most predictive of divorce, and it typically kicks off a chain reaction that pulls in the other three.
One partner raises an issue, but it comes out as criticism such as “You never help around here,” the other partner feels attacked and becomes defensive, and the first partner, feeling unheard, escalates further. It’s a loop that feeds itself. Once a partner starts to feel like their character is constantly under attack rather than their specific choices, they stop hearing the actual complaint and start bracing for the next one.
2. Responding to Every Complaint with Contempt
Contempt is different from garden-variety criticism, and it’s far more corrosive. It shows up as eye-rolling, sarcasm, mockery, name-calling, or a general air of moral superiority toward a partner. Contempt was the single strongest predictor of divorce, more powerful than criticism, defensiveness, or stonewalling alone, according to Gottman’s research spanning decades of observed couples.
One researcher calls it “sulfuric acid for love,” and his research supports that characterization with a precision that is sobering. What makes it so damaging is the underlying message it sends: I am better than you, and you disgust me a little. That’s a message no partner can absorb repeatedly without starting to build an exit plan, consciously or not.
3. Getting Defensive Instead of Actually Listening
Defensiveness feels justified in the moment. Someone raises a concern, you feel accused, and your instinct is to explain, deflect, or counter-attack rather than absorb what’s being said. It’s an almost universal response, but that doesn’t make it harmless. It’s understandable to defend yourself when you feel attacked, but this approach won’t have the desired effect; defensiveness only escalates conflict if the critical spouse doesn’t back down, because defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner and won’t allow for healthy conflict management.
The frustrating part is that defensiveness often feels like communication to the person doing it. They’re talking, explaining, defending their position. Meanwhile their partner experiences it as being dismissed entirely. Nobody feels heard, and the actual issue that started the conversation never gets addressed.
4. Shutting Down and Going Silent During Conflict
Stonewalling is the fourth and final horseman in this framework, and it might be the most quietly devastating of the group. It’s usually a response to contempt, and it occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction, shuts down, and simply stops responding, making evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, or acting busy. To the partner on the receiving end, it doesn’t feel like a pause. It feels like abandonment.
It triggers abandonment wounds, for the partner being stonewalled, the silent treatment can feel like emotional abandonment, and it activates deep fears of rejection and being unlovable. What’s often misunderstood is that stonewalling isn’t always a power move. Often it’s not a choice at all but a survival response, since when we feel overwhelmed, criticized, or emotionally flooded, our nervous system can flip into a protective mode called physiological flooding that makes conversation nearly impossible. Understanding that doesn’t erase the damage it does, though. A partner who repeatedly gets stonewalled starts to feel like a problem too big to even discuss.
5. Choosing the Phone Over the Person in the Room
This one is newer than the Gottman research, but the evidence behind it has grown fast. Researchers call it “phubbing,” a blend of phone and snubbing, and it describes the moment a partner glances at, checks, or scrolls through their phone while you’re mid-conversation. Although smartphones enable connection, they might harm romantic relationships in less obvious ways, and regularly tuning out a partner to focus on one’s phone can, over time, decrease feelings of love and satisfaction with a relationship.
A study out of the University of Connecticut found that participants who had been phubbed reported feeling less loved and valued, experiencing lower relationship satisfaction, and greater conflict and emotional distance. It doesn’t even need to be constant. In one small survey of 143 U.S. adults, 46 percent reported experiencing this with their partners, and 23 percent said it was a problem in their relationship. The message a distracted phone sends, whether intended or not, is that whatever is on the screen matters more than the person sitting across the table.
6. Keeping a Running Scoreboard of Wrongs
Some couples don’t fight loudly, they just quietly accumulate grievances. Every unwashed dish, missed errand, or forgotten anniversary gets filed away as evidence, ready to be pulled out during the next disagreement. This habit turns a marriage into a courtroom instead of a partnership. Instead of resolving conflict, both partners spend their energy building a case against each other.
The problem with scorekeeping is that it erases progress. Even when a partner genuinely tries to change or apologize, the ledger stays open, and old resentments get dragged into new arguments. Over time, this creates a relationship where nothing ever really gets forgiven, only stored for later use. That kind of environment rarely feels safe enough for a partner to stick around in.
7. Withholding Affection, Appreciation, or Basic Warmth
It’s easy to assume a relationship is fine as long as nobody is actively fighting. Silence and neutrality aren’t the same as connection, though. When partners stop expressing appreciation, stop offering small affectionate gestures, or stop acknowledging each other’s efforts, the relationship doesn’t explode. It just slowly cools until there’s nothing warm left to return to.
Gottman’s broader research on relationship stability found something important here too: it’s not only the negative behaviors that matter, it’s the absence of positive ones. His findings highlight that the absence of positive interactions is just as damaging as the presence of negative ones. A partner who feels consistently unappreciated, even without a single cruel word being said, will eventually start looking for that warmth somewhere else, or simply start planning a life without it.
None of these seven habits are unforgivable on their own, and almost every couple slips into one of them occasionally under stress. The real danger comes from repetition, when criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, phone distraction, scorekeeping, or emotional withholding become the default way two people relate to each other instead of the exception. Ten years into marriage, what I’ve come to believe is that love doesn’t usually die from one big betrayal. It erodes gradually, through a thousand small moments where a partner quietly gets the message that they don’t matter as much as they used to.
The encouraging part is that every one of these patterns can be unlearned. Recognizing them is the hardest step, and also the one most couples skip. Once you can name what’s happening in the moment, you get a small window to choose something different, a softer opening, an honest apology, a moment of undivided attention. That choice, repeated often enough, is really what keeps a marriage standing.
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