It’s Quiz time
Building a Strong Marriage
Pope St. John Paul II said “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.” We talk often about the importance of building strong families, but how do we do it? It starts with our marriages. Dr. John Gottman has given us tools for simple ways we can strengthen our marriages, and by extension our families and the world we live in.
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Results
#1. What is the definition of a “love map,” according to Dr. John Gottman?
Dr. John Gottman coined the term “love map,” to describe where we store the personal and important information about our spouse’s life. As life changes around us, it is vital that a couple keeps an up to date record of what is going on inside their partner’s mind and heart. Or as therapist Ross Hendrickson puts it, “… If your partner were a city, how well could you navigate it without GPS? Would you know where the traffic is building, where construction is happening, where the fragile areas are, and where growth is taking place? Or are you working from an outdated map from several years ago?”
#2. Which of the following would NOT be considered a “love map” of your spouse’s life?
Love maps focus on the personal and current inner life of your spouse. These include current goals, fears, stressors, relationships with others and more. It’s important to check in with your spouse daily to see what is going on inside their mind and heart, because people change. Knowing what is on your partner’s grocery list is a good thing to know, but it falls under more of a household administrative task than what is truly going on in your spouse’s world.
#3. Select all that apply: Which of the following are considered “The Four Horsemen” of predicting divorce according to Dr. John Gottman?
Select all that apply:
During his research observing couples as they worked through conflict, Dr. John Gottman found that four communication patterns were strong predictors of long-term marital distress and divorce. In his studies, he was able to predict with remarkable accuracy—about 90% in some research—which marriages were likely to end in divorce based on the presence and persistence of these four behaviors: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling, which he called “The Four Horsemen.”
The presence of these patterns should be taken seriously, but they are not a sign that a marriage is beyond hope. Rather, they are warning signs that change is needed. The encouraging news is that Gottman’s research also identified practical “antidotes” to each of the Four Horsemen. He recommends replacing criticism and attacks with a “gentle startup” with your partner, building a culture of appreciation to overcome contempt (see question 5), taking responsibility and offering an apology for any harm you might have caused instead of becoming defensive, and taking a break when emotions run high and return to the conversation later. While these practices cannot guarantee every marriage will be saved, they can help all couples strengthen their relationship and build healthier patterns of communication.
#4. True/False: Couples that display contempt in their marriage are more likely to get sick.
Research has found that when couples act contemptuously towards one another, they are at a higher risk of suffering from both long term and short term illnesses.
#5. For every negative interaction, a couple must have ___ positive interactions to counteract it.
Dr. Gottman found that couples who handle conflict well and have a strong relationship foundation have a very high positive to negative interaction ratio. For every negative interaction a couple has, they have five positive interactions to counter the negative. Some couples even had as high as 20 positive interactions per 1 negative!
#6. Bonus Question from Last Time: Select all that apply: Which of the following faith-based colleges sent researchers from their campus to form the Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI?
Select all that apply:
Baylor University (Baptist representation), Brigham Young University (Latter-Day Saint representation), University of Notre Dame (Catholic representation) and Yeshiva University (Jewish representation) came together to form the CEFE-AI– a research team seeking to discover how AI treats and interacts with various religious groups. They developed benchmarking tools to find what bias various AI models might have towards religion.