This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube interview between Josh Trent and Roger Nygard about relationship health. Key points: the Gottman Institute's findings (the "four horsemen": criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling) predict relationship outcomes — contempt being the strongest negative predictor and observable within minutes with ~90% accuracy; stable couples maintain roughly a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions (masters may reach 20:1); experts recommend premarital counseling and tools like a personal priorities checklist to increase relationship longevity. The discussion also situates modern romantic ideals as historically recent and contrasts transactional versus mutual-value relationships.
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This work, even the question, the truth about marriage, it's really about the truth about how I will show up, how I will choose to show up in marriage. And this could be and can be, and I believe will be more of like a personal development section in adolescence and middle school. Like, we're here doing it. I mean, we're educating, we're inspiring right now. And I think about the way that most couples go through conflict based on their paradigm of 0 through 7 and their attachment styles. You interviewed the Gottmans, and the Gottmans are so powerful. We've talked about them with Mark Groves, with Mark Wolin, with different people that have come on the show. They have the four horsemen that really, like, dictate whether or not couples will stay together. And I believe in your film, they said it was a 90%. They're able to watch couples go through conflict. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a 90% accuracy of whether the couples will stay together or not. And it was.
They can predict.
They can predict, isn't it?
It's mind blowing that they could watch you together with your partner for five minutes and then predict with 90% accuracy if you'll be together and how happy you'll be based primarily on one thing. They're looking for the existence of contempt from either partner. It's like rolling the eyes, sighing, dismissiveness, because that shows you're not a team.
Contempt was the big one, the four Horsemen. Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. My biggest trigger is stonewalling. Like, that's still things that I'm processing from childhood. Stonewalling. So which one of these spoke most to you? And then also, why is the contempt one really the deal breaker?
I like when things are quantified because then I can understand how to implement it in my life. Like the 20 minutes of listening. Okay, I'm going to do that every day. I'm going to try this experiment. I'm going to give 20 minutes of active listening every night and see if it's. If it changes things. Right. One of the things that Gottman, Dr. Gottman quantified was the five to one rule of positive to negative. What they found in stable couples was not how much they argued. You could have one couple that argues a lot, one that never argues, or rarely. And then somewhere in the middle, they argue, you know, an average amount. Well, they can all be equally stable and happy. If they reach the 5 to 1 ratio of every time there's a negative interaction, you must have five Positives to make up for it. So negative is obviously arguing, but it can be rolling your eyes, ignoring, stonewalling, forgetting a birthday. Whatever it is that makes a partner feel bad, that's a negative interaction. If you do that, you need to have five positives. What's a positive? A hug. Touching them on the arm as you walk by, a kiss, you look wonderful. Flowers, a new car. I mean, whatever. All these are positives. A new car is just. Is worth just as much as a hug. They're each one positive. So you can't solve everything with money. And, well, I bought you a house. Why aren't you happy?
How many people try to solve it by buying things instead of being vulnerable? I mean, that's powerful.
If you can hit five to one or better. And he said the masters of relationships, he said, hit 20 to 1. 20 positives for every negative. So that's something you can look at your life and quantify it and grade yourself, and then you can know how much better you need to do.
There's ingredients to love. And one thing that we didn't cover, which I just want to go back to real quick, was these four horsemen you mentioned. The contempt was the number one. We talked about that earlier. But can you as an ingredient in love, like taking out the contempt? Why is the contempt such the deal breaker? Like, why was that in your film in. The Gottmans talked about this. Why was that the number one thing compared to defensiveness, stonewalling, and criticism?
Well, you know, the scientists look at the why question last. First they look for trends and then connect the trends to behavior and then try to explain it with the why. And it seems to make sense that if your partner doesn't value you or your opinion, then you don't feel like you're valued or the relationship is valued. Maybe you start to feel like an object or it's transactional. You're not in it together. It's the togetherness that you. The couples at last and are happiness. They think of themselves as a unit, as a duo. One of the other techniques that the Gottmans use is they ask people to describe things that happened to the couple in the past. And when they describe their history in a positive way, that shows that they see themselves as a positive unit. When they describe all the negative things that happen, then that's not as good a sign. That's a worse sign. And they look for that, for those signals, for, okay, what is the. Let's diagnose the problem so we can offer some solutions to this couple so you need to get out of the contempt rut and be actively participating in the relationship in a positive way and valuing what your partner has to say or offer. If you don't value that person, why are you partners with them? That's the existential question of relationships. What are you getting out of the deal? A lot of people are together transactionally. They're in it for other reasons than for valuing each other as a human. I mean, you know, money, resources, staying alive. That's what most of human history was. This idea of getting married for love is 160 years old. They look back. Tai Tashiro, one of the psychologists I interviewed, told me that when they look back and studied history, this idea of I'm special, I have a birthday, I have a soulmate is a very new idea in human history. The vast majority of time that humans existed, we were paired up for reproduction, like arranged marriages or it was about bringing two families together or sharing resources. It was about survival, it was about surviving.
Very ancient brain stuff.
Exactly.
It's shocking to me because there is my. And I don't know if it was Disney, when I watched Disney as a kid or something, but I feel like we have all been force fed this story about, like, relationships and marriage need to be this way. Like the man should act this way and it should be like a night on a horse and the woman should be dainty and wearing white dress. I gotta tell y' all that this is like the ultimate bullshit story. Like, it's just not true. Like we.
Nobody can live up to that.
It's so much pressure, so much expectation.
One of the things that all the experts agreed that if you're someone who's thinking of getting married right now, the best thing you can do to increase your chances for longevity and happiness in a relationship is premarital counseling. Enter the relationship. Understanding better the rules of the game. Most people don't do this. And they found that religious couples tend to do better than non religious couples in marriage. And it's not because they're religious, it's because they're forced to do premarital counseling by their religion. And so they get a better understanding of each other. And, and in the book I made a list. For example, at the end of the book, I put an addendum for people to help them do this, which I called a personal priorities checklist. So that what you could do is sit down with your partner and you each fill out this form and then you exchange forms and discuss it with the idea of getting to a mutual priorities checklist between the two of you.
Here it is. If you're watching on video, if you're.
On YouTube with us, I mean, do you know everything about your partner? I mean, you'll never know everything, but you should know some basic things, especially the core values that you both hold. And it might come out in such things as. Do you prefer antiques or ikea? What's the most a person should spend on a pair of shoes? How often should we have sex? What religion should we raise our children, if we have any? How light or dark do you want the bedroom? Is it okay to leave the TV on all night? I can't sleep, honey, unless the TV's on all night. Well, can you live with that? I mean, it's good to know all these things in advance. And let's say you don't know some of these things. You're in for a shock and a surprise, you know, a constant life of surprises. And you'll never get them all. But if you can get a lot of them understood, you don't have to agree on all these things, but at least you know what you're in for. It.
