We are made to connect with others, to socially interact, to click with certain people more than others. Attachment is one of the primary needs of infants; without it they will die. That need for connection continues throughout life. Why then would some of us threaten the very lifeblood of our relationships? Mutual care and concern, safety and love create strong resilient relationships. We all at our core want that. Every human has the need to be included, to feel liked and feel a sense of control over their own life. But for some people, they find that over and over their relationships break up.
John Gottman from The Gottman Institute has identified four primary behaviors that destroy relationships: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling, with contempt being the best predictor of divorce (Gottman, 2002). What does contempt do? It is the exact opposite of love and care and it creates an environment that is anything but safe.
Social cognition refers to the ways that people think about themselves and others in terms of social behaviors (Social cognition, 2018). Contempt is defined as thinking negatively about someone over whom we feel superior (Contempt, 2018). It includes not recognizing the true value of ourself or others and seeing how important mutual respect is. When our social cognitions of others include contempt, it shows up regularly in our words and behavior. Negative social cognitions about self and others leads to abusive words and behavior. Social learning theory states that children will learn beliefs and behavior from the adults who model for them both the behavior and the reinforcement or consequences (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). They learn what is acceptable, what is not, and what are the underlying beliefs held especially by parents. Many children of alcoholic or abusive families learn negative beliefs such as: it is okay to treat a spouse with contempt, blame another for one’s actions and hurt those you say you love. They learn conditional love, based on performance and they learned to people please rather than form strong moral beliefs. They may even learn to align themselves with the one who does the hurting, the one in power, and they learn that having power over another is the safer place to be. They may learn hatred of men from an abusive father or hatred of women from a manipulative mother. All of this becomes their view of the world, of relationships, of self and others and leads to lifelong relationally debilitating beliefs unless they consciously choose to correct those beliefs.
Gottman (2002) has stated that verbal communication is the foundation of relationships. He has theorized that within relationships, people put out “bids” for attention and connection. By studying thousands of marriages, he has found that people tend to respond in three ways to bids for connection: turning toward, turning against, and turning away. Turning toward includes responding positively in a verbal or physical manner. This style leads to strengthened relationships with resiliency when there is conflict or times are tough. Turning against is an argumentative style in which one or both spouses may use contempt in the form of put downs and negative language. Turning away is basically ignoring one’s spouse, a type of contempt that is intended to show the other that they are meaningless. This leads to hostility and defensiveness, followed by suppression of feelings and early divorce (Gottman, 2002).
Within the “turning against” style of communicating, there can be both conflict and abuse. Conflict is when there is generally a balance of power and both spouses turn against each other. They have different views on a particular topic and don’t readily agree. Some conflict is normal even in healthy relationships. Abuse on the other hand is when one partner sees him or herself as above the other in some way and takes a power stance shown by putting the other down. If it’s within the context of an argumentative conflict, this is when the partner starts berating and using derogatory language, in an effort to force the other to comply, rather than using healthy communication skills.
But much abuse is not about conflict at all. It has instead to do with the unresolved trauma in a person’s life, as well as the entitlement they learned. A man who has had an unsafe childhood through abuse or neglect or through witnessing abuse of his mother for instance may act out towards his wife in hurtful ways that have nothing to do with conflict. In this case, he may lash out at her at times when they are not even involved in conversations. He may devise ways to hurt her proactively to keep her dependent on him, fearing that she will leave. Or he may put her down to make himself feel better. While his inner self is one of low self esteem, he projects an outer self of superiority and has always to show her that he is better, he is right, he is not to be disobeyed. He may or may not use anger as part of his control over her but the underlying feelings are not anger; they are things like feeling abandoned, feeling unsafe or unloved, feeling the instability from childhood. It is this misconception that anger and conflict are at the root of abuse that leads men to justify their actions and causes women to hesitate to come forward. Let me explain. If a woman is told that conflict is part of the problem then she will continually evaluate her role in the “conflict.” Her husband will also do this, pointing out her role repeatedly rather than looking at himself. You end up having two people that are both focused on her (pointing out faults, blaming/self-blaming), rather than on him where the true problem lies (trauma resolution). If he or his behavior is focused on, he may say that the root of the problem lies with his anger. He may do anger management counseling to talk about his anger towards his wife for the “justifiable” things he has against her. In reality, all of this is surface talk designed to prevent him from accessing the deep painful wounds from his childhood, which has led to the contempt of self and others.
Contempt is greater in marital relationships in which one partner has experienced childhood sexual abuse (Walker, Sheffield, Larson, & Holman, 2011). This trauma affects a person’s perception of self and partner in negative ways. They tend to have a poor body image, low self-esteem and higher levels of contempt for themselves and their spouse. They also tend to be more defensive and judgmental, again both of themselves and others, especially their spouse. Along with this is a feeling of having a low level of control in their interpersonal relationships while simultaneously having a greater need for power and a greater fear of power (Walker et al., 2002). They experience higher levels of stress, arousal and traumatization, all leading to more pathological views and behavior. Especially in men, childhood sexual abuse increases the risk that they will see themselves or their partners in a contemptuous or defensive way (Walker et al., 2002).
Trauma leads to reactive behavior, which may include angry outbursts but may also include fear, withdrawal, depression and many more relationally debilitating factors. This can be the case with either partner (abuser and victim), but the solution is to deal with each partner’s own behavior and underlying trauma separately. Most of the struggles within marriages come from the wounding of individual people that happens in childhood. As trauma is resolved, negative social cognitions become healthy, reactive behavior including contempt is lessened and relationships improve.
References
Contempt. (2018). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved on Apr. 6, 2019 from: https://dictionary.apa.org/contempt.
Gottman, J. (2002). The relationship cure: A 5 step guide to strengthening your marriage, family, and friendships. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Social Cognition. (2018). APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved on Apr. 6, 2019 from: https://dictionary.apa.org/social-cognition.
Walker, E., Sheffield, R., Larson, J., & Holman, T. (2011). Contempt and defensiveness in couple relationships related to childhood sexual abuse histories for self and partner. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 37(10)
