Hi everyone. This is Sean McGuire with the New Vision Counseling podcast, wanting to welcome you today because we are going to jump into something that if you can get ahold of identifying these four areas, and if they’re a prevalent part of your marriage, then we can start one by one seeing how we can save your marriage through reversing. They’re called the four horsemen. You know, a guy named John Gottman, who’s a mad scientist researcher for marriage and has been for decades, came up with these four horsemen, and they are the, if these four horsemen are present in your marriage, he says, your marriage is in the desk. Now it’s starting to go down and if nothing changes, it will end in divorce, which is destruction. So what I wanted to do is begin by helping you see what the four horsemen are identifying, if they’re in your marriage, give you some examples of what they look like, and then one by one go have the Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City antidote of what the solution is to begin identifying.
This is where we’re at. Then here’s the steps that we can start taking to move forward. So without further ado, let’s jump right in. Wa One more thing. I did want to say if you found value in this and you say, man, I would want to go to the next step because you’re in a situation where you need help. Nuvision counseling that live is a website where you can go and connect with one of our therapists. We have a team of Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City counselors who marry biblical principles, was cutting edge counseling techniques and we want to jump on your story. The reason why we do these podcasts is hugely because we want to share that you can change your life and there’s so many tools, resources. When you invite one of us and to the story that you can apply your life or if you don’t, you’re not at that step.
You can just apply it to your life and see God move and change your life today. All right? The first one of the four horsemen is criticism. Criticism. Now if you have a marriage where you feel like you’re constantly verbally attacked personally, your characters tact, you, personalities attacked, this is a, this is a huge red flag to your marriage is in critical danger. So I remember when we first got married, I felt like my wife was really critical and she showered me with negativity. She really just attack my personality. She attacked the fact that I was boisterous, you know, super outgoing that I talked to pretty much everybody when I was out in la on dates, which guys, that’s not a great move for life if you want to make your wife feel special, good amount of attention should be focused on her. But I remember early on in our marriage that she was critical of me and in turn I was critical back to her because I was like, how could you attack my personality?
That’s something that God gave me. And I’ve seen this play out time and time again in marriage. What I didn’t realize is my personality was a trigger for her insecurities and she spent the majority of her life trying not to be seen because she didn’t feel like she was worth enough. She didn’t feel like she was pretty enough. She didn’t feel like she was a smart enough, which is crazy cause she’s so brilliant, but, but these are the lies that she grew up with. And when I would be outgoing and people would look at us, people would talk to us. We would sit in the front row of conferences or churches and it would highlight her. I’m the guy that likes to be on stage and communicate and just to see the energy if people’s lives change and she likes to be the one behind the scenes.
And I had no idea. I took all of this personally, but when we were able to peel back the layers, once we realized that this was a huge element destroying our marriage, the solution began to surface of, I’m not the one that needs to be taking all of this personal. It’s really part of it was about me, but another part of it was really her issues of insecurities. And so as we both began to see that and allow God to move through our lives through wise Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City counsel, through reading books, and through a lot of practice, we started to see a change. Now one of the ways he practiced with something called a gentle startup, this is the antidote to criticism, is instead of her just attacking my personality and me reacting negatively, attacking her personality, if she would say something like, you know, you always have to be the center of attention, you know, why do you have to talk to people everywhere we go, I would react and I’d say, why do you have to sit in the back and just pull me down like dead weight?
And you know, when we first married back and forth, that would go and it hurt both of us. Instead of that, she could say something of, I feel like I’m not important when we go on dates because you talked to everybody else but me. Wow. How much that changed the whole environment and the whole way we communicate it immediately because I didn’t feel attacked. I didn’t feel like she was slamming me and my personality. Now, the other part of my spot responses, even if she says something, you know, why do you always have to do talk to everybody but me? I could say, it sounds like you’re feeling like I’m putting other people above you. It sounds like you’re feeling like I’m valuing other people and I could bring the gentleness in because it’s part of Gottman’s research on Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City and marriage, is that succeed versus marriages that fail, whether you’re in Edmond, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, or around the world, it didn’t matter.
His research indicated that when you have a gentle startup, it really sets the tone of having a good outcome. But if you have a horse startup, a critical startup, well then 90 I think 90 plus percent of your conversations, we’re going to tank. You could tell within the first either three minutes or 30 seconds, that timeframe determine the outcome of the entire conversation, no matter how long it was. So criticisms number one, and I’m going to go through all four of these really quick and I’m going to do this in two parts. I’m going to try to keep these podcasts to 10 minutes in length. So I’m going to do the first four upfront and then go to two and their antidotes and the solutions. So the second one is contempt. You know when you attack the sense of self of who that person is with the intent to insult or abuse at the really big red flag that your marriage is in.
Great danger. The fourth one is defensiveness. When somebody brings up an issue, if you bring up an issue to your spouse or somebody you’re in a relationship with and instead of addressing the issue, they just attack you back or they make excuses, huge red flag because then you can never work through conflict. The fourth, and this is really dangerous, is stonewalling. When you become emotionally unavailable by with rollen, your participation in the relationship, your marriage is really unlike support at that point and in a dangerous situation. So those are the four. So I’m going to jump back in. We’ve went over a number. Number one, which is criticism. When you criticize your marital partner and in marriage, even if you’re a Christian, non Christian, it doesn’t matter, poisons your marriage. The second is content. We talked about contempt being assigned of really attacking that person’s sense of self.
This is when you attacked who they are you. I remember one time this lady hated her husband’s so much and I seem like he was a great guy from the image I saw on Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City that she was convinced that I needed to go outside of counseling. And so we did one of our sessions on fishing. So funny. What a great way to counsel right? Cause I’m the way that I councils, I meet people where they’re at and if fishing was the way that they were convinced that I could get to know this guy in a different atmosphere because she was so convinced that I believe his lies, that that in the 45 minutes or an hour that we had in counseling that he was able to deceive me. So we went of the golf course, which is a place where we fished. He fished this golf course and I discovered this guy was not only the guy that I thought he was, this guy was super kind and very gracious.
I mean it gentlemen the whole way put me on his best fishing spots. He’s like, Hey, throw here, there’s all the big fish. Usually when I come this is the best place to start. And he just honored me the whole time. And I left that situation thinking he was a better guy than when I originally started in Christian marriage counseling Oklahoma City. Now why do I tell you that? Well, because she was so convinced that he was an awful human being, that she could not see all of the areas of her life where he was serving her the areas of her life or he was serving the kids and putting them in positions to succeed even when it required him disciplining them, removing privileges instead of honoring and coming together. She attacked him. And so the cure or the solution for that is to start building a culture of appreciation.
And this can start when you leave in the morning, you have a nice tell the person something positive about them and you know, share maybe a few minutes or even one minute about something cool about your day and then validate that to your spouse. The person in relationship with the other culture of appreciation is you find positive qualities about your spouse. And then you talk about them with your spouse, you think about them in your mind, and then you pray and ask God to give you strength and grace to bring them up. To think about, to see that person through the lens of appreciation. And over time it begins to change the way your heart fields. Now look, this is the daily grind of making decisions in your marriage to save your marriage. But you know, I know in Oklahoma City and Edmond, we’re in the Bible belt and in Oklahoma City, uh, especially, we have a diverse group of people from poor to rich and Edmund.
There’s a lot of money, but no matter where they have money, whether it, whether, whether they’re don’t have money or they’re poor and are struggling. When you have a culture of appreciation, you literally change the way your atmosphere that you’re in fields. You change the way that you see people and you really changed the way that you feel even in the relationship and when you’re not with a person or when you are with the person in the marriage, you feel different about them and really start to feel different about yourself. Well, we’re going to jump into the next two, but I want to say if this was helpful, if this has sparked some interest or has hopefully sparked hope in you or maybe you’re on the other end. Maybe you’re saying Matt thought we were okay, but Sean, you haven’t even gotten over all four of them and I know that we’re in big trouble.
The great news is we have a team of therapists that would love to partner in your story that Mary, Biblical truth with cutting edge counseling techniques and the vision of New Vision counseling is we want to partner with you. We want to help you discover what better looks like for you, and then equipped me with the tools and resources to make it possible. So guys, New Vision counseling. Dot Live is our website and it really helps if you go look at our Facebook page or Instagram page, same handle division, counseling, Okc. If you like what you see, rate us like us. You know, Google reviews are great. The more people that see that, you know, high reviews on there, the more people will think counseling can help their marriage, their lives. And I hope you that are one of them because we do this to serve you. We do this because we want to maximize the gifts that God’s given us and change lives. And we pray that one day we get to meet you and that you’re one of them. Have a great day and this is part one of the four horsemen of how to identify the areas of your marriage that are taking you down. And then solutions to help me take you back up. God bless and I look forward to speaking with you again really soon.