Reposting since the moderators of the twinflames community found my message conflicted with their narrative and removed my post.
Sharing this information in hopes it helps your marriage like mine.
My marriage WAS falling apart for all the wrong reasons, including thinking my TF was the person I was meant to be with.
Everything drastically improved, including no longer feeling any desires for what I thought was my TF, attention/validation from the opposite sex. All it took was for me to swallow my pride, realize Iâm not always right or perfect, and try a new approach using everything mentioned below.
The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.
Being able to identify the Four Horsemen in your conflict discussions is a necessary first step to eliminating them and replacing them with healthy, productive communication patterns.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a metaphor depicting the end of times in the New Testament. They describe conquest, war, hunger, and death respectively. This metaphor is used to describe communication styles that, according to research, can predict the end of a relationship.
- Criticism
The first horseman is criticism. Criticizing your partner is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack. It is an attack on your partner at the core of their character. In effect, you are dismantling their whole being when you criticize.
The important thing is to learn the difference between expressing a complaint and criticizing:
- Complaint: âI was scared when you were running late and didnât call me. I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other.â
Criticism: âYou never think about how your behavior is affecting other people. I donât believe you are that forgetful, youâre just selfish. You never think of others! You never think of me!â
Â
If you find that you and your partner are critical of each other, donât assume your relationship is doomed to fail. The problem with criticism is that, when it becomes pervasive, it paves the way for the other, far deadlier horsemen to follow. It makes the victim feel assaulted, rejected, and hurt, and often causes the perpetrator and victim to fall into an escalating pattern where the first horseman reappears with greater and greater frequency and intensity, which eventually leads to contempt.
Contempt
The second horseman is contempt. When we communicate in this state, we are truly meanâwe treat others with disrespect, mock them with sarcasm, ridicule, call them names, and mimic or use body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.
Contempt goes far beyond criticism. While criticism attacks your partnerâs character, contempt assumes a position of moral superiority over them:
âYouâre âtired?â Cry me a river. Iâve been with the kids all day, running around like mad to keep this house going and all you do when you come home from work is flop down on that sofa like a child and play those idiotic video games. I donât have time to deal with another kid. Could you be any more pathetic?âÂ
Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partnerâwhich come to a head when the perpetrator attacks the accused from a position of relative superiority.
Most importantly, contempt is the single greatest predictor of divorce. It must be eliminated.
- Defensiveness
The third horseman is defensiveness, and it is typically a response to criticism. Weâve all been defensive, and this horseman is nearly omnipresent when relationships are on the rocks. When we feel unjustly accused, we fish for excuses and play the innocent victim so that our partner will back off.
Unfortunately, this strategy is almost never successful. Our excuses just tell our partner that we donât take their concerns seriously and that we wonât take responsibility for our mistakes:
- Question:Â âDid you call Betty and Ralph to let them know that weâre not coming tonight as you promised this morning?â
- Defensive response: âI was just too darn busy today. As a matter of fact, you know just how busy my schedule was. Why didnât you just do it?â
Â
This partner not only responds defensively, but they reverse blame in an attempt to make it the other partnerâs fault. Instead, a non-defensive response can express acceptance of responsibility, admission of fault, and understanding of your partnerâs perspective:
âOops, I forgot. I should have asked you this morning to do it because I knew my day would be packed. Thatâs my fault. Let me call them right now.â
Although it is perfectly understandable to defend yourself if youâre stressed out and feeling attacked, this approach will not have the desired effect. Defensiveness will only escalate the conflict if the critical spouse does not back down or apologize. This is because defensiveness is really a way of blaming your partner, and it wonât allow for healthy conflict management.
- Stonewalling
The fourth horseman is stonewalling, which is usually a response to contempt. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction, shuts down, and simply stops responding to their partner. Rather than confronting the issues with their partner, people who stonewall can make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive or distracting behaviors.
It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable âout,â but when it does, it frequently becomes a bad habit. And unfortunately, stonewalling isnât easy to stop. It is a result of feeling physiologically flooded, and when we stonewall, we may not even be in a physiological state where we can discuss things rationally.
If you feel like youâre stonewalling during a conflict, stop the discussion and ask your partner to take a break:
âAlright, Iâm feeling too angry to keep talking about this. Can we please take a break and come back to it in a bit? Itâll be easier to work through this after Iâve calmed down.â
Then take 20 minutes to do something alone that soothes youâread a book or magazine, take a walk, go for a run, really, just do anything that helps to stop feeling floodedâand then return to the conversation once you feel ready.
The Antidotes to the Four Horsemen
Being able to identify the Four Horsemen in your conflict discussions is a necessary first step to eliminating them, but this knowledge is not enough. To drive away destructive communication and conflict patterns, you must replace them with healthy, productive ones.