Resentment, Blame And The Downward Spiral

Has this happened to you? You’re enjoying takeout from your favorite place and remark, “This restaurant food is good, isn’t it?” Your partner replies, “You have never appreciated my cooking.” Or you express your opinion like, “We need a vacation. It’s been a long time since we went out together” and it is met with “What should I do to make you happy? Do you want me to quit my job?” You feel perplexed and try to defend yourself, but it only seems to escalate the conflict.

Sometimes you wonder what you said wrong? Was it your words or context? Something seems to be upsetting your partner and you don’t know what. Over time, as talking does not lead anywhere other than conflict, you give up. You focus instead on something else, be it work, house chores, or scrolling social media. Though you crave your partner’s companionship, it seems like it is an impossible feat to achieve.

WHAT HAPPENED?

What possibly happened here is your partner has built up resentments and is stuck in negative sentiment override. Couple interactions are influenced by sentiment overrides as theorized by Weiss. In essence, the residual emotions from every interaction (could be words, gestures, facial expression, or body language) accumulate over time, becoming a new dimension of the relationship that derails the objectivity of the current interactions. Your partner silently harbors the emotions of feeling unimportant, unwanted, or uncared for and now perceives everything said with a negative filter. This might come as a shock to many partners as they do not seem to recall anything that they said or done to cause their partner’s underlying wrath.

This resentment, however, happened the times you were late when they eagerly waited for you; you unintentionally exposed their personal information to friends; or, you ignored things and activities that they see as a priority again and again. Your partner may have voiced their concern gently and perhaps you brushed it away as you had your reasons. As time went on, they retreated, feeling their concern is futile, which probably went unchecked as well. Now your partner is resentful and bitter and displays criticism and contempt for everything you say. If the situation persists for long, as multiple attempts to build a normal conversation go nowhere, you may also eventually wind up in negative sentiment override. A vicious cycle results, where any attempt to converse seems a mountainous task.

RESEARCH ON SENTIMENT OVERRIDE

Dr. John Gottman and his team studied 96 newlywed couples and observed this phenomenon where observers coded discussion differently from that of partners in a conflict situation. Partners perceived the interactions negatively though it did not appear negative to the researchers.

However, in some couples, the interaction went another way, where neutral and low-intensity negative messages were interpreted positively. In the above two examples, the partner would have responded positively like “I know you love this restaurant” or “I miss our vacations too, so we should plan one soon.” Here there was a positive sentiment override where the partner attended to the neutral comment positively.

Negative sentiment override was observed more in distressed couples, while positive sentiment override was predominant in non-distressed couples. The distressed partners perceived the messages negatively even when their partners shared neutral or positive behaviors. These patterns along with other destructive patterns like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Emotional Disengagement (as observed in other longitudinal studies by Dr. Gottman) continued to keep the couples in the status quo of distress.

Chris Cambas, LMFT, Certified Gottman Therapist & Trainer, Relationship Expert, Co-Founder of CoupleStrong
CEO of National Marriage Seminars & The Practice Startup.