Headless Horsemen

As a little girl I ran and hid every time my brothers turned on the Headless Horseman on Halloween.  There is an image in that movie that will forever be stuck in my brain…. the Headless Horseman was on a dark path, the horse reared up on his back legs and in the horseman’s hand was a big pumpkin that he was about to through.  I would be out of the room and under my parents blankets before he could launch this pumpkin head.  To this day I have no idea what his target was.  

As I read John Gottman and Nan Silver’s book, The Seven Principles for Making a Marriage Work they introduced what they call the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.  My mind immediately pictured the Headless Horseman of my childhood nightmares, only this time there were FOUR, and there is no question their target is marriage.  

The Horsemen that attack marriage are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.  These horsemen typically are things we do when we are not at our best in our relationships, proceeded by harsh words, and followed by attempts to repair the damage done by the Horsemen.

Though this is a HUGE simplification of the process that Gottman and Silver describe in detail, backed with years of research, you can probably think of times that you have engaged in such behavior.  We all do it. 

Unlike many marriage researchers Gotten and Silver aren’t arguing that we need to stop arguing. Disagreements and bad days are just a part of life. They happen and happen often.  As Goddard points out in his book, Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, it is part of the natural man, to be natural. We all want to be understood more than we want to understand, be forgiven more than we want to forgive.

The big take way from this framework is that marriage can still be happy and fulfilling despite our shortcomings.  HOPE, THERE IS HOPE.

Goddard finds hope in the Atonement of Christ to make us more charitable and heal all the wounds we gain as we grow up.  Gottman finds hope in the deep friendships we develop during our marriage.  He finds that the greater the friendship is, the easier the couple recovers from all the pumpkins the horseman may throw.  The ability of positive experiences to overwhelm the negative experiences that are part of living together.

I am only a few chapters into these books and look forward to learning how to make martial friendship grow and have positive feelings dominate in my marriage as I work toward Christlike solutions.