Oby Love — Adult attachment and love-style frameworks | obylove.com
Criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling are the four negative patterns Gottman's research links to break-ups — with 90–94% reported accuracy in predicting divorce from observed interaction — and each has a repair move that replaces it.
The four patterns are behaviours, not identities, and they tend to arrive in sequence. Criticism attacks character instead of naming a behaviour: 'you never think of anyone but yourself' rather than 'the bins are still full.' Contempt adds disgust — eye-rolling, mockery, sarcasm from above — and is reported as the most corrosive of the four.
Defensiveness is the reflexive counter-attack or innocent-victim move that blocks any complaint from landing. Stonewalling is the shutdown: monosyllables, leaving the room, the face that has stopped receiving. It often pairs with a dismissing attachment style, just as protest behaviour pairs with a preoccupied one — see /four-attachment-styles for that layer.
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Each pattern has a documented replacement. Criticism is replaced by a gentle start-up: name the specific behaviour and the specific need, without the word 'always.' Contempt is replaced by deliberate appreciation — the daily habit of stating what the partner did right, which rebuilds the respect contempt erodes.
Defensiveness is replaced by taking responsibility for even a fragment of the complaint: 'you are right that I forgot' ends the escalation that 'I only forgot because you...' extends. Stonewalling is replaced by a structured break: call the pause, state a return time, and take at least 20 minutes apart so physiological flooding can subside before the conversation resumes.
The repair routine for one argument looks like this: catch the pattern while it is happening and name it neutrally ('I am getting defensive'), run the replacement move for that pattern, take the 20-minute break if either heart rate is up, and close with one appreciation. Couples who practise this on small arguments report it becomes available during large ones. For lowering the background tension that feeds the four patterns, the two-week trial on /five-love-languages is the companion exercise.
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