often. They tend to say things like “okay,” or “good point,” or “you’re making perfect sense, really,” or “you’re starting to convince me.” This is not compliance; it is lively give and

The failure of men to accept influence from their women.

behavior; they also trained the partners to observe positivity from their spouse.

In negative sentiment override, observers would say that a message was sent in a neutral or even positive way, but the partner sees it as negative. (Hence, negative sentiment overrides positive interaction.) In positive sentiment override, even messages an outsider would see as negative are not interpreted as particularly negative by the partner,

people process their inevitable fights and moments of miscommunication or hurt feelings, and to enable them to repair the relationship. Regrettable incidents in interaction are simply par for the course. The goal is to be able to heal the emotional wounds created by those incidents.

People responded to their partner’s bids for emotional connection in a crabby, irritable manner.

them, some couples didn’t escalate conflict. They just had little positivity at all during conflict (no affection, shared humor, question asking, active interest, excitement, joy, support, empathy).

connection. In that pattern, one partner ignores the other’s attempts to connect or get the partner’s attention, interest, humor, affection, or support.13

but we discovered that even in happy, stable relationships, when one person gets angry and hostile, the other person reciprocates in kind. It is the escalation of negativity, marked particularly by criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling, that predicts divorce. We found that couples who escalated conflict divorced an average of about