Top Highlights

• Masters say “yes” in the various ways more often than they say “no” through anger, hostility, insult, disgust, contempt, sarcasm, sadness, disappointment, belittling, disagreement, and emotional withdrawal.
• The bottom line is that relationships need to have at least a 5 to 1 ratio of positivity to negativity during conflict—
• In the 1970s many therapists believed that anger and hostility in a relationship were dysfunctional, 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 stonewallin...
• In that pattern, one partner ignores the other’s attempts to connect or get the partner’s attention, interest, humor, affection, or support.13
• 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.