It depends on what your couple-style is.

Gottman's research 5 Kinds of Couples

Do you think you're the hostile-detached style couple, that Gottman outlines on his website?

Dysfunctional Couples Styles
4. Hostile Couples

All of the Four Horsemen are on display with Hostile Couples, But the Attack/Defend Groundhog Day fights are where Hostile Couples get perpetually bogged down.

Hostile Couples spend a great deal of time in criticism and defensiveness, and empathy is clearly in an ongoing short supply. Contempt also shows up, and Hostile Couples interactions have a skip in the record.

They have the same fights over and over with little understanding of just how stuck they are in their own felt sense of being “right.” As someone once said, you can be right, or you can be married.

Hostile Couples, however, defy that axiom, as they tend to modulate their negativity just enough never to let it get completely out of control. Gottman’s research reports that despite their perpetual conflict, Hostile Couples tend to remain together in an unhappy union.

Some hostile couples actually fear intimacy. They squabble as a way to carve out space for themselves. We call these couples intimacy-avoidant. They fight in front of the kids and are married more to their misery than to each other.

5. Hostile-Detached Couples

Hostile-Detached Couples engage in trench warfare, bitterly escalating the level of negativity. Hostile-detached wives are typically inconsolable, as all aspects of trust have been eroded.

They have the same tendency to fight and show the Four Horsemen in each fight, just like Hostile Couples.

But Hostile-Detached couples are very divorce-prone, where Hostile Couples typically are not. So how are they different?

While their husbands seek to withdraw, Hostile-Detached wives will keep fighting until both are entirely escalated and dysregulated, Hostile Couples will regulate their conflict, where the Hostile-Detached will keep fighting until they are exhausted and burned-out. Emotional abuse is a persistent pattern with Hostile-detached couples.