Makati Polytechnic Community College H.S. 1978

When Ilze Andzans and husband, Uga Drava, have a fight, you'd swear they were about to break up. Heated words are exchange, fists pound the table, a dish crashes against the wall. "We cut to the bone when we fight," says Ilze, a 38-year-old landscape architect and city planner at Scarborough, near Toronto. "Everytime we think: 'This is it! I'm packing my bags and moving out." But by morning the anger is forgotten. "I don't believe in cold wars," says Uga, a 40-year-old sculptor who left the former Soviet Republic of Latvia ten years ago. "Fights should be hot, short and fair."

Yet, according to some of the latest research on marital discord, this couple's seven-year relationship stands a good chance of lasting a lifetime. It's not the fury or frequency of quarrels that leads to marriage breakdown but how the partners cope with their differences. Ilze and Uga have avoided the terrible four-step pattern, namely, Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Withdrawal ----- that leads to divorce (separation) if it is not checked. They may trade angry complaints, but they listen to each other and then try to change. They may storm out of the kitchen in a huff, but they're right back in there the next morning, laughing and talking over coffee.

The four-step pattern is not just another pop-psychology theory. Its discoverer, John Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of the book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, can point to hard evidence. Gottman has spent 20 years putting marriages under scientific scrutiny, monitoring the words, gestures, facial expressions, even the heart rates of more than 2000 couples while they work their conflicts out. He follows up over the years to compare his lab observations with real-life outcomes. Today, says Gottman, he can predict with 94 percent accuracy "which couples will stay together and which will split."

These findings challenge a widely held myth about divorce: that disputes over money, sex, or incompatibility are to blame. In fact, the four relationship killers ----- criticisms, contempt, defensiveness and withdrawal ----- create a downward spiral of action and reaction. "A small criticism, unheard and ignored, turns into anger and then contempt. 'You never ask me how my day went' can turn into 'You don't care about me' and then 'There's something really wrong with you!' Then the other spouse gets defensive, which can lead to stonewalling and complete withdrawal."

Gottman's research brings a message of hope. If you can recognize destructive patterns in your own marriage, you can change them. And if that sounds impossible, Sara and Robert Burke (not their real name) can tell you otherwise.

She's a 39-year-old manager of a community-service agency; he's 49 and owns a small printing firm. They seemed the picture of compatibility as they watched a nature documentary in their Toronto home late in the summer of 1993. Married 15 years, with one beloved Border collie and no children, they weren't given to stormy fights. But Gottman's four-step pattern was about to make trouble. One evening Sara turned to Robert and asked whether the lawn needed mowing before their weekend trip to their cottage. Robert nodded in agreement. Later she'd wondered whether they shouldn't stay in town instead and paint the kitchen. "Whatever," he replied, climbing the stairs for bed.

But while rushing to get ready for work the next morning, Sara let fly a volley of angry criticism: "Why is it always me who has to say it's time to cut the grass? Why can't you think about why we should paint the kitchen?" Robert, still in bed, just stared at the ceiling in silence.

On the surface, their argument was about Sara's emotional investment in their home and Rob's seeming lack of interest. But Sara's real complaint was Robert's withdrawal. Her questions went unanswered, her concerns unheard, it seemed to her. As he became more and more uncommunicative, her criticisms turned to contempt.

She attacked him on another front: the state of his recession-battered business. "Why can't you face the fact that your business is a debt pool? Why can't you close up, get a job and get on with your life?"

Day after day, week after week, the Burkes replayed the same scenario. Gradually, defensiveness set in. Feeling victimized and abused, Robert interpreted Sara's actions in the worst possible light. He recalls: "I used to leave things at the bottom of the stairs to be carried up, and Sara never carried anything up with her. I saw that as a sign that she didn't love me."

Sara, too, was reaching a similar conclusion. "I was doing a lot of yelling about work and money," she says now, "but underneath I was feeling: 'Why can't you hear me? Can't you see I only want a sign ----- just a little one ----- that you still love me?'"

Finally, one morning in November 1993, Robert responded to Sara's criticism and contempt: "I'm not happy here anymore." That afternoon he moved out while Sara was at work.

The Burkes had led each other into what Gottman calls "a classic marital impasse" ----- a wife seeking emotional connection from a withdrawn husband. Both nurture and nature create these sex differences. Society encourages emotional expressiveness in girls and get-the-job-done stoicism in boys. At the same time, men may have more sensitive nervous systems than women. Gottman's studies indicate that a man's blood pressure and heart rate rise higher than a woman's during stressful marital discussions: and men take a lot longer to cool down both physically and psychologically.

Small wonder, says Gottman, that 85 percent of stonewallers are men. Like Robert Burke, they withdraw from conflict as a defense from overwhelming anxiety and anger.

Commitment alone won't break the cycle, as the Burkes discovered when Robert moved out. Missing each other, they spent a few session with a marriage counselor and began to date. After two months Robert moved backed home. Trying to avoid trouble, they didn't voice any dissatisfaction with each other. Sara says, "We tiptoed around eggshells."

Their uneasy peace lasted three months. Then came a major blowout that almost derailed the marriage again. The trigger, as in most marital squabbles, was a trivial event.

Because of a crisis at the office, Sara had been working ten-hour days plus weekends. "Late Sunday I was taking a relaxing bath. I told Robert that I have folded the laundry and could he put clean sheets on the bed." She looked up from the tub to see Robert's face distorted with anger; "So, since you folded the laundry, you can tell me that I have to make the bed?"

All the suppressed tension of the preceding months poured out in a torrent of rage. "You're so self-centered that you can't see anyone else's needs!" Sara screamed. "Just get the hell out of here!"

For three days the two didn't speak. Finally Robert announced he was leaving again. Then Sara did something, Robert remembers, she had never done before: she told him she needed him. For him it was a turning point. "Don't go," she said. "We have to work on this."

Working things out means employing four strategies, according to Gottman's research. During a heated exchange, couples should take a 20-minute break, if necessary, to calm down. They should stop being defensive and acknowledge their partner's feelings. And finally, they should practice these skills so that they become second nature.

Robert Burke's no. 1 challenge is giving up defensiveness. It was easier to withdraw, nursing his feelings of victimization, than to accept responsibility for improving his marriage. "I'm opening my mouth, getting my voice back again. Now when we argue, it's me who drives the Mack truck, and she drives the Volkswagen." He adds, "Everytime Sara complains about something, she's not telling me I'm an idiot and she doesn't love me."

"And I carry things he's left on the stairs now," says Sara. "Before, I thought, 'Why should I help him with anything when he's not even taking part in this marriage?"

For Sara the key is "remembering that Robert is the kindest man I know." Instead of letting fly with angry jabs in the morning while she rushes around getting ready for work, she prepares a list of complaints and then asks Robert to sit down with her. "But before we even start talking, I start crossing things off my list ----- 'Nah, that's not important' or 'That's probably more my fault.' And then, we talk over what's left."

Gottman has observed that happier couples use this marriage-building skills, which they instinctively adapt to suit their temperaments. For Ilze Andzans and Uga Drava, remembering each other's good qualities means lots of hugs everyday and making dinner together nightly ----- "four hands in perfect harmony," Uga calls it. Even more distinctive is his method of stopping a fiery fight with Ilze. "I do it with sound effects, like kicking the dog food bowl. First, there's the terrific shock of the kick and then the crash of the dog food pellets against the wall. And then we laugh. We are thinking of buying some cheap china especially for this purpose."