It is not the shouting that does the damage. You have both survived shouting. It is the moment after. You say something, and your partner’s upper lip curls slightly. Or their eyes drift to the ceiling. Or they repeat your words back in a small mocking voice. Something in your chest folds up. You cannot always name what just happened, but your body knows. This was not disagreement. This was dismissal. Or perhaps you are the one whose eyes roll, and you have started to hear yourself and not like it. Psychologists call this contempt in relationships. John Gottman, who has watched thousands of couples argue in his lab, calls it the single best predictor of divorce. I want to show you what it is, where it grows from, and what you can do instead.
Because contempt in relationships is not a personality. It is a habit, and you can unlearn a habit.
What contempt in relationships looks like
The Gottman Institute names four communication habits that wreck couples, and calls them the Four Horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. Contempt, the article says, is the worst of the four. It comes dressed as sarcasm, condescension, hostile humour, name-calling, mimicking, eye-rolling, and sneering. Whatever the costume, the message underneath is the same. In Gottman’s words: I am better than you. And you are lesser than me.
That message is what separates contempt in relationships from ordinary conflict. A complaint says I did not like what you did. Criticism says you did it because of who you are. Contempt goes one step further and says who you are is beneath me. The psychologist Susan Heitler, writing in Psychology Today, calls it arrogant disregard, dismissal, and denigration of the other person’s concerns. Empathy and contempt, she says, are polar opposites.
Gottman gives two examples that most couples will recognise. A wife, when her husband asks what time the concert starts: I learned how to tell time when I was five years old. When are you ever going to learn? And a husband, as his wife gets ready to go out: you look like you are dressed for the streets. Why not just flirt with everyone at the party? Neither line is about the clock or the dress. Both are about rank.
Where contempt in relationships comes from
Contempt in relationships never arrives on the first date. Gottman describes it as fuelled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner. It grows from complaints that nobody voiced, or that landed on nothing. Over months, those complaints stop being about what someone did and turn into a settled verdict on who they are. By the time the sneer shows up, the verdict has usually been in place for a long while.
There is also a family history in it. Heitler points out that what parents do toward each other and toward their children teaches those children to do the same. Perhaps you grew up in a house where one parent mocked the other, or where a child’s concerns got an eye roll. Then you learned that this is what disagreement sounds like. You may have hated it and absorbed it at once, because a child absorbs the whole house. It is the same inheritance that runs through emotional invalidation: the tone that made you small becomes the tone you reach for when you feel small.
Underneath the superiority there is almost always a wound. When I worked in counseling, I found that the partner who sneered was very often the one who had felt unheard for years. The eye roll was what came out when asking directly had stopped seeming worth the risk. Contempt is anger that has given up on being understood and settled for being above.
Here is the part I most want you to hear. Putting yourself above someone who kept hurting you was intelligent. It was the only height a child could climb to when she could not leave the room. The contempt protected you. It simply never learned that it could stop.
Why the sneer does so much damage
Gottman’s research found contempt in relationships to be the number one predictor of divorce. The reason is what it does to the person on the receiving end: he calls it an attack on their sense of self. Heitler explains the mechanism in a way I have never forgotten. A baby who tastes rotten food wrinkles his nose, curls his lip, and spits it out. That is the face of contempt. When someone speaks to you with that face, you feel spat out of their world. The hidden message, she writes, is get out of my life.
The body hears that message even when the mind argues with it. Gottman’s lab found that contemptuous couples suffer more infectious illness, more colds and flu, than other couples. The immune system, it seems, does not do well in a house full of sneering.
Then there is what contempt does to conversation. Heitler describes a good exchange as two people taking turns to offer and accept information, braiding a connection. Contempt cuts the braid. When one person dismisses what the other says, the flow of information breaks, and the emotional intimacy that runs on it breaks with it. It also invites hopelessness. Drawing on Martin Seligman, Heitler notes that contempt tells the other person they have a flaw that is permanent and unfixable. Nobody works on a marriage that someone has called hopeless.
Finally, contempt tends to call up its own reply. Most people, Heitler observes, answer if you do not want me with then I do not want you. So the partner on the receiving end either returns fire or goes quiet and shuts the door. That is the stonewalling horseman arriving to keep the first one company.
How to replace contempt in relationships
Gottman offers two antidotes, one for the moment and one for the long run. Both are simpler than you might expect, and both take practice.
First, say the need instead of the verdict. The short-term antidote is to describe your own feelings and needs rather than your partner’s failings. Instead of when are you ever going to learn, Gottman suggests: it is very important to me to be on time. Can you please help me with that? Notice that the second version is not softer for its own sake. It hands the partner something they can actually do. Learning to communicate your needs is the whole skill here, and it is a skill, not a temperament.
Then, catch the face before the words. Contempt lives in the body: the lip, the eyes, the tone. If you can feel your eyes start to roll, you have a half-second in which to choose. Use it to take a breath and drop your shoulders. That small act of emotional regulation is often the difference between a complaint and a wound.
Building back what contempt in relationships spent
Also, build the culture of fondness. The long-term antidote, in Gottman’s model, is a culture of fondness and admiration. He places it on the second level of his Sound Relationship House. It is made of small things: thanking your partner for the coffee, noticing what they got right, saying so out loud. A habit of daily gratitude turned toward your partner is the cheapest repair there is. Heitler calls this positivity, and lists its ingredients as appreciation, gratitude, affection, agreement, interest, and smiles. Contempt cannot grow in soil you tend this regularly.
Finally, tell the old story together. Gottman suggests couples revisit how they met and what drew them to each other. He even asks them to glorify the struggle, the hard times they came through side by side. Remembering that you were once a team is a direct answer to the verdict that says you never were. If contempt has been in the house for years, or if it has slid into cruelty, please talk to a doctor or a couples therapist. Therapists know the Four Horsemen well, and a good one can spot them in a single session.
Journaling prompts for contempt in relationships
Write these on your own, before you bring any of it to your partner.
- What is the complaint underneath my sarcasm, and when did I stop saying it plainly?
- Whose eye roll did I grow up with, and what did it teach me about disagreement?
- What is one thing my partner did right this week that I have not told them?
- If I felt fully heard by my partner, would I still need to be above them?
If the fourth answer is no, that is the truth of it. The height was never the point. You only ever wanted to be heard.
Conclusion: the sneer is a locked door, not a fact
Contempt in relationships is the habit of speaking from above. It predicts the ending because nobody can stay close to someone who has decided they are beneath them. It grew from complaints that went unheard, and often from a childhood where being above was the only safe place to stand.
You do not have to become a different person to stop it. You only have to say the need before the verdict, and catch the face before the words. Then put back, every day, a little of the fondness that contempt spent. Couples who learn to do this can also learn to make repair attempts that actually land. That is where the work becomes a marriage again.
Check out the author’s book here: Love and Relationship Workbook for Couples
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