What Predicts Divorce

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“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

One word. Delivered with a sigh, a dismissive glance, or an eye roll. It seems like nothing. But according to decades of relationship research, moments like this one are far more predictive of divorce than most couples realize.

This article is part of Marriage.com’s Science Says series, where we unpack surprising, research-backed truths about how relationships actually work. 

In episode two, we are looking at what predicts divorce more reliably than cheating, and why the answer is not found in dramatic betrayal but in small, repeated moments that slowly erode the foundation of a marriage.

Why cheating is not the biggest threat to your marriage

When people imagine what ends a marriage, infidelity tends to top the list. It is dramatic, it is clear, it has a beginning and an end point. Most couples can identify it the moment it happens.

But research consistently tells a different story about what actually predicts divorce. The work of Dr. John Gottman, who spent four decades studying thousands of couples in his laboratory at the University of Washington, identified four specific communication behaviors that predict the end of a relationship with striking accuracy. He called them the Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Of all four, contempt is the single most powerful predictor of divorce. Not infidelity. Not financial stress. Not incompatibility. Contempt: the slow, quiet erosion of respect that happens in small moments, most of which neither partner consciously registers as dangerous.

What contempt actually looks like in everyday life

Contempt does not always announce itself. It does not show up wearing a name tag. It arrives in moments that feel minor, and that is precisely what makes it so insidious.

It looks like an eye roll when your partner tells a story you have heard before. It sounds like sarcasm when they suggest something you disagree with. It feels like dismissiveness when they share something that matters to them and you offer a one-word response, or none at all. 

It is the slight curl of the lip during an argument. The heavy sigh that says “here we go again” without a word being spoken.

Each of these moments, taken in isolation, seems harmless. A bad day. A momentary irritation. But contempt in a relationship is not defined by any single instance. It is defined by pattern. 

And when the pattern takes hold, it communicates something deeply corrosive to the receiving partner: you are beneath me. What you feel does not deserve my genuine attention.

That message, delivered repeatedly through small moments rather than one dramatic confrontation, slowly breaks emotional safety. And once emotional safety is gone, connection follows.

How small disrespect breaks emotional safety

Emotional safety is the quiet foundation beneath everything good in a relationship. It is the felt sense that you can be yourself with this person, that your feelings will be taken seriously, that you will not be mocked or minimized for what you need or how you feel.

When respect is consistently present, emotional safety is maintained almost automatically. Partners can disagree, frustrate each other, go through hard seasons, and still feel fundamentally secure in the relationship. But when small moments of disrespect accumulate, that safety begins to erode.

The mechanism is straightforward. Every eye roll, every dismissive comment, every instance of sarcasm during a vulnerable moment, teaches the receiving partner something: sharing yourself here is not safe. Over time, they begin to share less. They self-edit more. They stop bringing things up. The relationship starts to feel more like coexistence than genuine connection.

And here is the critical point the video makes: this does not happen all at once. Relationships do not weaken in dramatic collapses. They weaken slowly, through the accumulation of small moments that were never individually identified as dangerous. 

The predictors of divorce that Gottman identified are powerful precisely because they are gradual. By the time most couples recognize the pattern, significant damage has already been done.

Why we do it without realizing it

Very few people in a relationship are consciously choosing to be contemptuous toward someone they love. Most of these moments are automatic, habitual, and below the level of deliberate decision-making.

The eye roll happens before a conscious thought. The sarcasm is just the way you have started talking to each other. The dismissiveness is a product of familiarity, of being so used to someone that you have stopped really hearing them. None of this is usually intentional. All of it still causes damage.

This matters because it changes the nature of the solution. The problem is not that one partner is secretly malicious. The problem is that a pattern has taken root that neither person may have noticed forming. Identifying it requires a kind of honest self-observation that most people do not apply to their day-to-day interactions in a long-term relationship.

A useful question to ask yourself: if a close friend were watching your last three difficult conversations with your partner, what would they notice about how you respond when you are frustrated, tired, or disagreeing? Not the content of what was said, but the tone, the body language, the micro-expressions. That reflection often reveals more than any single argument could.

The shift that changes everything

The video’s prescription is both simple and genuinely demanding in practice: replace judgment with understanding. Listen before reacting. Understand before responding.

This is not a call for conflict avoidance or constant agreement. It is a call for a fundamental shift in orientation during difficult moments. Instead of responding to your partner’s behavior with an evaluation, right or wrong, smart or foolish, reasonable or dramatic, respond first with curiosity. 

What is underneath what they are saying? What do they actually need right now? What would it feel like to be them in this moment?

That shift from judgment to understanding does not require you to abandon your own perspective. It simply delays the reactive response long enough to create genuine connection rather than escalating defensiveness. 

And it sends a message that is the opposite of contempt: I see you. What you feel matters to me. You are not beneath my attention.

Building this into daily interactions is how healthy communication in marriage becomes a protective force rather than just an aspiration. The couples who are most resilient over time are not the ones who never feel frustrated with each other. 

They are the ones who have built a consistent habit of responding to that frustration without diminishing the person they married.

Practical ways to interrupt the pattern

Recognizing contempt in your own behavior is the first step, but recognition alone does not change a pattern. Here are concrete ways to begin interrupting it.

Notice your non-verbal responses first. The eye roll and the dismissive sigh often happen before words do. Start paying attention to your body language during disagreements. If you catch yourself doing it, acknowledge it: “Sorry, that came across as dismissive. I’m listening.”

Separate the behavior from the person. Contempt attacks character. Healthy frustration addresses behavior. “You never listen to me” is contempt. “I felt like I wasn’t being heard just now” is honest and specific without attacking who your partner is as a person.

Create a ratio of appreciation. Gottman’s research found that healthy couples maintain roughly five positive interactions for every negative one. If your recent interactions have been heavy on criticism and light on warmth, deliberately introduce appreciation. Not as a performance, but as a genuine counterweight to the negativity that has been building.

Slow down reactive moments. The moments most likely to produce contemptuous responses are the ones where you are tired, frustrated, or already triggered. Slowing down, even by taking a breath before responding, creates just enough space between the feeling and the reaction to choose something better.

Name the pattern together. If contempt has been present in your relationship for a while, naming it explicitly with your partner, in a calm moment rather than a heated one, is more effective than trying to quietly manage it alone. “I’ve noticed we’ve been pretty harsh with each other lately. I want to change that” is the beginning of a different kind of conversation.

Common questions about what predicts divorce

Final thoughts

What predicts divorce is rarely what most people expect. It is not the big betrayal or the explosive fight. It is the eye roll that happened a hundred times. The sarcasm that became the default tone. The dismissiveness that slowly taught a partner their feelings were not worth taking seriously.

The good news is that small patterns cut both ways. The same daily consistency that allows contempt to take root is the same consistency that allows respect and warmth to rebuild. 

Every moment you choose understanding over judgment, curiosity over dismissal, and genuine listening over reactive response, you are making a deposit into the emotional safety of your relationship. Those deposits compound over time, just as the withdrawals do.

Watch the full Marriage.com video on what predicts divorce more than cheating, and then share your thoughts in the comments below. Has this changed how you think about the small moments in your relationship? Your perspective might be exactly what someone else needs to read today.

Calantha Quinlan Author

Calantha Quinlan is a talented writer with a passion for exploring the depths of the human experience. Her writing is characterized by its raw honesty, emotional depth, and sensitivity to the complexities of life. Calantha’s work... Read more covers a wide range of topics, from love and relationships to personal growth and spirituality. Her writing is known for its ability to inspire readers to live more meaningful and fulfilling lives and to approach challenges with courage and grace. When she’s not writing, Calantha can be found indulging in her love for photography, capturing the beauty of the world through her lens. She also enjoys practicing yoga and meditation, which help her to stay centered and grounded in a busy world. Read less

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