Surely no one wants to get divorced (well, aside from anyone with a vested interest in the “Kim’s Fairytale Divorce” sequel.) But what if an expert could tell you whether your marriage will last, within a few minutes of meeting you and your beloved? It might be possible. John Gottman—a marriage therapist featured in Macolm Gladwell’s bestselling “Blink”—claims that he can “thin-slice” a couple, predicting the fate of their union with incredible accuracy just by watching them. The secret: Your positive and negative emotional interactions with each other. Do you roll your eyes when he talks? Bad sign. Does he smile when you tell a story? Good sign! It’s all about the right balance. “All couples, happy and unhappy, have conflicts,” Gottman writes, “but the ratio of positive to negative interactions during arguments is a critical factor.” The golden ratio: 5:1. With five being the positives, that is!
QUIZ: What’s Your Relationship Style?
