I originally wrote this in February, 2017 when we were in the early days of the Trump administration. I’ll bet that anyone who reads this could add a litany of examples to each section of this piece. Feel free to comment, and remember to show respect for other people, no matter how much you disagree with their opinions.
—Erik
John Gottman is one of the world's leading experts on interpersonal relationships. Scratch that... he is THE leading expert. He has been studying marriage, family, and other relationships for many years. One of his main goals is to improve the effectiveness of marriage/family therapy (he and his wife run one of the most influential family therapy training programs in the world).
Gottman found what he calls the Four Horsemen of the Relationship Apocalypse, four types of behavior that are each a strong predictor that the relationship will end. And together... let's just say they don't look pretty.
First is criticism. That means attacking your partner's character instead of focusing on the problem. Example: calling them "liars" when you disagree with their opinions.
Next is defensiveness. That means blaming your partner or anything but yourself when you are at least partly responsible. Example: "it's not my fault my car ran out of gas!" (when I'm the only one who drives it or takes care of it).
And then there's contempt. That can look like sarcasm, eye-rolling, name-calling, mocking, or similar behavior. It's all about showing your partner that they disgust you and you're better than them.
The last one is stonewalling. It happens when one partner refuses to participate in the argument. It can look like shutting down, having to have the last word, walking away, or deflection. If you have ever felt like you were talking to... well, a stone wall, then you know what this means.
Over the last couple of years I've noticed these relationship killers in a few other contexts, besides marriages. For example, I've been seeing some criticism and stonewalling from top leaders of the LDS (Mormon) church in discussion about some of their actions.
I've also been seeing a lot of these behaviors in the relationship between the Trump administration and the American people. Let's look at some of them.
Criticism
On Monday, the White House released a list of terrorist attacks to accuse the media of shirking their duties. Whether or not his message was true, his method of communicating it was harmful to the people, as the media are an important part of public life.
If Trump were serious about improving media coverage, he could have invited reporters and investigators to meet and review the information that he wanted publicized. But instead, he launched yet another in a long list of attacks on journalists' ethics and character.
If he wants to turn things around, Trump could still express disagreement... he would just need to focus less on attacking the media and more on publishing what he actually believes.
Defensiveness
Wow... where to begin... let's start with this. In the last few days, Trump tweeted "Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" This referred to the federal judge who said Trump couldn't stop people traveling from seven countries with Muslim majorities or stop our refugee-acceptance program.
When I read between the lines here, I find something like "it's not MY fault I tried to do something hugely unpopular that has done serious damage to our country's reputation!" And I think "yes, Mr. President, it really is your fault. Maybe the rumors are true and your advisor(s) put you up to it. But even then, you're the one who signed the order."
If Mr. Trump accepted even a little responsibility for the damage his actions have done, that would greatly improve his credibility, and it would show that he wants to participate in repairing his relationship with the people who didn't choose him in the first place.
Contempt
As if there weren't enough ineffective behavior in those last two categories, we could write books about his contemptuousness.
Trump's behavior shows signs of narcissistic personality. The theme of those signs can be summed up as acting on the belief that he's better at everything than everybody else. If we listen to Trump, then he's better at fighting ISIS, providing health insurance, securing borders, and hosting game shows than... whoever else did those things. Nielsen ratings support one of those claims, though I doubt it's hard to be better than Arnold Schwarzenegger at hosting a TV show made for Trump. The other claims have next to no supporting evidence, and in turn provide evidence of Trump's contempt for anything that doesn't go his way.
Stonewalling
Trump has gotten good at refusing to participate in important conversations. Look at his use of surrogates like Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer. I know POTUS always has spokespeople, and that doesn't show stonewalling by itself. After all, most of the time there's more room for questions and feedback. Recent history shows presidents responding to popularity polls by adjusting their actions. Trump responds to historically low ratings by tweeting “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting." He doesn't listen to the real argument. Instead he hears half of the description of the problem, throws out a criticism, and then refuses to engage.
Bonus: Gaslighting!
Recently, several writers have weighed in about gaslighting, another behavior that is harmful to relationships. We usually look at it as a sign of an abusive relationship. Wikipedia describes it well: "Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief."
Does any of that sound familiar? For one thing, Kelly Anne Conway is a master gaslighter. For another, "persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying" sounds a lot like "alternative facts" and Trump's frequent claim of "lies."
So on top of four strong signs that our relationship with our partner (POTUS) is on the rocks, we also have signs of psychological abuse by him. And abusers never stop abusing until they face punishment. People don't change their behavior until the pain of changing gets smaller than the pain of staying the same.
This week the Senate confirmed DeVos as Secretary of Education, along with several other hotly protested high-profile appointees. I know it's not the end of the world. I also know that the confirmation tells Trump that his behavior isn't that bad, that it's ok to keep doing what he was doing. It's a reinforcer (a reward that makes the behavior more likely to happen again).
What will it take to show him that it's not ok? How do we work towards extinction (imposing unwanted consequences until the behavior stops) on a national scale when the bad hombre (to borrow his own phrase) won't listen?
