Workbook
The Four Things Killing Your Relationship
A Couples Workbook for Identifying and Replacing Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling
This workbook produces a signed repair plan naming each destructive pattern, its trigger, and its antidote.
For the couple who recognizes the pattern — the criticism, the eye-roll, the shutdown — and wants a plan for replacing it.
The Name It First Experience
Every couple has patterns — this workbook names yours and builds the plan to replace them. The Four Things Killing Your Relationship walks you through the four most destructive communication patterns — criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling — and shows exactly what replaces each one in the moment it appears. It is for the couple who can already recognize the pattern — the criticism that lands like a verdict, the eye-roll that signals contempt, the shutdown that ends the conversation — and wants a concrete plan, not just awareness. You finish with a signed Repair Plan naming each pattern, what triggers it, and the specific antidote you commit to.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- Which of the four — criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling — shows up first in your conflicts?
- What triggers the pattern — not the surface argument, but what is underneath it?
- What has this pattern cost you in this relationship that you would name if someone asked?
Research basis
Grounded in Gottman and Silver (1999) identification of the Four Horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling) as relationship destabilizers / Gottman et al. (2003) on physiological flooding and its interference with productive conflict / Johnson (2004) emotionally focused therapy research on negative interaction cycles.
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$27.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
Not available
Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
Not available
Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
Not available
Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$16.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
Not available
Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
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The Hardcover Everything Package
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The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
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Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
Partner Pair
Built for two. You each work your own copy, on your own time — then you bring them together and compare, one answer at a time.
The comparison is the conversation.
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Buy it for yourself.
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