The Toxic Patterns: Criticism | Communicating Effectively in your Relationship | Part 2
This is the second in a series of posts about communicating in your relationship - check out part one here. We’ll be posting these often so keep checking back for the latest instalment. You might also consider attending our workshop on couple communication in February 2026. Learn more about that on our Landmark Learning Sessions page.
The Toxic Ways We Communicate and How to Do It Differently
In our first post on this topic, we talked about a couple of key things to know and practice in order to improve your communication. First of all, you have to actually know what it is you’re feeling. You can do that by improving your overall vocabulary to describe how you feel.
Then, we talked about the idea that how you communicate your feelings matter. When we feel sad, we most often want to feel connected to our partner. But it’s possible to communicate that in a way (e.g. by using criticism) that actually disconnects people from us even more.
There is an amazing body of work completed by Dr. John Gottman and his team at the Gottman Institute related to how couples communicate. Dr. Gottman’s work over several decades is the foundation for so much of what we do in couples therapy.
One of the foundational elements is his collection of four toxic communication patterns that often show up in relationships. He calls them The Four Horsemen. We referenced two of them last time, but here’s the full list:
Criticism
Defensiveness
Stonewalling
Contempt
These four communication patterns are like poison for your relationship. Just like if we found ourselves eating food that was hurting us, it’s important to stop using these patterns in the way that we try to communicate with our loved ones. Luckily there are four antidotes to these patterns and we’ll share those with you over the next few posts.
Criticism & Gentle Start Up
The first toxic pattern is called criticism and it is very likely the most common of the four. If you’ve even been in a relationship with someone, you’ve likely both delivered and received criticism. At it’s core, you can think of criticism as seeing someone else as responsible for the negative feelings or thoughts that you might be having and then attacking them as the cause. The attack part is key here. When you say something in anger that starts with “You always…..” or “You never….” there’s a good chance that criticism is about to follow.
It might sound like “You never ask me any questions about my day. All you care about is yourself.” Or, “You’re always so flirty at parties. You don’t even like me!”
To avoid criticism, the first antidote is called Gentle Start Up. A gentle start up still acknowledges that the other person did or said something that resulted in your negative feelings and even calls on them to do something different. What it does better though is that it avoids that attack!
It does so by including a couple of distinct components.
An expression of how you feel
An expression of what you need
The don’t need to appear in any particular order. It’s just important to ensure that you communicate both.
It might also be helpful to think about the difference between criticism and a gentle start up as the difference between an attack and an invitation for the other person to see and care about how you’re feeling.
So, here are a couple of examples of criticisms reframed as gentle start ups.
Criticism: There you go again! You’re always making us late for everything. Can you just get out the door?
Gentle Start Up: “It’s really important for me to be on time to this meeting. Can we finish these tasks when we get home?”
Criticism: Why am I always the one to do everything? You never help and it’s getting really old!!
Gentle Start Up: “I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed with taking care of things around the house. I need some help with a few things.”
Criticism: Do you ever stop? Why are we always talking about your day, your work? I never get to talk. You don’t even care.
Gentle Start Up: “I’d like to hear about your day, but can we talk about the things that happened to me today first?”
While it can take some time to really master how to reframe your complaints using gentle start ups versus attacking your spouse, it’s really clear that doing so can help you feel more connected, seen, heard, and valued.
The reality of relationships is that there are always going to be things that happen that you don’t like or that you want to change. No one should expect that their relationship is free of complaints.
The key here is to complain without blame. By using gentle start ups, you’re effectively communicating your needs to your partner without attacking them and potentially activating the second toxic communication pattern, Defensiveness.
And that’s where we’ll start next time!