My partner rolls their eyes at me: what contempt does to a relationship
Contempt is any message that you are beneath your partner: the eye-roll, the mocking repeat of their words, the sarcastic "great job". It hurts more than anger because it attacks a person's standing, not just their behavior. The long-term remedy is less about what you say in fights and more about rebuilding everyday respect and appreciation. When contempt is constant and comes with humiliation or control, treat it as a safety issue, not a style.
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By EQTiger Editorial. Review status: needs-expert-review. Qualified review is pending; the review date records an editorial check. This is general education for adults, not therapy or couples counseling, and EQTiger does not diagnose anyone, including your partner.
What it looks like when you are on the other end
Elena is walking her wife, Ruth, through a spreadsheet of the holiday budget. Ruth glances at the ceiling and lets out a long breath through her nose. Nothing has been said, and Elena already feels small.
Or: Kwame comes home and says he is wiped out after a twelve-hour shift. His boyfriend repeats it back in a sing-song voice, "Oh, you're tired," and goes back to his laptop. Or at a friend's barbecue, someone tells the story of their partner getting lost on the way, and the punch line is how hopeless the partner is with directions. Everyone laughs, including the partner, who is quiet in the car afterward.
None of these is shouting. All of them send the same message: you are a bit ridiculous, and I am above this. The Gottman Institute lists the forms contempt takes: sarcasm, mockery, name-calling, and body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing, and describes it as taking a position of moral superiority over the partner (The Gottman Institute, 2013). Criticism says "you did a bad thing." Contempt says "you are a lesser person," which is why it lands so hard even when the words are small.
How strong is the evidence?
You will often read that contempt is the number one predictor of divorce. That line comes from the Gottman Institute's own writing, which calls contempt the single greatest predictor but gives no figure on the page (The Gottman Institute, 2013). The underlying research is real but more modest than the headline. In a 14-year study, negative emotion during conflict predicted earlier divorce, while a lack of positive emotion, in both conflict and everyday conversation, predicted later divorce (Gottman and Levenson, 2000). The high accuracy figures in this line of work came from models fit and tested within the same sample.
Other researchers have pushed back. A critique argued that some practical recommendations drawn from these studies went further than the data allowed (Stanley, Bradbury, and Markman, 2000), and a reanalysis showed that divorce-prediction accuracy drops sharply once equations are tested on new data (Heyman and Smith Slep, 2001). The fair summary: contempt is a reliable marker of a relationship in trouble, but no one can look at a couple's eye-rolls and tell you their future.
Why it starts, and what replaces it
Contempt rarely appears out of nowhere. The Institute describes it as fed by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner (The Gottman Institute, 2013). In practice that often means complaints that were never voiced or never resolved, slowly hardened into a story about the partner ("she is so controlling", "he is useless with money"). Once the story is in place, you start seeing evidence for it everywhere, and the eye-roll is the story leaking out.
That is why the Institute's suggested remedy is not a better comeback in the moment but a culture of appreciation and respect, built by noticing and saying what you value in your partner on ordinary days (The Gottman Institute, 2013). It fits the 14-year finding above: it was the absence of positive moments, not only the presence of bad ones, that tracked with later breakups (Gottman and Levenson, 2000). If you are the one rolling your eyes, two things help. First, find the original complaint under the contempt and raise it plainly (see criticism vs complaint). Second, start catching your partner doing things right and say so out loud.
Telling a bad habit from degradation
| What you notice | Habit that can change | Pattern of degradation |
|---|---|---|
| How often | Flashes during fights or stressful weeks | Most days, including calm ones |
| When it is pointed out | They wince, apologize, and catch themselves next time | They mock you for being "too sensitive" |
| In front of others | Rare, and they notice the hurt | Regular, and the humiliation seems to be the point |
| What comes with it | Ordinary disagreements | Insults, isolation from friends, control over money, threats |
The right column matters. Insulting and shaming a partner, cutting them off from friends and family, controlling money and making threats are listed as warning signs of abuse (National Domestic Violence Hotline). If that column describes your relationship, appreciation exercises are not the answer, and the safety note on this page lists people who can help you think through your options.
What to say
Use your own words. These are starting points, not lines to perform, and they work best said once, calmly, and then followed by listening.
When you rolled your eyes just now, I felt like an idiot for bringing it up. I want to finish what I was saying. Can you hear me out?
When to use it: Right after an eye-roll or scoff, said calmly. Naming the specific gesture and its effect works better than calling them contemptuous.
I was sarcastic with you earlier about the car, and that wasn't fair. What I actually meant was that I'm worried about the repair bill.
When to use it: You caught yourself being contemptuous. Owning it and saying the real complaint underneath gives your partner something they can respond to.
Can we agree that stories about each other at parties stay kind? The one about the airport last night stung, even though I laughed.
When to use it: The next day, privately, after a joke at your expense in front of friends. Raise it once, specifically, and ask for an agreement.
I noticed you handled the call with the landlord really well today. I don't say that enough.
When to use it: Any ordinary day. Specific appreciation, said out loud, is the slow work that crowds contempt out.
What to avoid
| Avoid | Why it backfires |
|---|---|
| Answering contempt with contempt ("Oh, real mature") | It confirms the story each of you is building about the other, and the conversation becomes a contest of who is more above it. |
| "I was only joking" | It tells your partner their hurt is the problem. If a joke landed badly, the useful reply is that you did not mean to hurt them and will not repeat it. |
| Building a case file of their failings to prove you are right | Collecting evidence feeds the hardened story behind contempt and makes every new mistake look like proof. |
| Waiting for your partner to stop first | Contempt tends to run in both directions. Whoever changes first breaks the cycle, and it rarely matters who started. |
A 10-minute exercise for the two of you: the respect inventory
This is for couples where contempt is an occasional habit, not a sign of fear. Each of you needs a pen and a phone timer.
- Minutes 0 to 2: each of you writes three specific things you have respected about the other in the past month (an action, not a trait: "how you talked to your dad on the phone").
- Minutes 2 to 5: take turns reading them aloud. The listener only says "thank you" and does not deflect or joke.
- Minutes 5 to 8: each of you names one gesture or phrase of your own that you suspect comes across as dismissive (a sigh, a particular "okay", an eye-roll) and says what you will do instead.
- Minutes 8 to 10: agree on a gentle word either of you can use when one of those gestures slips out, and decide on one place (the fridge, a shared note) to add a new item of respect each week.
When to see a couples therapist
- Both of you roll your eyes, mock or use sarcasm most times you talk about anything difficult.
- You notice a fixed, negative story about your partner that you can no longer argue yourself out of.
- Appreciation feels impossible to say, even when you try, because resentment gets there first.
- Contempt comes with insults, humiliation in front of others, or attempts to control you. In that case, start with an individual counselor or an advocate rather than joint sessions.
Look for a licensed marriage and family therapist or another licensed clinician who works with couples. EQTiger does not recommend specific providers.
Research notes
Every source below was opened and checked on the review date. Each note says, in one sentence, what the source found or argues.
- The Gottman Institute, 2013. The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. The Gottman Institute. Gottman Institute blog describing criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling; it calls contempt the single greatest predictor of divorce and advises taking 20 minutes alone to self-soothe when flooded. www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/
- Gottman and Levenson, 2000. The timing of divorce: Predicting when a couple will divorce over a 14-year period. Journal of Marriage and Family. Negative affect during conflict predicted early divorce, while a lack of positive affect in conflict and everyday conversations predicted later divorce. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00737.x
- Stanley, Bradbury, and Markman, 2000. Structural flaws in the bridge from basic research on marriage to interventions for couples. Journal of Marriage and Family. Critique arguing that Gottman and colleagues' 1998 recommendations (drop active listening, anger is not harmful, gentler wife start-up) were premature given methodological and conceptual shortcomings. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00256.x
- Heyman and Smith Slep, 2001. The hazards of predicting divorce without crossvalidation. Journal of Marriage and Family. Using archival data, the authors show that divorce-prediction accuracy and predictive value drop sharply when equations are cross-validated, so uncross-validated results deserve extreme caution. doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2001.00473.x
- The Gottman Institute, 2013. The Four Horsemen: The Antidotes. The Gottman Institute. Gives antidotes: gentle start-up for criticism, a culture of appreciation for contempt, taking responsibility for defensiveness, and physiological self-soothing for stonewalling, with breaks of at least twenty minutes. www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-the-antidotes/
- National Domestic Violence Hotline. Warning Signs of Abuse. National Domestic Violence Hotline. Lists common behaviors of an abusive partner, such as insulting or shaming, isolating you from friends and family, controlling money, and threatening or intimidating, and directs readers to advocates. www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/domestic-abuse-warning-signs/
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2 questions
Questions
Is eye-rolling really that big a deal?
One eye-roll is not a crisis. A habit of eye-rolling, sarcasm and mocking sends a steady message that one partner looks down on the other, and that is the pattern relationship researchers link to couples in trouble. What matters is how often it happens and whether it gets better when it is named.
Is contempt the biggest predictor of divorce?
The Gottman Institute says so, but the claim comes from its own studies, whose accuracy figures were not tested on new samples. Treat contempt as a serious warning sign rather than a forecast.
Related
- No. 01The four horsemen, explainedThe "four horsemen" are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling, four ways of fighting that John Gottman's lab linked to unhappy marriages and later divorce. The studies were real, careful observations of couples, but they were correlational, mostly small, and their headline prediction rates were never cross-validated. Treat the horsemen as useful warning signs to change, not as a test that tells you whether your relationship will last.
- No. 02Criticism vs complaintA complaint names a specific thing that happened and what you would like instead; a criticism turns that same problem into a verdict on who your partner is. The complaint keeps the problem small enough to fix, while the criticism invites a defense of their character. You do not need to stop raising problems. Aim them at the event, not the person.
- No. 03Feeling taken for grantedFeeling taken for granted usually means a lot of what you do, especially the planning, remembering and checking, has become invisible, sometimes even to you. Studies of couples link everyday gratitude to feeling more connected the next day, and people who feel appreciated tend to appreciate their partner in return. The fix is two-sided: make the hidden work visible and ask directly for what you need, rather than hinting or quietly doing less.
- No. 04Expressing appreciationName the specific thing your partner did, the effort behind it and what it meant to you: "Thanks for refilling my coffee before I woke up. It made the whole morning easier." Everyday gratitude between partners is linked to feeling more connected and satisfied the next day, for both the person thanked and the person thanking. People who feel appreciated tend to appreciate back.
- No. 05Being called too sensitiveBeing told you are too sensitive usually ends the conversation about what hurt you and starts an argument about whether you are allowed to feel it. In a lab study, invalidating responses kept people more upset and more physically aroused than validating ones, which can make a reaction look even bigger. Separate the original hurt from the label, look honestly at whether there is a pattern in how you react, and notice if the phrase is used to shut down every complaint.
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