Gottman Method · Virtual · Six provinces
The Gottman Method: what it is, and how it works
By the time a couple books, the problem may not be the dishes or the money or the in-laws. It is that both of you already know how the conversation ends before it starts.
Virtual couples therapy across six Canadian provinces. The Four Horsemen, the Sound Relationship House, and what actually happens in the sessions.
The Gottman Method at TEO, at a glance. TEO Counselling provides Gottman Method couples therapy across six provinces, every session online. It is delivered by two clinicians who have both completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy: Mohamad Shabib, a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC #11249205, CCPA), in all six provinces in English or Arabic, and Alison Shaji, a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC #22608, BCACC), British Columbia only. Couples sessions are $175 and individual sessions $150, each 60 minutes, no intake or assessment fee. No provincial health plan covers counselling in private practice; every session comes with an insurance-ready receipt; direct billing is available with Mohamad and Alison for Pacific Blue Cross and TELUS eClaims plans where the plan covers couples sessions, which varies by insurer. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation on a video call or a scheduled phone call, no referral needed.
The approachWhat is the Gottman Method? The plain answer
The Gottman Method is a structured approach to couples therapy, developed by Drs John and Julie Gottman, that begins with a formal assessment of the relationship and then works on the specific patterns that assessment identifies. It came out of observational research. Couples were brought into a lab in Seattle, recorded while they talked, and their behaviour coded moment by moment — tone, facial expression, what happened in the seconds after a complaint landed. That work ran across decades and thousands of couples, and the method was built out of the patterns that kept repeating.
The practical difference is that Gottman work does not start with treatment. It starts with assessment.
Couples counselling can begin with a session, then another, then a third, and somewhere around the fifth hour a shape finally emerges. Gottman work front-loads that. Before any intervention there is a structured assessment: a joint session, a separate session with each partner, and a set of questionnaires. Your therapist then gives you a description of your own relationship — where it is strong, which patterns are doing the damage, and what they propose working on — early, and in plain language.
That matters for the partner who is only in the room because the other one asked. There is a plan, and you are told what it is before you are asked to spend much on it.
What are the criticisms of the Gottman Method?
One well-known criticism concerns the prediction research behind the method. You will see it written that the Gottman Method predicts divorce with over ninety per cent accuracy. That figure comes from the Gottmans’ own studies, and it has been criticised in the research literature on methodological grounds — chiefly that the models were built and tested on the same couples, which makes the number a description of data already gathered rather than a forecast. A methods paper using archival data makes the same point: a divorce-prediction formula loses much of its accuracy once it is checked against couples outside the sample it was built from (Heyman and Slep, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). So treat the headline number with caution. The patterns the research describes are still worth knowing, and that is the part that will actually be useful to you.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, an assessment of your relationship, or a prediction about it. One thing worth saying early: if there is violence or control in your relationship, couples therapy is not the right first step. See the note below, or sheltersafe.ca.
What are the Four Horsemen? And the antidote to each
The Four Horsemen are four communication patterns — criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling — that Drs John and Julie Gottman found show up reliably when a relationship is in trouble. They borrowed the image from Revelation — four riders who arrive to announce the end — as shorthand for patterns that signal where a relationship is heading if nothing changes.
All four appear occasionally in relationships that are perfectly fine. What matters is how often they show up, whether they have become the default, and whether anything repairs the damage afterwards. Each one has an antidote. The antidotes are small and specific, and they feel awkward for the first month. That is normal.
| Horseman | What it sounds like | The antidote |
|---|---|---|
| Criticism | “You never think about anyone but yourself.” | The gentle start-up — say the effect, then the request |
| Contempt | “Oh, you’re tired. From what, exactly?” | Build a culture of appreciation — notice out loud |
| Defensiveness | “When exactly was I supposed to do that?” | Accept some responsibility — grant the part that is true |
| Stonewalling | Nothing. A blank face, one-word answers, the door. | Self-soothe, and come back at the time you said |
Examples of each, and what the antidote sounds like in a real argument, are in the Four Horsemen and their antidotes, with examples.
The Sound Relationship House, in plain words
The Sound Relationship House is the Gottmans’ model of what a working relationship is built out of: seven levels stacked on each other, held up by two weight-bearing walls — trust and commitment.
It is a house on purpose. You cannot renovate the fifth level if the first three are empty. That is the reason couples therapy sometimes appears to start in the wrong place. Couples can arrive wanting the fighting fixed, which is level five. The fighting can be bad because the levels underneath are thin, and the work starts lower down than expected.
- Love Maps. Knowing the inside of your partner’s life as it is now. What they are worried about this month. Who is irritating them at work. What they want in two years. Not who they were when you met.
- Fondness and admiration. Respect and affection that get expressed, not just felt. This is the level contempt eats first.
- Turning toward instead of away. The Gottmans call the small approaches bids — a comment about the news, a hand on your shoulder, “look at this.” Some are trivial. Turning toward means responding rather than half-hearing. In their research, how reliably partners responded to these small approaches tracked long-term satisfaction more closely than the big set-piece conversations did.
- The positive perspective. When the first three levels are solid, ambiguous moments get read generously by default. A short reply means they had a bad day, not that something is wrong. This level cannot be installed directly — it is what happens when the ones below it are in place.
- Managing conflict. Managing, not solving. The Gottmans’ research found that roughly two-thirds of relationship conflict is perpetual — differences in personality and needs that will not be resolved and do not need to be. This is where the horsemen and their antidotes get worked on directly.
- Making life dreams come true. Inside a gridlocked fight there can be something one partner needs that they have never quite said out loud. The argument about money, or how often you see family, can be carrying something older.
- Creating shared meaning. Rituals, roles, the things you do the same way every year, what you are building together. The part of a long relationship that makes it feel like a specific one rather than a functional one.
The walls. Trust is the belief that your partner is acting in your interest when you are not in the room. Commitment is the belief that this is the relationship, and that comparison shopping is not quietly running in the background. If either wall is compromised — after an affair, for instance — that is addressed before anything else, because nothing above it holds.
What a course of Gottman work involves
This is the shape of the method as the Gottman Institute publishes it, rather than a fixed program.
A free 15-minute consultation
No cost, no obligation. A chance to ask questions before either of you commits money to anything.
A joint session
Both partners together. How you met, what the relationship has been, what is happening now, and what each of you wants out of the work. The therapist is watching how the two of you talk to each other, not only what you report.
An individual session with each partner
Separately, and more candid. This is where individual history comes out, along with routine screening: safety, substance use, affairs, and each partner’s own mental health. How information from these sessions is handled between the two of you is normally explained before those sessions begin.
Questionnaires
Completed on your own time, between sessions. They cover areas the conversation will not reliably reach.
A feedback session
You are told what was found. Strengths first, then which of the Four Horsemen show up in your particular arguments and how fast, which levels of the house are thin, and a proposed focus. You get to disagree with it. It is a working hypothesis, not a verdict.
Then the targeted work
Specific things practised in session, and specific things practised between sessions, aimed at whatever the assessment identified. The focus is reviewed as the work goes on.
Length of work varies genuinely, and anyone who quotes you a fixed number of sessions before meeting you is guessing.
Who this suits, and who it may not suit right now
It can suit couples who:
- Have the same argument on a loop, in different costumes
- Have drifted rather than fought, and are more like housemates than partners
- Disagree hard about money, parenting, sex, in-laws, or how much time apart is normal
- Are rebuilding after an affair that has ended, with both partners willing to do the work
- Are about to marry or move in together and want to do it with their eyes open
- Include one partner who is sceptical of therapy and wants to know what the plan is
Married or not makes no difference to the method. Gottman marriage counselling and Gottman couples therapy are two names for the same work.
It may not be the right piece of work right now if:
There is ongoing intimate partner violence
Couples therapy is not recommended where one partner is being physically hurt, threatened, or controlled. The reason is practical, not moral. Couples therapy asks you to be honest in front of your partner, and then you go home with them. That can raise risk rather than lower it, and no amount of skill in the room changes that. The recommended route is individual support and specialist services first, on your own.
If that is your situation, it is not a judgement about you and it is not a door closing.
- In an emergency in Canada, call 911
- sheltersafe.ca lists shelters for women and their children fleeing violence, with 24-hour crisis lines, in every province and territory
- Support for men and for people in same-sex relationships exists too — your provincial or territorial victim services line can point you to it
- Suicide Crisis Helpline: call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7)
Untreated addiction is running the household. Substance use severe enough to drive the conflict needs its own treatment alongside or before couples work.
An affair is still ongoing. Recovery work after an affair is possible, and some couples choose to do it. It is not possible while the affair is still happening, because one partner is being asked to do the work without the information.
One of you has already decided. If therapy is being used as a soft way to exit, or to be able to say you tried, that is worth naming out loud. Deciding whether to stay is a different piece of work from repairing, and it can be a shorter one.
One partner is in acute individual crisis. Sometimes individual work has to come first. That is a sequencing decision, not a refusal.
Gottman vs EFT: which one is right for you
Gottman Method
Structure and a shared language
- Assessment first, then targeted work
- Concrete, sequenced, with things to take away
- Rests on an unusually detailed observational and longitudinal base
- Suits couples who escalate fast, want a plan, or have a sceptical partner
EFT (emotionally focused therapy)
Getting underneath it
- Attachment-focused; works with what surfaces in the room
- Experiential, slower, more emotionally exposing
- Has the larger body of controlled outcome trials testing the therapy itself
- Suits couples who fight about nothing, feel lonely together, or where skills have already been tried and did not touch it
Neither has been shown superior to the other in a head-to-head trial, and neither is the right answer for every couple. In practice, couples therapists can borrow from both — Gottman gives structure and a shared language for what is happening, EFT gets underneath it.
A rough guide. If your arguments go from zero to shouting in ninety seconds and you want something concrete to do about it, the Gottman approach is a good fit. If you rarely fight but feel unseen, and communication techniques have already failed to fix that, attachment-focused work may reach it faster. A consultation is also a chance to work out whether this approach is the right fit.
When one partner’s trauma keeps hijacking the relationship
One partner raises their voice slightly and the other is suddenly not in the conversation at all — not sulking, not stonewalling to win, but gone somewhere the argument does not explain. Or a specific tone, a closed door, a particular phrase, and the reaction that follows is three sizes too large for what just happened. Both partners can feel that something is off. Neither can name it. The couple gets labelled as having a communication problem, and communication skills do not fix it.
Sometimes a reaction like that has less to do with the present relationship than with something older being touched inside it. Whether that is what is happening in any particular relationship is not something a webpage can tell you. Where it is, the skills are not failing because they are bad skills. They fail because no technique works on someone whose nervous system has left the room.
Mohamad Shabib has completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, as well as advanced EMDR training through an EMDRIA-approved program, IFS Levels 1 and 2, and CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2. Because that training covers both couples work and trauma modalities, trauma responses that surface in couples sessions can be considered as part of the work rather than left unaddressed. More on EMDR and childhood trauma.
Sessions are available in English and Arabic. People argue in the language they were raised in, and being able to say the difficult sentence without translating it first for the therapist changes what gets said.
Nothing here is a diagnosis or an assessment of your relationship.
Gottman Method couples therapy with TEO Counselling in Canada
Two TEO Counselling clinicians, Mohamad Shabib and Alison Shaji, have both completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy. Mohamad is a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) with the CCPA. Alison is a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) in British Columbia. Rola Shbib, a Registered Social Worker (RSW) in Ontario, is currently completing her Gottman Method training.
Registration requirements for counselling are not the same in every province, so which clinician can work with you depends on where you live. If a designation matters to you — for insurance or anything else — ask about it at the consultation rather than assuming.
Where to start depends on your province. In British Columbia, couples work is with Mohamad or Alison: see online couples and marriage counselling in BC. In Ontario, couples work is with Mohamad: see online couples counselling in Ontario. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador, see online couples therapy and marriage counselling. City pages add local detail for couples in Windsor and Essex County, for marriage counselling in Sudbury and Northern Ontario, and for couples in Calgary.
Training levels
Mohamad and Alison have each completed Gottman Method Level 1 and Level 2 training.
The Gottman Method, answered
What is the Gottman Method in simple terms?
A structured approach to couples therapy built from decades of observational research by Drs John and Julie Gottman. It begins with a formal assessment — a joint session, an individual session with each partner, and questionnaires — and then targets the specific patterns that assessment identifies, rather than working through whatever comes up each week.
What are the Four Horsemen in the Gottman Method?
Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. They are four communication patterns the Gottmans found show up reliably when a relationship is in trouble. All four appear occasionally in relationships that are perfectly fine — what matters is how often, whether they have become the default, and whether anything repairs the damage afterwards.
What are the antidotes to the Four Horsemen?
Criticism is answered by the gentle start-up: say the effect on you, then the request, with no diagnosis of the other person. Contempt is answered by deliberately building a culture of appreciation. Defensiveness is answered by accepting some responsibility — granting the part of the complaint that is true. Stonewalling is answered by self-soothing and returning at the time you said you would.
Why are they called the Four Horsemen?
The Gottmans borrowed the image from the Book of Revelation — four riders who arrive to announce the end — as shorthand for patterns that signal where a relationship is heading if nothing changes.
Which of the Four Horsemen is the most damaging?
The Gottmans describe contempt as the most corrosive. The other three are bad ways of handling a disagreement, and a disagreement can be settled. Contempt communicates that a partner is beneath you, which is a message about worth rather than behaviour — and the person on the receiving end can stop raising things at all, so the real problems go unspoken.
What is the Sound Relationship House?
The Gottmans’ model of what a working relationship is built out of: seven levels stacked on each other — Love Maps, fondness and admiration, turning toward, the positive perspective, managing conflict, making life dreams come true, and creating shared meaning — held up by two weight-bearing walls, trust and commitment.
Does the Gottman Method really predict divorce with ninety per cent accuracy?
Treat that figure with caution. It comes from the Gottmans’ own studies, and it has been criticised in the research literature on methodological grounds — chiefly that the models were built and tested on the same couples, which makes the number a description of data already gathered rather than a forecast. Heyman and Smith Slep (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001) used the Gottmans’ 1998 newlywed study as an example of that wider problem: a formula built and scored on the same couples is tailored to them, and the real test is whether it holds up on a separate group of couples. The patterns the research describes are still worth knowing.
Is the Gottman Method the same as marriage counselling?
Married or not makes no difference to the method. Gottman marriage counselling and Gottman couples therapy are two names for the same work, at the same rate.
Is the Gottman Method religious?
No. The Gottman Institute describes the method, developed by Drs John and Julie Gottman, as based on laboratory observation, not religious ideology, and as adaptable to couples of any background, religion or culture. The Four Horsemen name uses a biblical image as a metaphor for communication patterns, not as religious instruction. Couples of any faith or none can use the method alongside their own values. If you want faith in the work, your therapist can make room for it, and the two of you decide how much. Alison offers Christian counselling in British Columbia only; Mohamad offers faith-informed therapy for Muslim clients in all six provinces. Mohamad (all six provinces) and Alison (British Columbia clients only) have each completed Gottman Method Level 1 and Level 2 training. Couples sessions are $175 per 60 minutes.
Is the Gottman Method better than EFT?
Neither has been shown superior to the other in a head-to-head trial, and neither is right for every couple. Broadly: if your arguments escalate fast and you want something concrete to do about it, the Gottman approach is a good fit. If you rarely fight but feel unseen, and communication techniques have already failed to reach that, attachment-focused work may get there faster.
Does the Gottman Method work for couples in crisis?
Couples can arrive in a bad state, and the assessment at the start of Gottman work exists partly to establish whether this is the right piece of work right now — no approach can be promised to help any particular couple. There are situations where couples therapy is not the right first step: where there is ongoing intimate partner violence or control, where an affair is still happening, where untreated addiction is driving the conflict, or where one partner is in acute individual crisis. Those are sequencing questions rather than refusals, and the free 15-minute consultation is where they get asked out loud. In an emergency in Canada, call 911; for the Suicide Crisis Helpline, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7).
Is couples therapy appropriate if there is violence in the relationship?
No, not as a first step. Couples therapy asks you to be honest in front of your partner, and then you go home with them — which can raise risk rather than lower it. The recommended route is individual support and specialist services first. In an emergency in Canada, call 911. sheltersafe.ca lists shelters with 24-hour crisis lines in every province and territory, and for the Suicide Crisis Helpline, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7).
What Gottman Method training has Mohamad completed?
He has completed Gottman Method Level 1 and Level 2 training. He also holds advanced EMDR training through an EMDRIA-approved program, IFS Levels 1 and 2, and CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2.
What does couples therapy cost, and which provinces do you serve?
Couples sessions are $175 per 60-minute session, individual sessions $150 per 60-minute session, and the initial 15-minute consultation is free. TEO is online only and works with couples in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Evening and weekend appointments are available. Receipts are provided for extended health plans — coverage for couples work varies considerably, so check your plan’s wording before booking.
You might also need
- Infidelity counselling — rebuilding after a betrayal
- Attachment-based therapy — the individual side of a couple pattern
What it costs, and how to start
Couples sessions are $175 per 60-minute session. Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session. The initial 15-minute consultation is free. TEO is online only — no office — and works with couples in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Evening and weekend appointments are available, which for two working people can be the only way this happens at all.
And if you are the reluctant one: you are not being asked to commit to anything except fifteen minutes on a video or scheduled phone call, at no cost, where you can ask what the plan is before anyone spends a dollar — and decide afterwards that it is not for you.
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