Areas › Your marriage › Repair after rupture
Name one old hurt with your spouse that still aches, gently and without re-litigating.
When you were not there that day, it marked me. Naming it is not attacking, it is asking to heal.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Whoever pardons and reconciles, their reward is with God (Qur'an 42:40). Naming a hurt in order to mend it is that road to reconciliation.
وَجَزَٰٓؤُاْ سَيِّئَةࣲ سَيِّئَةࣱ مِّثۡلُهَاۖ فَمَنۡ عَفَا وَأَصۡلَحَ فَأَجۡرُهُۥ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself––He does not like those who do wrong
Qur’an 42:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Some wounds keep quietly shaping a marriage until they are named. Speaking an old hurt, softly, is how you finally let it begin to heal.
Johnson, S.M. (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Guilford
The originator's account of EFT as attachment-based practice.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Voicing an unhealed attachment injury is the first step to repairing it.
Where this sits: EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy), attachment-based couple intervention.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.