Areas › Your marriage › Knowing your partner
Ask one open question about their inner world tonight, and just listen to the whole answer.
What are you hoping for lately, what are you dreading. Questions with no single answer.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God placed love and mercy between spouses and made them a place of rest (Qur'an 30:21). Rest begins with being truly known.
وَمِنۡ ءَايَٰتِهِۦٓ أَنۡ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا لِّتَسۡكُنُوٓاْ إِلَيۡهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيۡنَكُم مَّوَدَّةࣰ وَرَحۡمَةًۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Another of His signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: He ordained love and kindness between you. There truly are signs in this for those who reflect
Qur’an 30:21read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The people who stay close keep learning each other. Open questions keep the map current instead of frozen where you left it years ago.
John Mordechai Gottman; Nan Silver (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work
Lay presentation of the Gottman Method: Love Maps, fondness and admiration, turning toward, accepting influence, solvable vs perpetual problems, shared meaning.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Open questions build the detailed map of a partner that closeness depends on.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Build Love Maps.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.