Areas › Your marriage › Fondness and admiration
Tell your spouse one thing you respect about who they are, not something they did.
Your patience, your honesty, the way you are with people. Admire the person, not the task.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The most honoured of you before God is the most mindful of Him (Qur'an 49:13). To see and name good character in your spouse is to honour what God honours.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقۡنَٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرࣲ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلۡنَٰكُمۡ شُعُوبࣰ ا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ أَكۡرَمَكُمۡ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتۡقَىٰكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرࣱ
People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware
Qur’an 49:13read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Gratitude honours what someone did; admiration honours who they are, and it steadies something deeper. Naming a trait you respect feeds the fondness a marriage rests on.
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: research links. Replicated observational or longitudinal work.
Why it works
Admiration for character steadies the fondness that buffers a marriage against conflict.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Share Fondness and Admiration.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.