Areas › Your marriage › Fondness and admiration
Scan today for one thing your spouse did right, and say it before the day ends.
The mind drifts to what is wrong. Deliberately catch what is right, then name it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Even an atom's weight of good will be seen, says the Qur'an (99:7). If the smallest good is never lost before God, train your own eye to catch the good your spouse does, and to name it.
فَمَن يَعۡمَلۡ مِثۡقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيۡرࣰ ا يَرَهُۥ
whoever has done an atom’s-weight of good will see it
Qur’an 99:7read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In strained marriages the eye learns to find fault. Deliberately catching what your partner did well retrains it toward what is good.
Gottman, J.; Levenson, R. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology doi
Interaction patterns and physiological arousal predicting dissolution.
Strength of evidence: research links. Replicated observational or longitudinal work.
Why it works
A habit of noticing the positive counters the negativity that erodes marriages.
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.