Areas › Your marriage › Gratitude
Give your spouse one genuine compliment today, specific enough that it could only be them.
Not nice shirt. The way you handled that call was so calm. Precise praise lands deepest.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Is the reward for good anything but good? (Qur'an 55:60). A good word given is a good returned to the one who placed them in your life.
هَلۡ جَزَآءُ ٱلۡإِحۡسَٰنِ إِلَّا ٱلۡإِحۡسَٰنُ
Shall the reward of good be anything but good
Qur’an 55:60read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Vague praise slides off; specific praise proves you saw. One precise compliment a day quietly tips the balance toward warmth.
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
Frequent specific appreciation raises the positive-to-negative balance a marriage needs.
Where this sits: Gottman method, The Positive Perspective.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.