Areas › Your marriage › Fondness and admiration
Replace one eye-roll or cutting joke today with a word of respect.
Contempt is the slow poison. Catch the sneer and turn it, deliberately, into something kind.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Let no people mock another, perhaps they are better than them (Qur'an 49:11). Mockery at home is that same contempt, in a smaller coat.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا يَسۡخَرۡ قَوۡمࣱ مِّن قَوۡمٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُونُواْ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ وَلَا نِسَآءࣱ مِّن نِّسَآءٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُنَّ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُنَّۖ وَلَا تَلۡمِزُوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡ وَلَا تَنَابَزُواْ بِٱلۡأَلۡقَٰبِۖ بِئۡسَ ٱلِٱسۡمُ ٱلۡفُسُوقُ بَعۡدَ ٱلۡإِيمَٰنِۚ وَمَن لَّمۡ يَتُبۡ فَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلظَّٰلِمُونَ
Believers, no one group of men should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; no one group of women should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; do not speak ill of one another; do not use offensive nicknames for one another. How bad it is to be called a mischief-maker after accepting faith! Those who do not repent of this behaviour are evildoers
Qur’an 49:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Contempt, the sneer and the cutting joke, is the strongest single predictor of a marriage failing. Removing it from even one exchange guards the whole bond.
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
Removing contempt protects the fondness everything else in a marriage rests on.
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.