Areas › Your marriage › Shared spiritual life
Name one goal you are building toward together, and say it out loud as ours.
The home, the children's upbringing, a habit of worship. Something you are making together.
Qur’an and Sunnah
They pray, our Lord, make us a model for the mindful (Qur'an 25:74). A shared goal is a family aiming at something higher than itself.
وَٱلَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا هَبۡ لَنَا مِنۡ أَزۡوَٰجِنَا وَذُرِّيَّٰتِنَا قُرَّةَ أَعۡيُنࣲ وَٱجۡعَلۡنَا لِلۡمُتَّقِينَ إِمَامًا
those who pray, ‘Our Lord, give us joy in our spouses and offspring. Make us good examples to those who are aware of You’
Qur’an 25:74read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Couples with a shared sense of what they are building weather the dull stretches better. Naming the goal aloud makes it something you own together.
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
A shared goal gives a couple a we and a direction beyond the daily.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Create Shared Meaning.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.