Areas › Your marriage › Shared spiritual life
Tell your children, or each other, one good part of your story of us.
How you met, a hard thing you got through, why you are proud of this we. Say it aloud.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God placed love and mercy between you as a sign (Qur'an 30:21). Your story together is a small telling of that sign.
وَمِنۡ ءَايَٰتِهِۦٓ أَنۡ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا لِّتَسۡكُنُوٓاْ إِلَيۡهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيۡنَكُم مَّوَدَّةࣰ وَرَحۡمَةًۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Another of His signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: He ordained love and kindness between you. There truly are signs in this for those who reflect
Qur’an 30:21read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Couples who tell a warm story of their us stay bound to it. Speaking that story, even once, reminds you both what you are part of.
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 rehearsed positive story of the relationship strengthens its glue.
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.