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Your marriage

What keeps a marriage well is not the big gestures. It is knowing each other, turning towards each other in ordinary moments, staying regulated when it gets hot, and repairing quickly when it goes wrong. Most of the practices here take under five minutes.

What works for this

Gottman on repair, and emotionally focused therapy

What separates couples who last is not the absence of conflict but what happens in the ordinary moments and whether repair gets through. Emotionally focused therapy works on the pattern the two of you fall into, not the thing being argued about.

One move, today

Notice one small overture from them today and answer it. Not a conversation, just turning towards it rather than past it.

What matches

2 practices

Narrow these down

Ask one open question about their inner world tonight, and just listen to the whole answer.

What are you hoping for lately, what are you dreading. Questions with no single answer.

Twenty minutesKnowing your partnerGottmanQur’an 30:21One line of research

Ask your spouse about a moment from their childhood that shaped them, and listen closely.

What comfort felt like then, what they longed for. It still lives in how they love now.

Twenty minutesKnowing your partnerGottmanQur’an 17:24One line of research

Learn this in order

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