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Your marriage
The small things that hold a marriage
Four behaviours that corrode a marriage, one skill that repairs it, and an honest account of how good the evidence for any of this really is.
Before anything else. If any of these is true for you, this course is not the right one and you should not use what it teaches. You are afraid of your spouse. You change what you say to avoid a reaction. You have been hurt physically, even once. You are not allowed to see people, hold money, or go out alone. Your phone or your movements are checked. You have been threatened. Sex happens when you do not want it. Nothing is scored here and nobody is being told what is happening to them. But repair skills are not safe where one person is controlling the other, because technique in that situation becomes another tool for the person doing the harm. Go to the course called When home is not safe instead.
What this course teaches
The Gottman findings on bids and repair, with the pursue and withdraw cycle
The work is in the ordinary days, not in the argument. It teaches noticing and answering your partner's small everyday overtures, making and receiving repair attempts during conflict, and recognising the criticism and withdrawal cycle you are both caught in rather than who started it.
Why this one
The observational work distinguishing couples who stay together is strong; the very high prediction accuracy that gets quoted is not, because those models were fitted to the same couples they then predicted, and no percentage appears in this course for that reason. Couples therapy helps and the gain fades somewhat by a year.
What this course will not do
Couples therapy itself. And this course will not run at all if there is violence or control in the relationship, because joint work in that situation can make a person less safe, which is why it asks first.
Six short lessons on a marriage that has got harder than it used to be. It separates the argument you are having from the pattern you are having it in, names the four behaviours that observational research keeps finding in couples who come apart, and says openly where those famous claims have held up and where they have not. One skill is taught, the repair attempt, because it is brief, behavioural and available to one person acting alone. The last lesson covers the small everyday things, the in-laws, and what to do when a course is not enough.
Who this is for
Two people who both want this to work, in a marriage where neither is afraid of the other. It assumes no clinical background and no training in the sacred sciences. It can be read by one person on their own.
What this is not
This is not the right course for anyone who is afraid of their spouse, controlled by them, or hurt by them. See the safety note. It is not couple therapy and it is not a substitute for it. It does not process anything that has happened to you, does not ask you to raise a difficult history with your spouse as an exercise, and gives no protocol for affairs or for sexual difficulties. It gives no fatwa. It cannot tell you whether your marriage should continue.
The lessons
6- Where you left off. What is actually going wrongThe row is not the problem. The shape of the row is the problem.7 min
- The four things that corrode itCriticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling, with the evidence stated honestly.7 min
- Mercy is not a mood, and sabr is not silenceWho gets told to be patient in a marriage, and what the texts actually put on each of you.7 min
- Repair, the only skill in this courseWhat a repair attempt is, what makes one land, and why it is worth more than being right.8 min
- The small things, and the in-lawsTuesday afternoon decides how Friday night goes. And then the other family.7 min
- When this course is not enoughWhat therapy actually achieves, where the evidence is thin, and the honest thing about endings.6 min
What this course is built on
- Qur'an 2:187, 2:229, 2:231, 2:263, 4:19, 4:35, 4:128, 4:130, 30:21, 49:12. Translation throughout: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004. 4:19 is used twice, once for the standard it sets and once to correct the use of its second clause as an instruction to tolerate anything. 4:35 is presented with the explicit limit that it does not apply where there is fear or control. 64:14 is not used, because its scope is a matter for the scholar reviewer.
- Gottman JM, Levenson RW (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221 to 233. Also drawn on: Gottman JM, Coan J, Carrere S, Swanson C (1998), Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(1), 5 to 22, doi 10.2307/353438; and Gottman JM, Levenson RW (2000), The timing of divorce, Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(3), 737 to 745, doi 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00737.x.
- Driver JL, Gottman JM (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43(3), 301 to 314. Identifier unverified, so none is published. The five to one ratio of positive to negative interaction that circulates from this research group's observational coding is not quoted in this course, because it rests on the same sample and method as the prediction claims and no effect size for it was verified.
- Rathgeber M, Burkner PC, Schiller EM, Holling H. The efficacy of emotionally focused couples therapy and behavioral couples therapy: a meta-analysis. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. Author hosted copy gives 44(3), 2018; the journal issue is commonly cited as 45(3), 447 to 463, 2019. The authors' own stated limitations are published in the lesson alongside the effect sizes, including the near zero twelve month result for behavioural couples therapy.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 676, 5991, 7257; Sahih Muslim 2328, 2592, 2593, 2594; Jami' at-Tirmidhi 3895. Only reports graded sound or good are used, and each carries its grading and grader on its own entry. The reports on prostration, on a husband's pleasure and on a wife's refusal are held back pending a written scholarly treatment and are not quoted here. The narration that a believing man should not hate a believing woman was previously left out because its reference could not be confirmed. It has since been resolved in our own corpus as Sahih Muslim 1468, graded sound, and it is now used in lesson 3. Marriage is half of your deen, and the narration about divorce being the most disliked permitted thing, are still not used, because no reference and grading were confirmed for either.
- Heyman RE, Slep AMS (2001). The hazards of predicting divorce without crossvalidation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63(2), 473 to 479. The reason no prediction accuracy figure appears anywhere in this course. The Gottman Institute's own published research FAQ, fetched from gottman.com on 4 September 2026, concedes that statements about the 94 percent accuracy rate have become a source of confusion, and that the correct claim is that a couple is behaving like the couples in the group that went on to divorce in those studies.
- Bograd M, Mederos F (1999). Battering and couples therapy: universal screening and selection of treatment modality. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 25(3), 291 to 312. The source of the universal screening principle, and the basis for the gate at the front of this course.
- Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, Kitab Adab al-Nikah, on the etiquette of marriage. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zad al-Ma'ad, on the Prophet's conduct with his wives. Named by work and chapter only. Edition and page await a reviewer, and no passage is quoted. What qiwamah means is treated as a matter for the scholar reviewer and no ruling is asserted here.
- Karakurt G, Whiting K, van Esch C, Bolen SD, Calabrese JR (2016). Couples therapy for intimate partner violence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 42(4). Listed for completeness. No figure from this paper is quoted anywhere in the course, because its abstract, effect sizes and stated limitations could not be read.
- Penn State Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, Continuum of Evidence entry for the domestic violence focused couples treatment programme of Stith SM, Rosen KH, McCollum EE and Thomsen CJ, fetched 4 September 2026. Cited for eligibility criteria only: mild to moderate violence, couples wishing to remain together, excluding serious substance abuse, significant mental health problems, repeat offenders and batterers. Rated promising rather than effective. The underlying paper's identifier is unverified, so none is published.