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Areas › Your marriage › Staying regulated in conflict
We have both gone quiet and cold. One of us has to reach first. Let it be you.
The Qur'an says that if a couple want to put things right, God will bring about a reconciliation between them. Somebody has to make the first move that shows the wanting, and it may as well be you.
النساء
وَإِنۡ خِفۡتُمۡ شِقَاقَ بَيۡنِهِمَا فَٱبۡعَثُواْ حَكَمࣰ ا مِّنۡ أَهۡلِهِۦ وَحَكَمࣰ ا مِّنۡ أَهۡلِهَآ إِن يُرِيدَآ إِصۡلَٰحࣰ ا يُوَفِّقِ ٱللَّهُ بَيۡنَهُمَآۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيمًا خَبِيرࣰ ا
If you [believers] fear that a couple may break up, appoint one arbiter from his family and one from hers. Then, if the couple want to put things right, God will bring about a reconciliation between them: He is all knowing, all aware
Qur’an 4:35read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Freeze and Flee is Johnson's name for the pattern where both partners give up and go cold. Because neither is reaching, silence only deepens it, so naming the freeze and being the one who reaches first is the move that ends it.
Susan M. Johnson (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown
Conversation 1, Recognising the Demon Dialogues. Johnson names three patterns, Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, and Freeze and Flee, and holds that the cycle, not the partner, is the enemy: naming it out loud is the first move of de-escalation.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Naming mutual withdrawal breaks a standoff that silence only deepens.
Where this sits: EFT, Hold Me Tight Conversation 1: Freeze and Flee, mutual withdrawal.