Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your marriage › Knowing your partner
When you go quiet I feel abandoned, like I did as a child. Name the ache, not the blame.
Lower to them the wing of humility and mercy, and recall the tenderness of your beginnings (Qur'an 17:24). Old wounds deserve gentle handling.
الإسراء
وَٱخۡفِضۡ لَهُمَا جَنَاحَ ٱلذُّلِّ مِنَ ٱلرَّحۡمَةِ وَقُل رَّبِّ ٱرۡحَمۡهُمَا كَمَا رَبَّيَانِي صَغِيرࣰ ا
and lower your wing in humility towards them in kindness and say, ‘Lord, have mercy on them, just as they cared for me when I was little.’
Qur’an 17:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Johnson holds that each partner carries raw spots, tender places formed long before this relationship, and that a sharp reaction is usually one of them being touched. Naming yours out loud lets your spouse understand a response that otherwise looks out of proportion, and stop treading on it unknowingly.
Susan M. Johnson (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown
Conversation 2, Finding the Raw Spots. Johnson holds that the sharp reaction is a secondary emotion covering a raw spot, a place of tender attachment fear, and that naming the raw spot rather than the reaction is what allows the partner to respond to the need instead of the attack.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Sharing attachment raw spots helps a partner stop stepping on them unknowingly.
Where this sits: EFT, Hold Me Tight Conversation 2: Finding the Raw Spots.