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Areas › Your marriage › Staying regulated in conflict
I felt alone, not you ignored me. The feeling is yours to own and easy to hear.
Believers are told to speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose. I felt alone is more direct and more useful than you ignored me, and it leaves the door open.
الأحزاب
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ وَقُولُواْ قَوۡلࣰ ا سَدِيدࣰ ا
Believers, be mindful of God, speak in a direct fashion and to good purpose
Qur’an 33:70read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Emotionally focused therapy asks partners to speak from their own inner experience, which cannot be argued with, rather than from a description of what the other did. I felt alone gives your spouse something to respond to, while you ignored me gives them something to contest.
Susan M. Johnson (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: EFT with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Guilford
Accessing underlying emotion, Stage 1 Step 3. Johnson distinguishes the reactive secondary emotion, usually anger or numbness, from the primary attachment emotion beneath it, usually fear or grief, and holds that only the primary emotion pulls a partner closer.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Owning the feeling rather than the other's act keeps the door open.
Where this sits: EFT, Stage 1 Step 3: owning your own emotion rather than reporting your partner's behaviour.