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Areas › Your marriage › Repair after rupture
I see how that hurt you, and I am truly sorry. Then stop. The silence after is the repair.
Whoever pardons and reconciles, God rewards them (Qur'an 42:40). A clean apology opens the door to that reconciling.
الشورى
وَجَزَٰٓؤُاْ سَيِّئَةࣲ سَيِّئَةࣱ مِّثۡلُهَاۖ فَمَنۡ عَفَا وَأَصۡلَحَ فَأَجۡرُهُۥ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
Let harm be requited by an equal harm, though anyone who forgives and puts things right will have his reward from God Himself––He does not like those who do wrong
Qur’an 42:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Emotionally focused therapy asks for an apology that names what the other felt and then stops, with no defence attached. A but quietly takes the apology back, while the silence after a clean one is what convinces your spouse you understood.
Susan M. Johnson (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown
Conversation 5, Forgiving Injuries. Johnson holds that an attachment injury, an abandonment at a moment of acute need, blocks all repair until it is named as such, its impact heard without defence, and comfort offered at the exact point of the wound.
Strength of evidence: seen more than once. Replicated observational or longitudinal work, not tested against a control.
A clean apology that names the impact, without excuse, is what actually lands.
Where this sits: EFT, Hold Me Tight Conversation 5: Forgiving Injuries, the apology that names the impact.