Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your marriage › Answering bids
Disconnection is healed less by solving the problem than by emotional presence, being genuinely there, attuned and engaged, so your partner does not face the hard thing alone.
God made spouses so each might find comfort and rest in the other. When your partner is in distress, that comfort is not a solution you supply, it is simply not leaving them alone in it.
الروم
وَمِنۡ ءَايَٰتِهِۦٓ أَنۡ خَلَقَ لَكُم مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا لِّتَسۡكُنُوٓاْ إِلَيۡهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيۡنَكُم مَّوَدَّةࣰ وَرَحۡمَةًۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَأٓيَٰتࣲ لِّقَوۡمࣲ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
Another of His signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquillity: He ordained love and kindness between you. There truly are signs in this for those who reflect
Qur’an 30:21read it in the library
الأعراف
۞هُوَ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفۡسࣲ وَٰحِدَةࣲ وَجَعَلَ مِنۡهَا زَوۡجَهَا لِيَسۡكُنَ إِلَيۡهَاۖ فَلَمَّا تَغَشَّىٰهَا حَمَلَتۡ حَمۡلًا خَفِيفࣰ ا فَمَرَّتۡ بِهِۦۖ فَلَمَّآ أَثۡقَلَت دَّعَوَا ٱللَّهَ رَبَّهُمَا لَئِنۡ ءَاتَيۡتَنَا صَٰلِحࣰ ا لَّنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلشَّٰكِرِينَ
It is He who created you all from one soul, and from it made its mate so that he might find comfort in her: when one [of them] lies with his wife and she conceives a light burden, going about freely, then grows heavy, they both pray to God, their Lord, ‘If You give us a good child we shall certainly be grateful,’
Qur’an 7:189read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Emotionally focused therapy treats disconnection rather than disagreement as the real injury in a couple, and presence as its remedy. When your partner is in something hard, being felt to be there with them is what calms the body and closes the distance, whether or not the problem gets solved.
Susan M. Johnson (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: EFT with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Guilford
The attachment frame. Johnson holds that adult partners function as attachment figures, a safe haven in distress and a secure base to go out from, and that distress is best read as a protest at the loss of that connection rather than as a skills deficit.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Offering steady emotional presence, rather than solutions or distance, is what meets the underlying attachment need and re-establishes safety.
Where this sits: EFT, attachment frame: presence as the answer to disconnection, the partner as safe haven.