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Areas › Your marriage › Knowing your partner
In the science of love, a partner is an attachment figure: a safe harbour in distress and a secure base you venture out from. Treating the relationship as that shelter, rather than only a source of pleasant feelings, changes how you show up in it.
He created spouses for you to live with in tranquillity, and ordained love and kindness between you (Quran 30:21). The verse names the marriage itself as a place of rest, the very safe haven the science describes.
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
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Emotionally focused therapy treats adult love as an attachment bond, so your partner is meant to be both the person you run to when hurt and the base you set out from. Seeing the relationship that way turns conflict into a search for connection rather than a contest to win.
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.
Understanding love as an attachment bond, a real need for safety and closeness, reframes conflict as a search for connection rather than a battle to win.
Where this sits: EFT, attachment frame: the partner as safe haven and secure base.