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Areas › Your marriage › Knowing your partner
What comfort felt like then, what they longed for. It still lives in how they love now.
Lower to your parents the wing of humility out of mercy, and recall how they raised you when small (Qur'an 17:24). Our beginnings shape us; knowing them is tenderness.
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.
Gottman's love map questions reach back into a partner's history, because what comforted or hurt them early still shapes what love feels like now. Knowing that story tells you how to reach them when the usual words do not.
John M. Gottman; Nan Silver (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown
Principle 1, Enhance Your Love Map. Emotionally intelligent couples keep a detailed internal map of the partner's world, their worries, hopes, history and daily pressures, and that stored knowledge is what keeps them oriented to each other when life changes.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Understanding a partner's history explains what reaches them and what wounds them.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Build Love Maps; a partner's history and formative memories.
If sharing a real feeling is too scary, start smaller: say out loud just how hard it is to say it.
Do not win in a way that crushes your partner's dream. Aim for a marriage where you support each other's dreams.
See your bond as a safe haven and a secure base, not just romance. Your partner is meant to be the person you run to and the place you launch from.