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Areas › Your marriage › Shared spiritual life
The call, the errand, the small promise. Trust is built from tiny kept words.
The believers keep their trusts and their promises (Qur'an 23:8). The smallest kept word is that promise, honoured.
المؤمنون
وَٱلَّذِينَ هُمۡ لِأَمَٰنَٰتِهِمۡ وَعَهۡدِهِمۡ رَٰعُونَ
who are faithful to their trusts and pledges
Qur’an 23:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gottman's claim is that trust is built in very small moments rather than in grand gestures. Keeping the smallest thing you said you would do is one of those moments, and it is what makes you someone who can be relied on.
John M. Gottman; Nan Silver (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown
Principle 3, Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away. Romance is built in the ordinary moment when one partner makes a small bid and the other turns toward it. The running total of those turnings, not the grand gesture, is what fills the emotional bank account.
Strength of evidence: seen more than once. Replicated observational or longitudinal work, not tested against a control.
Reliability in small commitments is the daily bedrock of trust.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Turn Toward Instead of Away; trust built in small moments (keeping the small promise).