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Areas › Your marriage › Gratitude
What you look for grows. Train your eye toward their good and the relationship warms.
If you tried to count God's blessings, you could never take them all in (Quran 16:18). A grateful eye always finds more; start with the one beside you.
النحل
وَإِن تَعُدُّواْ نِعۡمَةَ ٱللَّهِ لَا تُحۡصُوهَآۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَغَفُورࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
If you tried to count God’s blessings, you could never take them all in: He is truly most forgiving and most merciful
Qur’an 16:18read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gottman treats appreciation as a habit of attention rather than a feeling that arrives on its own. Training the eye toward what is worth thanking, instead of what is worth correcting, changes the emotional climate of the relationship.
John M. Gottman; Nan Silver (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Crown
Principle 2, Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration. An active habit of appreciation is the antidote to contempt, which Gottman names the single greatest predictor of divorce. Fondness is rebuilt by rehearsing what is right about the partner rather than by waiting to feel it.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Deliberately attending to a partner's positives, rather than their faults, shifts the emotional climate of the relationship.
Where this sits: Gottman method, The Positive Perspective (habit of appreciation).