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Areas › Your marriage › Listening and understanding
All anger has a goal and something blocking it. Find both. What do you need is a good question.
Be tolerant and command what is right, and pay no attention to foolish talk (Quran 7:199). Tolerance holds steady while it seeks what the anger is really about.
الأعراف
خُذِ ٱلۡعَفۡوَ وَأۡمُرۡ بِٱلۡعُرۡفِ وَأَعۡرِضۡ عَنِ ٱلۡجَٰهِلِينَ
Be tolerant and command what is right: pay no attention to foolish people
Qur’an 7:199read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gottman's advice for a partner's anger is not to take it personally or rush to apologise, but to ask what it is protecting. Anger has a goal and something blocking it, and finding both addresses the real need.
John M. Gottman (2011). The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. W. W. Norton
Attunement, spelled ATTUNE: Awareness of the partner's emotion, Turning toward it, Tolerance of two valid realities, Understanding, Non-defensive listening and Empathy. Stated negative emotion is a request for connection, to be answered before the content is addressed.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Meeting a partner's anger with curiosity, not defense, turns it into an opening for closeness.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Turn Toward (listening to anger); How to Be a Great Listener.
Reflect your partner's feeling back to them in simple, slow, soft words, using their own words where you can.
When your partner is sad, do not try to cheer them up or fix it. Find out what is lost or missing.
When your partner talks, shift the focus off yourself. It is not about being interesting, it is about being interested.