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Areas › Your marriage › Listening and understanding
You are a traveler; they are the guide into their own landscape of sadness. Let them show you.
Yaqub said, I plead my grief and sorrow before God (Quran 12:86). Grief asks first to be heard, not fixed.
يوسف
قَالَ إِنَّمَآ أَشۡكُواْ بَثِّي وَحُزۡنِيٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَأَعۡلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
He said, ‘I plead my grief and sorrow before God. I have knowledge from God that you do not have
Qur’an 12:86read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gottman's advice for sadness is to stop trying to cheer your partner up and find out what feels lost or missing. Cheerfulness aimed at a sad person tends to leave them more alone; company and curiosity reach them.
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.
Cohen, S. and Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin doi
Perceived social support buffers individuals against the harmful impact of stressful life events.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Sitting with a partner's sadness, rather than rushing to fix it, is what actually comforts.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Turn Toward (listening to sadness); How to Be a Great Listener.
Once a day, take your partner's emotional temperature. Ask how are you doing, and mean it.
Reflect your partner's feeling back to them in simple, slow, soft words, using their own words where you can.
When your partner is angry, do not take it personally or rush to apologize. Ask what the anger is protecting.