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Areas › Your marriage › Repair after rupture
Report only what you saw, heard, and felt, like a reporter, not what you think they meant.
Avoid making too many assumptions, some assumptions are sinful (Quran 49:12). I heard, rather than you meant, guards against the sinful guess.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱجۡتَنِبُواْ كَثِيرࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعۡضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثۡمࣱۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُواْ وَلَا يَغۡتَب بَّعۡضُكُم بَعۡضًاۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمۡ أَن يَأۡكُلَ لَحۡمَ أَخِيهِ مَيۡتࣰ ا فَكَرِهۡتُمُوهُۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
Believers, avoid making too many assumptions- some assumptions are sinful- and do not spy on one another or speak ill of people behind their backs: would any of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? No, you would hate it. So be mindful of God: God is ever relenting, most merciful
Qur’an 49:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Step two of Gottman's Aftermath of a Fight has each partner describe their own reality as perception rather than fact. Reporting what you saw and heard, and leaving room to be corrected, stops the conversation becoming a fight about facts.
John M. Gottman (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy. W. W. Norton
The Aftermath of a Fight. A regrettable incident is processed only once both partners are calm, in order: each states how they felt, each states their subjective reality and the other validates it, earlier triggers are named, each takes responsibility for a part, and together they name one constructive plan.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Owning your account as perception, not fact, keeps a partner from feeling accused and lets them correct you.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Manage Conflict; Aftermath of a Fight, Step 2: Realities.