Al Iman Family Services
Al Iman Family Services offers social, educational, counseling, and psychotherapy services rooted in Islamic theology to enhance the quality of life for families in need.
By Imam Ayman Al-Taher, Registered Psychotherapist | Al Iman Family Services
A few years ago, a client came into my therapy room and said something I have never forgotten. She was a woman – strong, composed, highly educated – sitting beside a husband who was quietly falling apart.
“He cries sometimes,” she told me, almost puzzled. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
Her husband said nothing. He looked at his hands.
In over two decades of working with Muslim couples and families, I have encountered a pattern we rarely discuss openly: men who are starving for emotional safety in their marriages – and wives who, despite their love, do not know how to provide it.
We speak often, and rightly so, about the emotional safety that wives need. The Quran itself describes this need through the word sakinah – the tranquility that a marriage is designed to produce. But sakinah is not gendered. The verse does not say she finds rest in him. It says: “that you may find tranquility in them.” (Quran 30:21)
Emotional safety, it turns out, is a human need – not a female one.
I recently began using what I call the Mutual Presence Exercise in couples therapy. After one of my clients – a wife – told me, “Next time, ask my husband to face me, hold my hands, and look me in the eye,” I started inviting distressed couples to do exactly that.
What I found was illuminating – and humbling.
Some couples could not do it. Hands were held loosely. Eyes drifted. One wife said her heart was racing. The discomfort was not performance anxiety; it was their nervous systems reporting the true state of the bond. When emotional safety is absent, even the invitation to connect produces fear.
But here is what I also observed: it was not always the wife who was more distressed. In several cases, the husband – particularly those married to very strong, high-achieving women – sat with the same disconnected posture. He was the one whose eyes dropped. He was the one who held his wife’s hand without really holding it.
When I asked how he felt, the answers were often similar: “I feel like I can never do anything right.” “She doesn’t need me.” “I’m more like a co-manager of the household than a husband.”
These men were not weak. They were emotionally unsafe. And their wives – capable, driven, deeply loving – had simply never been taught that strength without softness can leave a husband feeling invisible.
The Quranic word sakinah – translated as tranquility, rest, or dwelling – comes from the root sakana: to settle, to be still, to find peace. Allah placed this gift within the marital bond itself, not within one spouse.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) modeled this mutuality throughout his marriages. He wept openly. He sought comfort from Khadijah (may Allah be pleased with her) after the first revelation, trembling and distressed. He expressed his grief, his fears, and his love without concealment. This was not weakness – it was the foundation of the deepest marital trust in Islamic history.
What the Prophet modeled was not a husband who needed nothing. It was a husband who could be known – who brought his inner world into the marriage and trusted that it would be received with mercy.
That is emotional safety. And it is a need both spouses carry.
The women I am describing are not cold or unkind. They are often extraordinarily competent – managing careers, households, children, and extended family with remarkable capability. Their strength is a gift. But strength, without the consciousness of a partner’s emotional world, can become a wall.
Their husbands learn, over time, not to bring their softness. They stop sharing fears. They stop asking for support. They perform competence and self-sufficiency, and the marriage – functional on the surface – grows quietly hollow at the center.
This is a form of emotional unsafety that is rarely named in our communities. We talk about the husband who dismisses his wife’s feelings. We almost never talk about the wife whose capability inadvertently communicates: I don’t need you, and I suspect you’re not quite enough.
That message – however unintentional – can devastate a man’s sense of belonging in his own marriage.
Modern attachment science supports what the Quran has always implied. Dr. Sue Johnson, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, demonstrates that both men and women carry the same core attachment question into their marriages: “Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Can I count on you?”
Men are simply socialized, in most cultures including our own, to suppress this question rather than ask it. The result is not the absence of the need – it is its concealment.
Research by Bloch, Haase, and Levenson (2014) found that husbands’ emotional regulation also predicts marital satisfaction – not just wives’. When a husband cannot bring his vulnerability into the marriage, both partners suffer. She is locked out of his inner world. He is stranded in self-sufficiency. The emotional climate of the home grows cold, even when the logistics run perfectly.
The 20-second hug, which research by Dr. Karen Grewen has shown to measurably elevate oxytocin and reduce blood pressure, is equally restorative for men. The face-to-face, eyes-meeting, hands-held posture of genuine connection engages the ventral vagal nervous system in both spouses – not only in women. The body needs safety before it can love freely. This is true for all of us.
Emotionally safe wives do not need to become less capable or less strong. They need to add one practice to their strength: the practice of reaching toward their husband’s inner world with curiosity and care.
This means asking – and genuinely listening – when he seems quiet or heavy. It means celebrating him, not only as a provider or father, but as a man whose feelings, fears, and dreams matter to you. It means letting him see you need him – not because you do not manage without him, but because needing each other is not weakness; it is covenant.
It means saying, with your presence and your attention: your inner world is welcome here.
Islamic application: Khadijah (RA) told the Prophet (peace be upon him): “By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You maintain the ties of kinship, help the poor and destitute, serve your guests generously, and assist those hit by calamity.” She named him. She built him. That is the work of a wife who understands that her husband, even the greatest man who ever lived, needed to be seen.
Whether you are a husband who needs his wife to see him, or a wife who has never been taught to offer that softness – start with the body.
Sit facing each other. Hold hands – really hold them, warmly, intentionally. Let your eyes meet and stay for a few moments without looking away.
If this is uncomfortable, that discomfort is information. It is your nervous system telling you that your bond needs tending. The discomfort is not the problem – it is the beginning of the solution.
Hold each other for twenty seconds. Long enough for the breath to slow. Long enough for the body to remember: this is safe. This is home.
Then ask: “How are you – really?”
And listen.
Imam Ayman Al-Taher is a Registered Psychotherapist and Islamic marriage counselor, and the founder of Al Iman Family Services (AIFS). He is the author of the Sacred Bonds Islamic Marriage and Family Series. For counseling inquiries, visit aifs.ca.
