Reflections on Marriage #3

Salam and Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala

Muhammad Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa Taala he was I was I love the Steven cathedra. Because he

was saying the

one of the big reasons why communication suffers and breaks down is because of the duration of childhood. So we have this delayed childhood syndrome, where we raise children and keep them as children long after they should really have grown up and

taken charge of themselves and taken charge of also taking care of the common space as a host. We never allowed that to happen, we continue to treat them as children, we continue to make decisions for them, we continue to

treat them as if they were incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. And lo and behold, they prove you right now, or therefore what to do.

Therefore, obviously, the obvious thing to do is to break this cycle.

This cycle must be broken in two ways. One is, and I'm talking here about quite literally saving your marriage, because if you don't do that, you will end up in a state where the children will grow up, but the marriage will, will go southwards, and in many cases break down

the two ways of doing that to not just two ways as in two choices, but two things must be done. Number one, is get out of the delaying childhood

way of raising children,

a child of the child only when it's physically, literally physically dependent on you, for its life. So nursing mothers, children when they are very small, and so on. But very quickly, the child must be given responsibility and must be

must be trained to accept responsibility and to carry out functions

as early as possible. Obviously, it doesn't mean that you leave the whole house to the child to a four year old, but it means that you give them responsibility, graduated responsibility, and teach them the values that you want them to grow up with. One of them is accountability. One of them is owning,

taking ownership for one's actions, and once and once speech,

not to come running and crying to the authority figure, which is the mother or the father, to solve problems that the child created for himself or herself.

Put it back, put it back in their, in their

in their laps, and say that this is what you created, you solve it, here is how you can do that, by all means, suggest to them, this them, but let them do it. You don't go and solve it for them. So for example, if two of them are fighting over a toy, Euro, go and tell them do this, don't do that. So maybe I'll help them walk them through the whole idea and aspect and the joy of sharing instead of negative toxic competition. Because guess what, in my

family business consulting practice, I see this being played out 40 years down the line. So at age two, the parents came in and said, No, don't worry about it, I will get you your own 40 years up the road, they are splitting the company, they're splitting the business into two, because that's all they were brought up. That is all that they were brought up to understand and do which is how can I have my own, and my own brother and whoever can go to hell? Instead of that, if the raising

at the age of two and three and four was? How can I share with my brother and sister? How can I grow the pie, instead of trying to chop off the largest chunk of that pie for myself, if that had been the training 40 years up the road, that training would have resulted in the business growing stronger, growing bigger, and the siblings, the family running the business doing that in a much more constructive way than what normally happens.

It all begins where you start. So the first part of

of dealing with this communication breakdown is to raise children to become responsible adults. And as I said, you don't have to wait for adulthood to do that. And you really should not that has to start from the nursery from the practically from the cradle.

And this is a joint effort of the parents. Now what this does automatically is it forces if I can use the word that the parents to communicate because this

is not something that you can do on your own, either the parent is something but you need, the husband needs the wife, the wife and the husband to communicate this jointly to growing children who are responsible, who will become inshallah responsible adults. It's very important there also that you don't short circuit each other, you support each other's messages, you do not contradict one another. It's also makes you conscious of how you behave with each other. In front of the children, the children are watching. And I keep saying all the time children listen with their eyes, not with their ears, children descend with their eyes, they don't care what you say, until they see what you

do. And of course, this applies to the whole world, not just to children, but definitely to children. So when you are focused on this,

then you're not just throwing toys and money at the children to give them shot, you're not just giving them a smartphone,

to keep them engaged, instead of screaming the guts out and disturbing everybody else. You're not doing any of these very negative things that we see happening all the time, instead of that you are training them to be responsible adults. And in that process, you are doing yourself a huge favor, by communicating putting yourself in a situation where you must communicate, you cannot abdicate your responsibility as a mother to the Father, you cannot abdicate your responsibility as a father to the mother and expect one of the spouses to do the raising of children it is not possible, it is not possible for a man or woman on his or her own to have a child without the other person being there

biologically that is not doable. And if that is the case, then biologically also it is it may be doable to be a single mother or single father or single parent, but it is definitely not desirable, it is definitely not something that

needs to happen when you started off with a marriage. So communicate, that's the first part. The second part is you also need to communicate just the two of you husband and wife without the children in the in the picture. So do whatever it takes right back the shoulder off to your your in laws or, or your friends or your to the to their uncles and aunts and wherever they are safe and they are well and they are happy and take time off and take time out for yourself. One of the

one of the fun ways of learning this is to watch or read the Calvin cartoon, there is so much wisdom in that water, one must be given the Nobel, Nobel Prize for wisdom, they I don't think there is one they should create one. There's so much a wonderful wisdom and of course, all expressed in a very

humorous way. But it's Calvin is is far more than human is far, far, far more than humor. It's a It's not humor it is, is distilled wisdom, in that so why so look at the tree that did that cartoon. It is, again, it's not a cartoon, really, if you look at it, so

focus on,

on communicating. And for that you have to get out, you have to get out of the house, that just the two of you go and discover what life was before the children came into your life. Right? hamdullah children, good children are a blessing. Not all children are blessing Bucha are busy. But irrespective of whether they are a blessing or not. You need to discover what life was. Can you even have conversation between yourself the two of you are just by yourself? What are you talking about? This is very, very important. Conversation between the parents, between the between the spouses, not parents, between the spouses is a literally as I mentioned in the last reminder, it's the

thermometer it's the meter which measures the health of the marriage.

Do you have this conversation?

If you don't have the conversation, and it might be possible that you don't have the conversation, then think about how can we bring back this conversation?

Remember, the first time when you got married, it was also probably a lot of physical attraction, which you thought was love but it was really physical attraction.

Depending on how long you've been married and what has been happening in your lives and to your to yourselves, this may not be the case anymore. But that does not mean that the marriage is you know, is is gone. It's not it's just changed in its form. And it can become more beautiful every time provided. There is conversation and conversation not talking at each other. Right talking to each other, talking with each other. Talking at each other is a distract is an absolute destroyer. This is one of the main one of them.

At the thing that happens between spouses, and each one is trying their best to change the other one. I think it's a completely insane thing to try to do that. If you didn't like the spouse, why did you marry them in the first place? And if you think that spouse is so bad that you need to change them all the time, then leave the one on go and go find another spouse. That's probably it's simpler and better for the mental health of both of them. But really is being think about that and say that it's not a question of changing anybody. It's a question of understanding the person supporting each other. And how can we do that in the in the most beautiful way? So think about

conversation more about this tomorrow? Insha Allah was Allah Allah Allah Allah will carry Murray he was with him but I want to go