Naima B. Robert – LET’S GET REAL! Advice to Muslims about Expectations in Marriage
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Assalamu
alaikum. Wurrahmatullah,
guys. This is your sister Naima b Robert
here.
Just with a short reflection and potentially
a reminder for everybody out there who wants
to be in a relationship, who wants to
be married or is currently in a relationship
and married.
So before I get into it guys, please,
I would love for you to like this
video
and subscribe to the channel. I'm trying to
get to 20,000 subscribers by the end of
the month.
You guys can help us get there. Please
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channel inshallah.
Now, the reason I just literally just threw
on my niqab,
put up my phone and decided to record
this is because I saw a comment on
my channel from a brother who's been following
the videos
and, I've been I read all your comments.
So I see
I see the growth guys.
I'm humbled by it.
Very gratified
by
the way that I can see you
engaging with the content
and actually thinking about the things that we've
been saying.
And I can see people's mindset starting to
shift.
And it's so beautiful to me, Masha'Allah,
to see people actually
having the humility
to maybe take a step back and say,
well, maybe I don't have it all figured
out. Maybe I don't know everything about this.
Maybe I can
make some adjustments. Maybe I can change.
And guys, this is something I wanna say
to every single one of you out there
whether you're single, married, divorced, young, old, with
kids, without kids, whatever it is.
There's this one quality
that if we can cultivate this quality,
I really believe that it will help us
to navigate our relationships
better.
You know, the ones that we're in now,
the ones that we'll go into InshaAllah.
And that quality is humility.
SubhanAllah.
I talked about this in my in my
little talk in the secrets of successful wives
conference,
but coming back to this quality of humility,
of knowing
and understanding
yourself,
your strengths as well as your weaknesses,
and having the emotional
intelligence and the self awareness
to to be humble.
Because guys, the fact of the matter is,
like, most of us are full of it.
Yeah?
And I'm accounting myself in that. Yeah. Okay.
We're amazing.
We're marvelous. We have so much potential. We've
done so many amazing things, but
at the same time,
most of us are full of
it. We think too much of ourselves.
We're not quick enough to say sorry. We
think that we're right. We need to be
right.
You know, we, we push on the wrong
things. We focus on the wrong things. We're
ungrateful.
Okay. We think we deserve
way more than we actually do.
And
that quality of humility
and just calming down,
Calming
right down
to say, you know what?
I'm a flawed human being
and you know what?
I'm grateful
that this other flawed human being puts up
with me.
A lot of us,
we forget that we can be a handful
sometimes.
We forget that we can be a bit
much.
We forget that we can do our partners
head in. We forget that, you know, our
list of demands, whatever that list of demands
is,
might not be realistic.
Right? What we're expecting from our husband, what
we're expecting from our wife just might not
be realistic.
And you know, when I talk about humility,
the other thing that I want to just
remind everybody
who's been watching the videos and commenting
is
again, the whole point of doing this conference
and having the marriage conversation
is for us to start getting real with
this
and start getting
really,
really familiar with
what's happening on the ground. Right? With real
life.
Not the fairy tales, not the idealized
version of anything or anyone,
but the reality
of this work that we've been put on
this earth to
do. If marriage is half hour Dean,
trust and believe it's not going to be
this fairy tale where you have the knicker
and you know, ride off into the sunset
and that's the end of it. No, of
course not. We all know this. Right?
So
I see the brothers doing it and I
see the sisters doing it, Having these unrealistic
expectations,
these unrealistic expectations of themselves, of their partner,
of the relationship as a whole. It should
be like this, but you're supposed to do
that. And I should feel like this. And
you know, if it's not like that, then
X, Y, and Zed, and I'm not gonna
accept anything less than this. And I'm not
gonna put up with that and this and
that.
Guys,
going back to the first point, the humility.
We have
a a short time on this Earth
to most for most of us, we have
some pretty important work to do. The first
is to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And
aside from any other responsibilities
and and and any other roles that we
play,
for most of us, we also have children
to raise. And you are gonna hear me
talking on this a lot and I'm gonna
mention it again and again. Because when we're
having these conversations about marriage, we very rarely
look at our children.
When we talk about whether we're happy or
we're not happy, we very rarely look at
our children. Right? We focus it on ourselves
and how we feel. And I'll say this
for men and for women.
When we choose somebody
to pair with, you're choosing
the future
father of your children.
The future
mother of your children. Right? And once Allah
gives them that,
that that that that status,
they will never lose the status.
Check it out.
Once allah
blesses that man
with the honor of being the father of
your children.
Once he blesses that woman with the honor
of being the mother of your children, you
can't take that away from them.
Nobody can take that away from them. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala has given that honor to
them regardless of whether you love them, you
don't love them, you're happy with them, you're
not happy with them, you stay together, you
don't stay together, they will always be mother
of your children, father of your children.
Which is why it's so important to choose
somebody
for with that in mind. This is going
to be the mother of my children, the
father of my children. How do I feel
about that? Right?
How, you know, how does that look? Am
I happy for this person to be the
father of my children and the, or the
mother of my kids? Right?
So
with that in mind,
we know that we've we've been tied together
with this person.
No matter how long the marriage lasts or
doesn't last, you guys have got a bigger
job to do than just make yourselves happy.
And I'm going to keep going on about
this because
I I I disagree
with people,
you know, make it okay. Let me let
me lay lay lay out my argument.
My assumption
is that the majority of marriages are average.
Meaning that they're not amazing
and they're not disastrous.
They're just average. So they have highs and
they have lows. There's some parts that work
really well. Some parts that don't work that
well at all.
You know, the the the the the husband
and the wife in general, they get along.
They may not be best friends,
but they get along, you know, there is
this intimacy, there's conversation,
it's average, right? It's just normal. Like I
said, with,
in the interview with, Imam Shabir, you know,
about it's okay for it to be just
okay. So the assumption is majority of marriages
are just average, they're just normal.
He annoys you, you annoy him, you know,
the usual. Right?
Now,
if we assume
that this is correct, that the majority of
our marriages are are average, right,
Then those people who are in average relationships,
you guys have got work to do
and the work is
helping each other to go to Jannah.
But also, if you've been blessed with children,
it is to prepare the next generation.
Okay?
This is your contribution to the Ummah. This
is your legacy. This is your Sadaqa Jariyah.
This is what you're gonna leave behind you
in the world. Okay.
So you 2,
you need to get really clear on that.
Because what you need to be doing is
making tau one. You need to be working
together as much as you can for the
sake of these children.
And if you're able to achieve that guys,
even if you don't achieve 5 star happiness,
even if you don't achieve so called soulmate
level,
you will have
done the right thing. You will have done
a good job
because
contrary to to popular
kind of belief,
just because a couple are not like on
the same wavelength or are not in love
does not mean that the relationship is toxic.
It doesn't mean that the couple is fighting.
It doesn't mean that the children are growing
up seeing abuse and this
is kind of the conversation that I see
in the public sphere. You know, when people
talk about staying together for the sake of
the kids, people will say, oh no. But
then, you know, what are the kids being
exposed to? Right? What are the kids seeing?
My guess
is a lot of the time the kids
are not seeing that much at all.
And again, we're not talking about abusive situations.
We're not talking about situations that are violent
or, or kind of really, really toxic, etcetera.
I'm not talking about those. I don't think
those are the majority.
I think a lot of the time when
the parents are not that happy together,
what the children might see
is mommy and daddy doing their own thing.
They come together when they need to come
together and then the rest
time they do their own thing. I don't
know.
If you're teaching your children,
if you both love your children,
if you're both, you know,
doing tarbia of those children, if he's teaching
the children what he knows and you're teaching
the children what you know, if they have
relationships with their granny and their granddad and
their aunts and their uncles, if they wake
up in the morning and they see their
dad there and he makes them Weetabix,
like, is that so wrong?
Have you done them a disservice
because the 2 of you were not this
loved up couple?
Because the 2 of you were not this
highly,
you know, highly connected couple that kind of
was always on the same wavelength that had
so much love for each other, was so
romantic and you know, it was so beautiful
together.
Have you done your children a disservice
by not modeling this beautiful ideal relationship?
I don't think that you have
because
yes, your children will kind of model their
parents,
but
if the parents were able to respect each
other,
get along enough to cooperate and raise the
children,
surely that's good enough.
And I mean they have Hollywood and songs
and books and all sorts of things
to, to, to help them build up an
idea of what they may think an ideal
relationship is.
But as long as they grew up with
their parents
respecting each other and their parents committed
to them and the family unit,
I don't know. I just I don't agree
that
if the parents are not happy together and
the marriage is not this amazing marriage
that what's happening is that the children are
being taught something bad, that the children are
learning a toxic example.
Again, let me know in the comments guys
what you think.
I want everybody
again, like I said, if we can all
just calm down
and humble ourselves
enough to be grateful for the good that
we have
enough to realize that we ourselves have work
to do,
that we're still learning, that we're still making
mistakes,
and that we need our partner's grace and
our partner's forgiveness
just as much as they need ours a
lot of the time.
And that we've we see the person who's
sitting across from us with the eyes of
love,
with the eyes of mercy,
with the eyes of Rahma
mercy,
with the eyes of someone who understands that
dude I know you're just a human being.
I know you're trying.
I get it and and I'm here for
it. You know. I'm here for you. I
am for you because I know that you
are for us.
Sisters this is directly to you.
And I've said this before. If your husband's
trying,
love that man.
If your wife is trying, brother.
Love that woman. Make her feel safe.
Make her feel secure. Make her feel like
you've got her back because the crazy thing
about it is that we actually both need
each other to have each other's backs. We
both need it to feel
acknowledged and appreciated and respected by the other.
We both need to feel safe together.
It's not just one needs it and the
others, you know, they couldn't care less.
That's the ideal scenario because this life is
hard enough as it is. And the world
itself, the world out there is a tough
enough place as it is.
Let people fight battles out there,
but not at home.
At home, guys,
keep reminding yourselves if you are in a
marriage right now, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala put
this person in your life for a reason.
They are a manna. You will be questioned
about how you behaved with them, how you
treated them, whether you gave them their rights
or not, whether you took advantage of them,
whether you were you were a terrible person
to them, whether you you know whatever it
is right? Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is going
to
ask you. He is
the one
whose pleasure we seek.
He is the one who will not leave
a single deed unnoticed
or unaccounted for. He is Al-'Adl. He is
the just.
So let's look to him for our reward.
Let's look to him for the gratitude.
Let's look to him for the the the
ultimate goal. Right? Which is to earn Jenna
through this.
So that's really all I want to say
guys. Just a quick reminder.
I want to say a big thank you
to everybody who has subscribed, who has been
watching the videos, who's been commenting.
I see your comments, I see your growth
and I'm grateful that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
has put us in this space where we
can learn from each other.
I ask Allah to allow it to continue
and if you haven't subscribed to the channel
already then please do hit the subscribe button.
More content is planned all the way up
to Ramadan and beyond.
We're gonna have another secrets of successful wives,
event. We're gonna have something for the brothers
as well. It's gonna be great InshaAllah but
let me know in the comments what your
thoughts were from this. I wanna keep it
short Insha'Allah and I'll see you on the
next one.