Naima B. Robert – TMC E3 Clip Muslim Couples Should Educate Themselves On Marriage

It's literally just an open market. And, and people are

suffering because they can't make sense of it, you know, and, and

weigh up, you know, desires versus, you know, kind of, you

know, eventual goals in your life and, you know, mistakes that you

make now that follow you later in dating and you know, all of that

stuff, you know, it's Pinilla, I'm, I'm grateful that we as

Muslims don't have to deal with that mess.

You know, one of the things, I am actually so grateful that the Dean

gives us the blueprint that we have, because I see what's

happening sort of in the world out there, because if you look at sort

of prior the 1960s, you know,

people around in the UK, in the US in the West, in general, they did

things a lot like us, you know, there'll be chaperones, you know,

there would be intentions of marriage, you know, you'd go and

ask the Father to take the girl out, you know, it was, it was a

lot more civilized, shall we say? Now, it's just a free for all.

It's literally just an open market. And, and people are

suffering because they can't make sense of it, you know, and, and

weigh up, you know, desires versus, you know, kind of, you

know, eventual goals in your life and, you know, mistakes that you

make now that follow you later and dating and you know, all of that

stuff, you know, it's Pinilla, I'm, I'm grateful that we as

Muslims don't have to deal with that mess. And how? Well

hamdulillah and it's all there, right? Like you said, the

blueprint is there. And what a lot of people do is they just jumped

into marriage without knowing any of this stuff. And this is why

conversations like these podcasts, classes, books, there's so many

resources out there

that most married couples,

they don't even consider. It's not even, it's not even, they're not

even thinking about it. It's just for them. It's about No, I know,

we're gonna get married, we'll figure things out kind of thing.

They don't even think about let me educate myself, right? Because

then later on, all of these discussions come up, and they're

like, I don't know what you know, what to do in this case. So I

didn't know about this. Right. So I feel like, you know, just one

tip for anyone that's considering getting married. And even if

you're already married, it's not still not too late. Is too, too,

isn't it?

Well, you know, depends on your situation, but we hope that

depends on the answer to the questions that you're gonna ask.

Yeah. Right. So

yeah, it's just, it's just about making sure that you spend a bit

of time educating yourself. And that's what it is. It's, that's,

you know, everything, you know, we talked about investing in

yourself, right, you got to invest in your relationship. And part of

investing in your relationship is to take a course or to read some

books and to, to learn, because then you start thinking a bit

outside the box, you start seeing different perspectives, right.

Whereas if you had, you know, had you not done that you would have

gone into the marriage, and you'd be thinking your way, and they'd

be sitting there Wait, so, you know, like, there's books like,

you know, men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Right? You know,

it's like understanding even the opposite gender, just

understanding that. People don't do that. Right. Yeah, so true. And

you think about it, you know, if you grew up in a sort of Muslim

Islamic environment, your dealings with the opposite gender will be

probably quite limited, right.

And, you know, even if you grew up with sisters, or you know, you

grew up with brothers, the understanding of why they did what

they did, and kind of where that was coming from. I mean, I

remember when I read, men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And it

was this like, light bulb moment, one after the other because what

we as women

see as issues, you know, what we as women see, as he doesn't do

this, he never does that. And you know, he always does this, things

that become problematized in a problematized in our minds. When I

read that book, I was like, oh, that's why he does that.

It doesn't mean what I think it means. It's like Brene Brown says

this thing she does this there's Netflix series, and she's talking

about Netflix talk and she she she had a conversation with her

husband where she said to him, there was something that happened

to upset by it and she said to him, the story I'm telling myself

is that you x y Zed, right? Because that's what it is. Your

husband does something you start to tell yourself a story. He's

doing it because of this is because he feels like that is

because the end You know, I did this or he's on how

have you with me? Or did it come to find out? It's none of those

things, you know, and there, you've worked yourself up into

this, you know, this state, when actually it was it was nothing

like that. So that whole men wants to fix things. You know, they want

to solve things. They want to be the Savior, you know, they want to

be the the dependable one. Yeah, that's why he keeps interrupting

you says and trying to tell you what to do when all you want to do

is just talk. Yeah, yeah. So So you see, so what I'm trying to say

is that when we're talking about educating yourself, now, when

Muslims hear that, the first thing they think of is okay, that means

I got to study fic.

Right, I've got to go to an Islamic school or whatever, and

learn about the rights and responsibilities. Right. This

that, okay. See, that's what they think. But they don't they don't

understand that. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying

just study fit. That's great. That's just one one small aspect,

right of what we're talking about here is this is another right what

we're talking about right now, you know, understanding men

understanding woman and vice versa. That's another area that

you need to look at. Right? You know, I miss to fix it. You know,

you're gonna think that your whole marriage that I need to be Mr.

Fixit, she's come to me, she's speaking to me. That must mean, I

gotta solve the problem. And then you start to understand, oh, no,

actually, she just wants to talk and I just need to hear her. I

just need to hear what she has to say. And I don't really need to

offer a lot of times the solutions

I need to do say

wow, Subhan Allah, you know, job done, give her a hug at the end of

it, Hollis, you know, and she's.

So this is like one example of you know how I said, even if you're

already married to stuff like this, that will help you because

even if you've been married for a few years, you might come to it

that you know, that realization that Oh, so that's what I've seen.

Okay, now, let me change it and switch things up a bit. And you

will see, and you know, as Muslims, that's what's, that's

what we're supposed to be doing, right? We're not just supposed to

just imagine it's just supposed to be one straight line. You know,

subhanAllah, like when you when you look at the Sunnah, and you

look at all of the stories of the prophets, salam, you know, was it

Charlotte, Atlanta, etc. You got to understand, I mean, like those

stories, those are the ones that are romanticized. They weren't

like in the honeymoon period at the beginning of the marriage,

right? These are things that he's doing, like 10 years in his

marriage. Right? Why? And you find stories of him racing her and

things like that, like that. He was doing that eight, nine years

into their marriage. So that shows up because the problem was

constantly is it was supposed to go up more, right? He's trying to

invest in his marriage. And Muslims think that the investing

is done before, like we were speaking about, right in Lima.

That's when we

must be investing and then once I'm married, that's a you know,

just gonna go in a straight line and just keep things ticking. But

that's not the mindset. So if you can learn something during that

time and invest in it, even better. I love that. I love that.

And I think you know, as you've said, you know, having the

intention to you know, keep growing in the relationship. keep

learning, keep learning each other, learning ourselves as well,

you know, becoming more self aware. I think in sha Allah, it

can only help the marriage