# Why is Marriage So Complicated? | SERIES PREMIERE | Real Talk ft. Dr. Tesneem Alkiek

**Author:** Dr. Tesneem Alkiek
**Series:** Real Talk Series
**Published:** 2025-12-04
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/fl2bVfoBSHw
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/why-is-marriage-so-complicated-series-premiere-real-talk-ft-dr-tesneem-alkiek
**Topics:** Allah, Faith, Family & Community, Marriage

## Description
Marriage is weighed down by so many expectations. His rights, your rights, cultural norms, social pressure, mahr debates, Islamic rulings… how do you even begin the conversation without getting overwhelmed? In this episode, Dr. Tesneem Alkiek and host Qaanitah Hunter unpack the topic of marriage...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Obey your husband. That's all what we seem to be talking about.

**[0:15]** Are there any other conversations we need to be having about marriage? There is so much more we need to be talking about. But, Manita, this is going to be a long one.

**[0:38]** Marriage is hard. Can we talk about how difficult it is? From getting married to being married, it's really, really difficult. Absolutely. Right? It's not easy. Everyone, whether you're married or not, knows that.

**[0:53]** And I think a part of it is sort of the structural changes that have happened in society, right? Think about how marriages were a few hundred years ago in lots of parts of the world. Because marriage today, I think, is very lonely. It's exhausting and overwhelming from the amount you have to do.

**[1:11]** Because there's just two people now. Just two people and you've got to do everything on your own, right? I think with the support systems that many societies had, and some parts of the world still have today, where you've got literally the village for support, right? If it's not your family who's living with you or nearby, you've got the neighbors, you've

**[1:28]** got the community. It's sort of like that communal experience, that village for support. So there's those structural changes that have really just entirely flipped marriage on its head in terms of the support we have. And I guess community plays such an important role, even in resolution of conflict.

**[1:47]** Absolutely. And that has always been part and parcel of Islamic law's approach to marital problems, right? You get a family member involved, you get a community member involved. And so that's like, it really reflects the inherent nature of having, again, that community support for your marriage.

**[2:02]** Those are the structural changes, right? And then there's also like modern life, right? Where you've got now appliances that have fundamentally changed like your responsibilities, right? You've got microwaves and ovens and fridges, all of these things, which of course historically

**[2:20]** never existed. And although for some time it worked to save time, free up time for individuals, what ends up happening a few years into it, maybe a couple of decades even, our expectations have

**[2:36]** shifted as a result. So whereas once you would get bread and dip it into something and call it a day, now it's like, well, you got to have a three course meal. You have to grow your own fruits and vegetables. I'm assuming you have a garden in your backyard. I do not, but I should have. You should have one.

**[2:52]** Everything needs to be homegrown, right? And you're not just eating basic foods. You're having, again, like multiple meals, three course meals. Everything is fancy. You know, cue the TikTok cooking videos. And now it's like, wait, I need to be making all of that too, right? There's just so much of expectation.

**[3:08]** It's really high, high expectations. And now, so it's like we're raising the level of expectation and we've lost the support to be able to do anything, right? Put those together and you find us in the mess that we're in today. And so how have Muslims navigated this changing world?

**[3:23]** So it's interesting. What I've noticed is that Muslims have navigated in a couple of ways. So number one, you'll see reference to culture or custom, right? So if, for example, in the United States, you know, you're an immigrant, you might have brought a certain custom or culture from wherever your hometown was.

**[3:43]** And the way that family members, community members will talk about it is like, well, no, no, no. This is what Islam says when in fact it's more on the cultural side, right? Like what? Give me an example. Marriage practices. The six weddings that you have to have before the actual wedding and then the five parties that you have after. Like this kind of stuff where sometimes it's just like, no, no, you have to do this, right?

**[4:02]** Maybe it's living arrangements. You have to live with this family member, like your in-laws have to live with you. This is part of like your Islamic identity. Certain things like that, right? That are not necessarily Islamic, like at its core, but because of the custom culture

**[4:18]** of where they're coming from became part and parcel of like the normal arrangements that you would have for marriage. Then another reaction is law. So I see this a lot. And as someone, again, my background is not just Islamic law. My focus is on marriage and divorce in the Islamic legal tradition.

**[4:35]** And so you'll see people saying, well, no, like they'll pull out fiqhi opinions. They'll pick out Islamic legal rulings. A woman must do this for her husband. A man must do this. And if you know anything about law, law is not meant to dictate your day to day life.

**[4:51]** Why do you go to court? As a last resort. It's a last resort. Where law is like things have really gone awry and now we got to like sort of backtrack. So law, like as an institution is for the extreme.

**[5:08]** These are the bare minimums you need to do as a wife. Here's a legal minimum, the bare minimum as a man. This is what you need to do. So if you're going to come back and quote me a fiqhi opinion on what a man or woman should do, it's not really that productive. So it can't be your starting point.

**[5:26]** It can't. It can absolutely, it must be your starting point. Right. Because what law does is tell me the very bare minimum that I need to be doing. But it can't be your ending point. And I think that's what happens. Right. So that's that's part and parcel of the issue here.

**[5:42]** And we sometimes get stuck in that. We always get stuck in that. Right. It's like, well, a woman should do this. And therefore there are no other exceptions or understandings of this, of a marriage. And now we're sort of like working within constraints that don't need to be there.

**[5:58]** Right. And then you added problem here is now you see a lot of Muslims were adopting either conservative or liberal language. So like I've seen people a lot of times it's like, you know, oh, that is just jahili masculinity instead of saying like toxic masculinity.

**[6:14]** It's jahili masculinity. It's like, did you know the Prophet (ﷺ) would clean the house and do the housework while neglecting like everything else about the Prophet (ﷺ). So it's this pendulum, right? That shifts between extremes. It's like you have to be doing this and like and then all the way to the other side.

**[6:33]** All the way to the other side. And then you have like the conservative side which says, you know that Allah created us with this fitrah and your gender is inherently part of your fitrah and your role cannot change because that is part of who you are. Well, like, don't let's again, that's another extreme, right? And so I think this is the situation that we find ourselves in is that we're taking,

**[6:51]** picking and choosing from all of these different areas. And it's placing artificial boundaries, artificial constraints on what marriage can be. It doesn't have to be black and white. Because that's all what the chatter is about. Yeah. And then it's just like it has to be either this or that, right?

**[7:07]** And I think that's so unjust. It doesn't do the Islamic tradition justice for the level of maturity it has to be able to accommodate different customs and cultures and norms, right? But let's talk through this using some examples.

**[7:25]** Yeah. Okay, let's go through some examples, right? Finances. Oh, that's a touchy one. That's a touchy one. That's what so many people are talking about online. Who should be responsible for what? What should the husband pay for? What should the woman pay for?

**[7:41]** You know, what's the role of money in relationships? It's a lot. It's a lot. So we're talking about legal minimums, right? Legal minimum, a husband is responsible financially for a few things in the household, right? Responsible for clothing, responsible for food, responsible for, you know, the basic

**[7:58]** necessities of his wife and of his children. So that's that. But what I think I see happening and probably what happens is that a man's responsibility to support his family is his sole responsibility and in the event that anything changes this

**[8:19]** model, it's like a hit to his masculinity. So let me explain that a bit more. The default for men, legally speaking, the responsibility, Islamically speaking, is that they must provide, right? Abdur Rahman ibn Awf (رضي الله عنه), a companion, was known for supporting his family

**[8:37]** and community. Abu Bakr (رضي الله عنه), Umar ibn al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), all these individuals, they were the default providers, so much so that when Umar ibn al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) and later another caliph, Umar ibn Abdul Aziz, they were known for being really tight with money with their family because they felt the amanah, the trust

**[8:55]** that they had as caliphs and were always worried that their family might be spending money from the community that was not permissible. And so you have so many stories that talk about them, their advice to their families about what to spend, what not to spend and really being frugal in that regard for the

**[9:12]** greater community, right? So we have all this evidence to demonstrate that responsibility was upheld by men at the time. But you know what else wasn't spoken, what's not spoken about? The financial contributions even female companions did and not just at a sort of communal scale,

**[9:30]** but even for their families. Back then? Back then, right? Umm Salama (رضي الله عنها), the wife of the Prophet (ﷺ), asked permission from the Prophet (ﷺ), can I give money to, like, can I donate to my children from her former husband? Excellent, the Prophet (ﷺ) said, this is something you're rewarded for.

**[9:46]** Zaynab (رضي الله عنها), the wife of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه), a really big companion, a really important companion, the same companion known for his Qur'an, his contributions, right? He was very, very poor. And Zaynab (رضي الله عنها) goes to the Prophet (ﷺ) and asks,

**[10:02]** like, you know, can I give zakah to my husband? Because if anyone needs it, my husband needs my zakah, like you're so poor, you qualify for zakah. And the Prophet (ﷺ) says, this is only encouraged her, he says, you know what, you get two rewards for this, you get double the reward, one, because you're

**[10:17]** giving zakah and two, because you're giving it to your family, you're supporting your family. So we have this evidence of women financially contributing and that's not taboo, right? It's not that, oh, now you, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه), you wouldn't say that you are now neglecting your family, you are lesser of a man because of it.

**[10:34]** No, no, no. That support was there. And even in general, right, the idea that women would go out and work and financially contribute, I think of the example of Asma (رضي الله عنها), the aunt of Jabir ibn Abdullah (رضي الله عنه), a companion, and she just gets divorced, right?

**[10:51]** After your divorce, you have an iddah, you have a waiting period in which you are required to refrain from certain things. And so during her iddah, she goes out to cultivate, she has a set of palm trees, like a garden that she cultivates and of course it produces fruit which she sells and makes

**[11:07]** money off of. So during her iddah, she goes out and another companion sees her and is like, hey, hey, hey, aren't you supposed to be home? What? It's your iddah, right? And she goes to the Prophet (ﷺ), like she gets permission from the Prophet (ﷺ).

**[11:22]** What do you think the Prophet (ﷺ) would have said? The Prophet (ﷺ) embodied the culture, the norms that we have today? No, stay at home. Stay home, right? What does the Prophet (ﷺ) say? Go cultivate your palm trees for, not because you need it to survive, because you might

**[11:41]** be able to use that money to do something good with it. You might be able to use that money to give to charity, right? So the idea that women were financially contributing to their communities and financially contributing to their households was something normal even during the time of the Prophet (ﷺ).

**[11:57]** Tasneem, it seems like we're stuck on the specifics. A man has to provide, and that's the conversation that I see online. You see a woman, even if you have so much of money, you don't have to contribute one cent and you're not paying for anything. But you're telling me, at the time of the Prophet (ﷺ), there

**[12:16]** was flexibility. Exactly, right? It's not a one-size-fits-all where there are no exceptions to the rule, right? There is room for accommodation and we really need to start factoring that into our conversations. You see the same thing on the conversation of like, mahr and dowry.

**[12:32]** It's crazy. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's just like, you have to give me a certain amount. Now it's become like a symbol of your self-worth, right? Like it's a price. This is my price. If you can't pay that price, go away. Yeah, and honestly, it's unfortunate because even during the time of the Prophet (ﷺ),

**[12:50]** a man comes up to the Prophet (ﷺ), doesn't got any money and he really wants to get married. And we have an example from the Prophet (ﷺ) who says that I will marry you and the Prophet (ﷺ) says, do you know anything about the Qur'an? He says, yeah, well, your ability to teach your wife Qur'an is something of value and

**[13:07]** therefore I will marry you for that act, that educational service, right? So mahr as early as the time of the Prophet (ﷺ), it was something of value, right? And what is the legal minimum of mahr? Depending on the school of law. So some schools of law identify a legal minimum in terms of monetary value.

**[13:25]** So it has to be like a certain minimum, right? So a man has to give something. A man always has to give something. Okay, so we get past that. But now if I say, Tasneem, you know, I have a master's degree and I come from a good family and, and, and the minimum a man must pay for me is one G-Wagon and five bars of gold.

**[13:48]** Like, where does that put into the conversation? So I think this is like a totally separate conversation from Islamic law and custom and practice. And I say this because now conversations about mahr are again, are shifting. So we're not talking about what Islamic law requires or doesn't require.

**[14:06]** These are norms and practices in the community that in some cases are, are unfortunate because it's affecting again, even your ability to start a marriage. And I think, I think that's so hard already. It's so hard already. And by the way, like I make it a point, because I know some people have come up to me, like,

**[14:21]** I can't believe she asked that. It's like, listen, it's your right to ask that. But what I want you to think about is what does that mindset do for you when you're entering marriage, right? What does it mean for yourself and for your husband, for your marriage? How you're approaching the concept of marriage.

**[14:38]** If it's a, you're setting it at a high price point. So ask what you want, because that's your right. But really think deeply about the implications of that decision. Because that's missing. And it's not the price of you. It's not your price. Like just, there's no, you are priceless girl, right?

**[14:55]** No, but really like, don't set a, if it's about your self-worth, that's a problem. It's not about your self-worth. You're not selling yourself for marriage. And so if that's the attitude you're going in with, that's harmful for you. We really need to take into consideration the implications of asking for something that's

**[15:13]** unreasonable because there's consequences to that. I love that you bring up flexibility because that's really what you need when it comes to mahr. Yeah. Did you see any examples of that in the time of the Prophet (ﷺ)? So in the time of the Prophet (ﷺ), we have that example of offering

**[15:29]** something of value. And throughout history, in fact, you have so many fluctuations with how mahr actually manifested, right? So do you have to pay it all up front or can you delay it? Can you pay it in installments? These are all part, like these are all legal debates and opinions that have existed.

**[15:46]** And for a long time, mahr and even the nafaqah, right? So what a man has to spend on his family, it wasn't, you're not getting cash, right? You're getting, literally he has to put bread on the table, right? So that just meant he needed to bring food home for you and buy your clothes.

**[16:04]** So it wasn't necessarily that he was giving you money to do that as well. And then of course, over time, that switches to cash payments for a lot of societies. And to me, again, that alone screams of the flexibility that was inherent to your mahr,

**[16:21]** your nafaqah, all of the money involved. It wasn't even always money, right? And so that's important. What does that mean? What does it look like for us today, right? Because situations change, like communities change, situations change, like the economy changes.

**[16:36]** And right, and again, and this is what I think makes me sad about these conversations, because when you have like such a limited view where you're just quoting Islamic law, I'm like... And it's dogma, it's like, this is it and there's no flexibility. Yeah, I'm like, you're doing a disservice to Islamic law,

**[16:53]** because Islamic law had so much room to accommodate custom. It had so much room to accommodate different peculiarities, different like expectations and norms. And so like, you see that again with anything regarding finances and most things regarding marriage.

**[17:10]** Qasim, you know what's also a difficult conversation around marriage and the rigidities that we see? It's the issue of intimacy. It's funny you bring that up, because the other legal minimum revolves around a woman's availability for sexual intimacy.

**[17:27]** And it's interesting, because if you look at the legal, the law, it is very clear cut about a woman, a wife, having the responsibility to be sexually available for her husband. And if you just take it like that, that's not it.

**[17:43]** That is devastating, right? To approach marriage as money for intimacy, right? It's pretty obvious why. And it's like, and again, it just does a disservice to how Muslims, even during the time of the Prophet (ﷺ),

**[17:59]** how the acknowledgment that, because what happens is that when you frame it as a legal minimum, like a woman must be available for intimacy for her husband, the almost immediate implication is that like, this is for a man, you do this for a man,

**[18:15]** and it's not about you in the process, right? And that I think is a disservice, of course, because since the time of the Prophet (ﷺ), the idea that a woman needs intimacy, that needs that engagement, was acknowledged. It wasn't something odd, it was something taken as a default, right?

**[18:34]** Going back to the time of the Prophet (ﷺ), Salman al-Farisi (رضي الله عنه), the companion, goes to visit his brother's fellow companion, Abu al-Darda (رضي الله عنه), his brother in Islam. Abu al-Darda (رضي الله عنه) is at home, and he's known for his extreme zuhd,

**[18:50]** his extreme ascetic lifestyle, like he's very, very pious. Prays all night, fasts all day. He shows up at the door, and his wife, after he knocks, Umm al-Darda (رضي الله عنها) opens the door.

**[19:05]** And he sees Umm al-Darda (رضي الله عنها), and she's in this disheveled state, right? And he looks at her, and he's like, you good? Is everything okay? It seems like, you know, there's something going on here. And she says, you know your brother Abu al-Darda (رضي الله عنه), like he has no need for this world.

**[19:22]** Because of his extreme piety, he began to neglect his wife's needs, right? And these are, by the way, also understood to be intimate needs. And so Salman al-Farisi (رضي الله عنه) gives him the advice. He says, listen, I love you, brother, right? Listen, إِنَّ لِرَبِّكَ عَلَيْكَ حَقًّا

**[19:38]** Your Lord, He has a right over you, right? These acts of good deed are important. وَإِنَّ لِبَدَنِكَ عَلَيْكَ حَقًّا But your body also has a right on you. وَإِنَّ لِزَوْجِكَ عَلَيْكَ حَقًّا But your wife also has a right on you. And word gets to the Prophet (ﷺ) that he says this.

**[19:55]** And the Prophet (ﷺ) affirms what Salman al-Farisi (رضي الله عنه) says. It's like, this is beautiful advice, right? And so, like this, again, this is an acknowledgement that of course, your wife needs you, of course your wife wants intimacy, right? Fast forward to the time of,

**[20:11]** the Prophet (ﷺ) has passed away now, and Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), a woman comes up to Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), and she says, she comes up to him, and she starts talking about her husband. My husband, he prays all night, he fasts all day, like whatever, like he's, this man is so pious, right?

**[20:27]** Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), he hears this, he's like, mashallah, your husband is amazing, right? And Ka'b ibn Sur (رضي الله عنه), another companion sitting there, and he was like, Umar, I think you're missing the point here. The point of what you're saying. She's not praising her husband right now,

**[20:43]** she's actually complaining about him, like Ka'b ibn Sur (رضي الله عنه), pick up on it, right? And then Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) is like, oh, oh, is that what's happening? Ka'b, you clearly caught that, you need to arbitrate, you have the wisdom here, you know, judge between them, because she was coming

**[21:00]** and the same complaint, right? Like, I want, I have needs, I have sexual needs, right? And he acknowledges that, right? There's another story with Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), and it's the last one to share, but I think it's important to show that there are so many of these stories, these are not one-offs, right?

**[21:16]** Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) is Khalifa at the time. He's doing his nighttime patrols around the city. He stops because he hears one night, a woman who's reciting verses of poetry from her home. And he can hear her, and she's reciting loudly, and these verses of poetry are very descriptive

**[21:34]** of how much she misses her husband, particularly intimately, right? And Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) hears this, her husband was on a military expedition, so he'd been away for a long time. Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه) hears this and says, like, oh no, like, this is a problem.

**[21:49]** Not like women, this woman's, right? Like, it's not like, you don't need this stuff. It's just for men, this is inappropriate. Don't be talking like that, right? She goes to his daughter, Hafsa (رضي الله عنها).  And he says, like, how long can a woman last

**[22:06]** without having her sexual needs fulfilled? And Hafsa (رضي الله عنها) says, you know, probably six months max. And Umar al-Khattab (رضي الله عنه), because of that, institutes a policy that gets concretized in Islamic law, by the way, that the maximum a husband can be sent to,

**[22:23]** you know, away for a military expedition was four to six months, because, like, if there's travel time that took a month to get back, like, sometimes it could only be four months, but the general agreement was about six months. So there was this acknowledgement that there's a maximum, like, a woman needs this.

**[22:41]** And by the way, six months might sound like a long time for some of us, right? And it's interesting because Ibn Taymiyyah and other scholars come in and say, well, six months was an approximation of women at the time, but things change, and some women, in particular circumstances, might need their needs fulfilled even more frequently.

**[22:59]** And so Ibn Taymiyyah and others, many from the Maliki school, many from the Hanbali school, come back and argue that, no, no, it just depends on the woman's needs, and if she needs more, like, we work around that, right? So again, that flexibility. That flexibility and that acknowledgement that these needs are different for people,

**[23:17]** and that we can accommodate that, right? It's not just like, you do this, you give this, you give that, you take that, right? It's so much more than that, right? And I think that, again, this, to me, illustrates the beauty of marriage, and it illustrates the beauty of Islamic law and its ability to accommodate exceptional circumstances.

**[23:35]** So when we get down to the dynamics of marriage, there's a huge conversation around obedience, that a woman has to obey her husband at all times. Talk to me about that. So you know what I think we need to start with

**[23:51]** is the word obedience itself. Because let's just acknowledge that a lot of us listening, myself included- Will roll your eyes. It's not about rolling, like, what do you think of when you hear obedience? You think of like, a pet.

**[24:07]** You think about like a pet, like a dog who obeys his master, right? So let's just acknowledge the unfortunate reality of how things are translated, right? And the misunderstandings or some of the implications

**[24:23]** that come with a bad translation, right? Let's entertain the word obedience for a second here. You know what I think? I think trad wives really ruined it for us, because at least like the online phenomenon- Yeah, because that's very new now, right? That's very new. The online phenomenon of like a trad wife

**[24:42]** does an extreme in some situations. I'm trying to qualify it here because I haven't watched everything online, but at least a few- I watched a lot. The few clips I've seen online, what I see with this movement is that a wife exists for her husband.

**[24:57]** Yeah, almost worship your husband. Right? And so I think that the problem is now it's like, oh, she obeys her husband, and that's how it looks like. I must exist to please my husband. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem.

**[25:14]** And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem.

**[25:30]** And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem.

**[25:46]** And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. And I think that's the problem. I think that most women don't have an issue with that. Should I add a disclaimer here? Yeah. No, I was just being sarcastic. Should I add another disclaimer here? Right?

**[26:01]** I think a lot of women, again, if you have a solid example, we can go down the route of maybe the problem is that we don't have good examples. Sure, that's a different discussion. But in an ideal world, I don't think we have a problem with that. But you need to tell me,

**[26:17]** is there a cookie cutter mold for how a Muslim marriage needs to be? Ladies and gentlemen, there is no cookie cutter mold, right? Drum roll, please. Say that again. There's no cookie cutter, right? Because- Okay, let's be serious.

**[26:33]** So again, we've got Islamic law, you've got the bare minimums. As a wife, I want to be mindful of my husband's sexual needs, but I also want to be mindful of his other needs, and I expect the same of my husband. He wants to be mindful of my financial needs, and of my other needs outside of money, right?

**[26:52]** I think of the Prophet (ﷺ), and I'm like, the best of you, he says (ﷺ), are those who are best to their families. I'm the best to my family. Islamic law is important because those minimums are important, but it's a compass and a blueprint needs to be formed with reference to custom and culture.

**[27:10]** I'm not saying throw out custom and culture. Al-'aadah muhakkamah, that there's a legal principle, but al-'aadah, custom, actually has legal room, right? That morphs into the two. What I'm saying is that we need to have ihsan in what we're doing, right? We need to push beyond the legal minimums

**[27:26]** because if your marriage just functions on legal minimums, it's not going anywhere. Nothing functions on legal minimums, right? Exactly, like who are we kidding to think that nothing else does, but marriage can, right? And so I think it's important, right? You need ihsan. It's always been more than what you have to do.

**[27:43]** It's what you should do, what you can do. How can you bring your best self to this relationship? And a big part of that is recognizing that marriage is ibadah at the end of the day. Marriage is worship. Marriage is not always gonna be easy. Yeah. There are even- And I love that because when things are going bad

**[28:01]** and things are going awry, at the end of the day, if you have to just delink it from anything else, like this is not about my happiness, this is like, I may not be happy right now, or things are a bit uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, this is for Allah. Exactly, no, and that's the attitude we need to have

**[28:18]** because I've heard so many people say this. It's like, well, if I didn't marry someone because I fell in love with them or I've had that sort of Hollywood moment, I feel like I have to settle and you're telling me to settle. Yeah, the Hollywood expectation is so high. That's ridiculous, right? Because it's not settling.

**[28:33]** I mean, even if you marry for love, right? You really like this guy, you end up marrying him, you're not gonna be in love every day of your life, right? And I think it's that unfortunate impression, like that expectation that devastates your marriage because there are going to be days and weeks

**[28:50]** and sometimes months and years on end where it's just not all roses, right? Because it's only if you marry with Allah in mind, like I'm doing this, ya Allah, for your sake, that's what's gonna get you through the hard times. We're not talking about harmful marriages.

**[29:08]** Harmful marriages are not the norm. They should not be the norm at least, right? So harmful marriages, exception, right? That's something you need to work on and to leave, right? But if your marriage is just hard and it's going to be hard, keeping Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala at the forefront,

**[29:25]** I'm doing this for you, ya Allah, I'm going to be uncomfortable, I'm gonna push myself, I'm gonna follow his lead in something that doesn't make me the happiest right now, like making sacrifices, right? That's the essence of marriage. And I can say this about a woman,

**[29:41]** but like a man will do the same thing. It's not just like I have to make the sacrifices as a woman. Men make sacrifices too, right? And it's only through that commitment to Allah that we have the motivation to even make those sacrifices. And so it's really, really important. Marriage is beautiful, it's filled with love,

**[29:56]** it can be filled with love, but most importantly, it's an act day in and day out, ya Allah, I'm doing this for you. So this mean you're not gonna give me a blueprint for marriage? Sorry, no checklist here at all for today. So tell us, how would you like to have ihsan in your marriage?

**[30:11]** Let us know in the comments.

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