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Okay, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillah, Rabbil ‘Alameen. Wasalatu wasalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen, Muhammadur Rasulullah ﷺ wa ala alihi wa sahbihi salam, tasliman kathiran kathiran.
The thing I want to remind myself and you about marriage is that the secret of a good marriage is adjustment. If we do that, if you do that well, if you adjust well, then there is nothing more beautiful than being married. And if you don’t adjust well, then it takes time and some energy, and it’s not a be-all-and-end-all, but obviously it takes that time and energy until you get it right. So it’s important. To understand that, and it’s important to be mentally prepared for adjustment.
Obviously, in any relationship, you want it to go the way you want it to go. And your wife will want it to go the way she wants it to go. So that’s where I mean adjustment because then when you talk to one another, you arrive at what are things that are negotiable and what are things that are not negotiable. There will be some things that you say, look, this, we have to have this, this way, and there’s no room for negotiation on it. For example, you might say, well, you know, being particular about Salah, we pray, we will pray on time and, you know, so whatever. So I’m just giving you one example; maybe anything else.
And therefore, in marriage, as well as in any relationship, the single most important thing is forgiveness. Forgiving each other. Forgiveness is so important that it is important when I say any relationship, I mean literally that. Including our relationship with Allah ﷻ, right? Because imagine, we want Allah to forgive us, right? We all make mistakes and we want Allah to forgive us. If Allah doesn’t forgive us, then where do we go? So without forgiveness, there is no relationship that can exist, including a marriage.
Why do we need forgiveness? Because we all make mistakes, right? Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in this hadith said: “All the children of Adam make mistakes. All of them. They’re all sinners. They all make mistakes.” Khairul Khatta’un Tawabin. He said, the best of those who make mistakes are those who seek forgiveness.
So seeking forgiveness and forgiving somebody who is seeking forgiveness, this is the root of all good relationships. Whether it’s marriages, whether it’s employment, whether it’s friends, or even including Allah ﷻ. So that is my first reminder to myself and to all of you: let us be people who forgive each other. The alternative of not forgiving is lifelong rancor, lifelong hard feelings, you know, in the heart, which is endless. And the longer it goes, the more harder it gets. And the harder it gets also to forgive and to return to a good state. Because you stayed with that so long now, that this becomes now a matter of ego. Right? If I do something wrong to you, and I should have asked you to forgive me, I didn’t do that. Time passes. Every time I meet you, I’m looking the other way. You say, Salaam; I don’t return Salaam to you. And all this happens. Right? Now, years pass. And then even though I know I did wrong to you, I should not have done it. Now to come back to you and say, “You know what, I’m sorry about this,” because very tough. Because I didn’t do it for all these years.
So I remind myself and you: if you make a mistake, and you will make a mistake, everybody makes mistakes. As soon as possible, go and say sorry. Whoever it is. Not only marriage, whoever it is. Say, “I’m extremely sorry that this happened. Didn’t mean to do it. Did it. Forgive me.” It finishes with that.
The Sahaba, the companions, they asked Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They said, “Ya Rasulullah, supposing I go and ask and the other man says, ‘I will not forgive.’ That can happen, you know. I mean, the other person has got so much now, you know, they say, no, I will not forgive.” Now, Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, “Then the responsibility is not on you. You made the effort to go and seek forgiveness. If the other person said, ‘I won’t forgive,’ well, okay. I mean, what can I do? If you, I’m asking you to forgive me; if you say ‘I won’t forgive you.'” But making the effort is important. And when you see, if you seek forgiveness, if you have done wrong, then admit it. Don’t, don’t, don’t seek forgiveness as if you are doing the other person a favor. Right. If I did wrong, I did wrong. I must come and say, “I’m very sorry. You shouldn’t have done it.”
So, that’s what marriage is. The second thing about marriage is: forget the good memories. I call it selective memory. Remember the good, forget the bad. Normally, human tendency is the opposite. We forget the good, we remember the bad. Not only in marriage, in anything. In customer service, when we talk about customer service. There is research data to show that a customer who has had an exceptionally good experience with you will probably tell four people about it if he is asked. Right. But a customer who has a bad experience with you will tell at least 20 people without being asked. He will voluntarily go and tell people. So, this is human tendency. We collect garbage. We remember bad things. We remember something which went wrong and so on. Good things? We take it for granted. Yeah, okay. So, it happened.
But that is wrong. Like when I entered your house, your father tells me, “Something I must have done good, so you came.” It’s so beautiful. Jazakumullah khairan. I don’t deserve it, but you gave it to me. You honored me. I respect that and I am thankful to you. You must notice these things. Not take it for granted. No. He doesn’t have to say that. But he said it. Alhamdulillah. So, I’m honored. So, remember. Remember the good. Select a memory. Your wife does something good, thank her. Consciously. She makes something, some good food, consciously thank her. Right? Most men, we take it for granted. Good food. You come home. For example, now you say it’s a beautiful house. So beautifully everything is arranged. Clean, neat. There’s a pleasant, beautiful smell when you enter the house. This is not automatic. This is not magic. Right? Somebody is taking the time and trouble to make all this happen. Whether they do it or not. Whether they do it themselves or they’ve got staff to do it, it doesn’t matter. But without the overall concern and the overall supervision of that, it won’t happen. Right? Now, this must be acknowledged. And it must be said. It must be spoken. Sometimes people think, “You know, what is the reason?” Every day you want me to come and say, “Wow, nice house. Beautiful house.” Yes. Not only every day. Say it three times a day.
Yeah? Allah ﷻ said, *La insha’akartum la azidannakum*. In Surah Ibrahim. Wa la inkafartum, inna adhabi la shadid. Allah said, if you thank Me for My blessings, I will increase them. And if you are ungrateful, then beware, My punishment is severe. So when people say, “Why should I thank my wife? Doesn’t she know?” I tell them this ayat and I say, “Doesn’t Allah know?” Why only your wife? Why only your husband? Doesn’t Allah know? Why is Allah saying, “Thank Me”? It is about Me. It’s not about whether you know or not. Am I grateful? Am I expressing my gratitude? That is very important.
I was teaching a course once in GE, General Electric Medical Systems in Chennai, in Madras, in India. And it was a whole, it was a two-day course. And the whole class was almost all of them were Tamil Brahmins, Hindus, the Brahmins. Now, Tamil Brahmins have a custom where, and you can see this in every Tamil Brahmin house. First thing in the morning, the lady of the house, whether it’s the mother or the daughter-in-law or the wife, she wakes up before all the men. She will have a bath. She will go to the puja room and she will do her puja to the gods. And then she will go into the kitchen and she makes coffee. And they make that filter coffee, you know, freshly ground coffee through the filter and all that. It’s absolutely fabulous coffee. She makes this coffee and then, by then, the men of the house, they would have woken up. So they sit there and they drink the coffee and there is a newspaper called *The Hindu*, English newspaper. So they read *The Hindu*.
So on day one of my session, towards evening, as they were going, I was telling them, “You know, we should be grateful to people and we should be thankful to people and so on.” And I asked them, I said, “Tell me, this custom of coffee and so on, does it happen in your house?” They said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “How many of you have thanked the lady, whether it’s your wife, your sister, your mother, whoever, how many of you have thanked the lady who does this for you every day?” So there’s dead silence. I said, “Supposing one day, this doesn’t happen.” They said, “Oh, yeah, exactly. One day it doesn’t happen. It’s like disaster.” But it happens every day without fail. Did you thank the lady? So there’s one middle-aged guy, maybe he was 50 something, right sitting in front. He started laughing. I said, “Why are you laughing? It’s not a joke.” He said, “You know, if I thank my wife, she will die. So I let her die happy. I mean, at least, you know, let her die happy.” Anyway, the day finished. They went home.
Next morning, I always come early when I’m teaching a course. I always come early. I’m sitting there having some coffee. One young guy comes. And he says, “Sir, my mother asked me to thank you.” I said, “Your mother? Who’s your mother? I mean, I don’t know your mother. I mean, I hardly know the guy. He just came to my class. About what?” He said, “You know, I went home last night and I told my mother, ‘Mom, thank you very much for the coffee.’ And her response, immediately, she said, ‘Who told you to say that?’ So he said, ‘I tried to bring it. I tried to say, no, I really, I realized.’ She said, ‘Rubbish. She said, I know you. You didn’t realize anything. Somebody told you to thank. Who is that?’ So our teacher, we are doing this course. So he said, go in the morning and thank your teacher for telling you this. Daily, every day. Right? We have staff in the house. In India also, here also, we have staff. In North America, where I live, there’s no staff. We have staff. How many of us thank the servants? They clean the house. They clean our toilets. They, you know, they clean our shoes and they do everything. How many of us thank the servants? Just say, ‘Thank you very much. Very nice.'” Most people don’t, right? Take it for granted. Yeah, servant is there. He’s doing something.
So thankfulness is extremely, extremely important for everyone. So obviously, for the wife. For the husband. She must thank you. You must thank her. It’s both ways. I mean, your wives are not here. Otherwise, I would have told them all the same thing. Right? Extremely important.
The third extremely important thing is complete and total honesty in the relationship. Because trust is something that takes years to build. But one incident will destroy it. And even after, if trust gets destroyed, obviously, you can go and, you know, thank and, I mean, you can go and apologize and so on. Seek forgiveness and, inshallah, people also forgive. But always, once that happens, there is always some little thing in the mind. Right? It’s like a, like you break this glass. Even you stick it back, you still see the crack. So that’s why it is very important not to allow trust to break. Of course, if it breaks, you do what you need to do. But very important. The best thing for that is complete honesty. If something went wrong, say it before somebody discovers. Don’t try to hide anything. This is how it is clearly total honesty. That’s very important. Right? Because the thing which happens with, the thing which we should remember, in all relationships, there are boundaries. There are filters. Right? There are safeguards. You’re not completely open to the other person. Because you don’t know how much you can trust people. I’m not saying be suspicious. But it is actually counterproductive and it is, you know, dysfunctional to be completely open to everyone. You should not be like that. I mean, there are things in your life which are confidential, which should remain confidential. But the husband and wife relationship is the only relationship. Not even a parent-child. Right? Husband-wife relationship is the only one in which you are completely open.
Right? Your wife knows you as you are. And you know her as she is. Total openness. Now, that is a very good thing in that relationship. But also it means that both parties are completely open. They have no defenses against each other. So, if somebody else attacks you, I don’t mean physically. I mean, you know, emotionally and so on, intellectually. If someone else attacks you, there are defenses. There is armor. There are defenses. But if the husband or the wife says something, it goes directly straight into the heart. So, we should be very careful of what we say. The tongue is the source of all kinds of problems. Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab said, “Keeping my mouth shut never hurt me.” But opening my mouth hurt me many times. Right? Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, he held his tongue between his teeth. He said, “This will take more people into Jahannam than anything else.” And the Sahaba said, “Rasulullah, our tongue?” He said, “Yes. All the stuff you do with the tongue. You backbite people. You slander people. You hurt people. You curse people. You tell lies. All of them. Everything with the tongue.”
So, the tongue is very important. Be very careful. What you say, how you say it, both are very important. What you say is important. How you say it is sometimes even more important than what you say. Right? So, I don’t want to frighten you out. And you say, “Okay, if this is the case, goodbye.” No. No. Get back. Huh? How do you say it? This thing looks like a bad deal. Give me the bike, dad. I’m gone. No, no, no. As I told you, it’s a beautiful thing. But one must know, we have, see, at the end of the day, we are human beings. We are not gods. We are not angels. You know, we are not prophets. We will make mistakes. But alhamdulillah. As long as you remember the niyyah. Intention, heart must be pure. Don’t do anything with a bad intention. Never. That’s very, it begins with intention. Everything depends on the niyyah. Keep the heart clean. And if there is a mistake, don’t wait. Don’t let that, you know, become a sore. Immediately go, apologize, get a bunch of flowers, get a cake like that. That is enough for. Even murder, right? Finish it. Then and there, matter is over. Don’t stockpile it. And then, selective memory. Don’t stockpile bad stuff. Remember the good stuff? Bad stuff, okay. It happens. We are human beings. Okay, forget. Inshallah. We ask Allah to make the marriage the most beautiful experience of your life. Inshallah. And keep the hearts together. And fill your lives with khair and barakah, inshallah. Fasallallahu ala nabiyyil kareem ala alihi wa sahbihi almayim wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.