 And so what we're going to do for you now is kind of show you a little bit of a role play as to how things go right in marriage and how things go wrong in marriage. Right? And it's a light and funny sort of thing that we're going to show you, but it's a reality that if it's not managed and if it's not dealt with and we don't learn how to deal with the conflict in an appropriate way, unfortunately, there are negative consequences to that, which is the reason why Nissa exists, right, in essence. So there is a definite tie-in to this, the way we run our own homes and to the way which we ideally want to run our homes. So first... Oh, yeah. So I have to... I'm the director, so I have to, you know, give my advice and tell them what to do. I'm her, you know, like, plaything. Just she gets to use me and abuse me. No, no, we don't want to use that word lightly. So we're going to role play for you how not to engage in conflict, marital conflict. Man, you're still on your phone? You've been staring at that thing for 30 minutes now. It's the big deal. I'm just trying to... You just barging in, yelling at me. I'm just looking at my phone. What's the big deal? Yeah, but you haven't even noticed me all evening. You're just glued to that dumb phone all the time. Calm down. Stop nagging me. I wouldn't nag you if you just pay attention to me. Can't you see I had a long day. I've been working all day, like 8, 10, 12 hours every day. Oh, yeah. You're always on my case. Oh, really? You've had a long day. What about me? Don't you think I like to relax after a long day driving the kids everywhere, cooking, cleaning up after your mess? My mess? What are you talking about? Look at your hijabs all over the place, man. Well, maybe if you helped me out more, I'd have time to put myself away. Maybe you can do more. Now you're blaming me? Now you're blaming me? I'm always on my phone. I'm not helping you up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You know what? That really hurts. I just wanted to spend some time with you, and now you're making fun of me. You know, that really sucks. Well, how am I supposed to know you want to spend time with me? All you do is criticize me. I wasn't criticizing you. I just want you to get off that dumb phone of yours. Okay, so I'm off my phone. Happy now? No, I forget it. I don't want to spend time with you. I'm going to go to sleep. Forget it. So that's... I don't know why you guys are clapping. That's not how you're supposed to engage. I don't understand this audience. I think it hits home too hard for all of us. We know. All right. Man, you're still on your phone. You've been staring at that thing for 30 minutes now. What's the big deal? Why are you barging in and yelling at me all of a sudden? Man, you haven't noticed me. I've come in and out the whole evening. You haven't even looked up once. Calm down. Stop nagging me, man. I wouldn't nag you if you would just pay attention to me. Besides, I feel hurt when you use that word nagging. It really hurts. Scoot over, bro. Scoot over. You know, we got to try to make this up now. Look, I'm sorry for saying that you were nagging me. I just don't know why you came in yelling at me all of a sudden. Okay. I mean, I admit that I came in here pretty upset. Let me start over. Let me start over. Okay. I'd like you to stop looking at your phone at night so we can spend some time together. Okay. That's reasonable. I would like that too. But sometimes I'm just overwhelmed from work and I need some time to relax, decompress, and, you know, catching up on my messages and reading stuff is my way of relaxing. Okay. I mean, that's fair. But I just want to let you know I feel lonely when I walk in and out of the room a few times and you don't even look up once. When the kids are asleep, this is a good chance for us to spend some time together. I want to catch up. I could see how staring at my phone when you come into the room would make you feel bad. I'm sorry. Okay. And I'm sure my yelling at you to get off your phone is not the best way to get your attention. Sorry about that. That's true. That's true. You know what? I just need about 20 minutes until after the kids go sleep and then I'm here for you. Okay. That's fair. But what if you're so blue to your phone you don't even realize how much time has passed. Just tell me the time is up and, you know, we'll manage it. Okay. That sounds like a deal. Hey, well... All right. Is that Klochen? I think that was an Academy Award for... let's give him another hand. Well, first of all, thank you, everyone, for coming. As Amun said, this is the largest event we've had and we're honored to have all of you join us. And as Amun Thair said, this is not our organization. This is our organization. So thank you again. So that was fabulous. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for coming and joining us. So what we thought we'd do is do a bit of a Q&A. I'm short. Okay, I get it. So I will ask you a couple questions if you don't mind. And also I'm going to leave it open for you guys to come up with your own questions too. So have some good, you know, conversation around the table and come up with a couple good questions. So I have one for you. First of all, you know, my husband and I fight. We feel very rejuvenated after. We feel that it can be a very, you know, cathartic experience. But as two people come together, disagreement is normal. It's natural. There are two different people coming together in one marriage or relationship. And conflict is not necessarily bad. So how my first question is how do you break down maybe years of resentment and anger to start afresh? You know, the kids are in college. You're looking at each other on the breakfast table. Yeah, yeah. I know when, you know, people bring these scenarios and not bringing theoretical scenarios. These are these are real life things that a lot of us live with on different levels. And, you know, in the field of mental health, they call this previous emotional injury. Now two people who have went through life and they went through pain and they went through difficulty and one party has really pushed hard on the other party and maybe there's a lot of that historical pain. And now you're looking at each other across the way and there's no one else in the house to occupy that time. It can be a very difficult time for a lot of people. Allah SWT tells us in the context of marital conflict يريد إصلاحا يوفق الله بينهما And if two people they want إصلاح they want reconciliation, they want to rejuvenate they want to revive their marriage Allah will divinely synchronize and make their marriage work. So the door of hope is always open. That's number one. The door of hope is always open for anybody in any relationship as long as both parties are committed in yuridah, both of them, both people have to be invested have to have a sincere intention then sometimes you have to take the means to fix what was broken. And Allah SWT is very interesting. He says that your women are a garment for you and your men are a garment for your women. If there's a tear, if there's a rip in that garment you have to patch it up. You don't walk around with the big, you know, rip hole in your pants. You've got to patch it up. And so dealing with that previous emotional injury is very important. Maybe Lubna Yafsin is right. So that's really important. And most likely that might be helpful to have that be guided, right? I mean, it's kind of like our first argument even though it was something light, the underlying, what was the underlying desire about the whole thing, about the whole argument, even though it went into hijabs and mess and driving and all this stuff. Well, spending time together, right? And so what happens sometimes, you know, the intention is good, but these past hurts, you start talking about it. Let's say, okay, you know, I want to resolve some of these things. I bring it up. And then, you know, husband and wife, it can just, the argument can just go haywire. Well, I did that because you did this and all these years and stuff. So sometimes, you know, the reality is it is helpful to have that guided, you know, and go to marriage counseling. So just as we're here tonight to kind of break the stigma and talk about domestic violence and hopefully inducing, what was it, marital harmony? That was the nice word. Same thing. We also want to break the stigma on marital counseling, you know, getting therapy because that can really help break down. And one of the steps aside from that is to really start from the bottom. You know, a lot of us, when we, our parents are teaching us about marriage, I don't know, at least from my background. You know, yeah, you don't need to be friends. It's just, you know, marriage is a business. You get it done, right? Marriage, husband, wife, you do your thing. But really, when Suhaa was mentioning what Alice Montala says about marriage, that a lot of places love and mercy between you, love is that baseline. Well, where does love start? It starts as friends. You have to rebuild that friendship, get to know each other again, go out together, spend intentional time together. That can start to soothe some of that pain. And then now when you want to bring up difficult things, you have something, you have a baseline to go off of. So it's, you know, there's a lot of steps, but those are some starting points, inshallah. Wonderful. Question number two. What do you do when conflict comes from an external source, like a family member, mother-in-law? Yes, another taboo that we should talk about. So you deal with that all the time. You want to start with your advice? And actually, many of us are mother-in-laws. Not me yet, but I know that many of my friends, our kids are getting married. Absolutely. He goes both ways. You know, SubhanAllah, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, when he frames marriage, and we heard the ayat that started off the night, actually, وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ انْخَلَ خَلَكُمْ اَنْفُسِكُمْ اَزْوَاجَةَ And from among his signs, he has created for you spouses for one another. Marriage is a unification of two people. And these two people need to be unified in their approach to life. And a lot of times, you know, when we have these external sources, we have in-laws, we have family, we have mother-in-laws that try to inject their wants and desires into your marriage, it's important that the couple is unified in their approach towards dealing with life. And that when somebody from outside kind of puts themselves too much inside, or one of these two allows too much space and they don't set up boundaries for themselves with the external family members, that's going to naturally disrupt this. So this comes number one. And even if that's mom, even if that's mom to say, mom, this is about us, this is about our life building, this is about our life together. And we, you know, we're not excluding you out of our life, mom or mother-in-law, but you need to let us to manage our life affairs. You need to let us raise our kids the way we see fit to our, raise our kids. Otherwise that's going to disrupt us and our flow and how we go about doing this. And I think, you know, it's important to understand the trends, just as we were saying, you know, unfortunately, domestic violence and abuse women tend to be the victim, right? Although men can be as well. Oftentimes in these in-law conflicts, it tends to be mother-in-law and son that, you know, that issue is there. And I think as, you know, just in general, when we educate our community, especially our men, to understand that you can implement the hadith of your mother, then your mother, then your mother, of whom you should love and respect, and then also implement the understanding that Allah SWT has put love and mercy between you. If a man understands that more, of course the women can do the same thing, right? She can always be telling her mom and then mom is interjecting and she's not kind of creating that boundary as well. But that can really alleviate a lot of this, you know, these problem dynamics. And of course, as women understanding, you know, the love that we have for our sons, for our daughters, it should not transgress the boundaries of that sanctity of marriage. You can love and respect your parents while loving and respecting your spouse. Any questions so far? Let me repeat it. So if I heard you correctly, how do you set boundaries, healthy boundaries in a marriage or relationship? And what can you do if they are disturbed or violated? And by boundaries, do you mean within laws or within each other, like between husband and wife? Maybe you want to start. Ladies first. Wow. You know, I, that's a fantastic question. And I would say that Subhan Allah, I think in a lot of these cases, the more we understand ourselves, the more we start to understand that something is affecting us and we're not really happy with it. But Subhan Allah, you know, human nature, it takes time to like, to see patterns time and time again and finally realize, wait a minute, I don't like this. This is not healthy. Right. So that's number one. It's kind of that self-realization that something is amiss. Like something needs to change. And then secondly, really being able to go about expressing your feelings in a non-confrontational manner, in a non-confrontational environment. So the argument that we had, it was a light one, right? But when we started to resolve it, what if we got so heated, we needed to take a break, you know? So that's something that's important. We never want to bring up these important conversations during a heated moment, you know, after dinner, hungry, all those kind of things. When we're hungry. So choosing the right, you know, having the realization, choosing the right time and then really being able to bring up how you feel about the situation. If you bring it up in a manner that is a non-confrontational, meaning talk about what you're feeling and what you would like is much more powerful than saying what you don't like and what they're doing. So if I say, for example, you know, you're always asking for things when I'm extremely exhausted. You're asking for dinner when it's like super late at night or I don't know, a third snack, whatever. It's always about food, so I'm just going to throw that out there. For me, at least. No, with me. Not with you. Not with you. I love food, so food comes to my mind. You're great. Then you would want to say, for example, you know, I feel really tired when it's late at night and I would really like it that any request you have, you know, that you help yourself to fruit or whatever. And you say what it is you want. That's a light example. Or I would really appreciate it that if you have a concern that you don't share negative things that are really personal with your mom. I would appreciate that. Instead of, you're always telling your mom private things about me that's really upsetting me. That's so annoying. Right? So it's difficult. There may be some reactions. It may take time. It may take again and, you know, having that facilitated, if it's something that's really painful and really, that's, you know, prevalent in your marriage. It's something that's very persistent. It may take a third party to help, again, like counseling, but giving space for, you know, these hurt feelings to express them in positive ways as much as possible and giving it time. Learning when to take a break from an argument when it gets heated and coming back to try to find that resolution, inshallah. One thing that's really important in marriage is, you know, theoretically, marriage is supposed to be unifying. But practically speaking, in the beginning of marriage and many people for many years beyond, marriage is, can be very conflictual, meaning it's two people coming together. Lubna doesn't like when I give this whole little spiel, but marriage in itself can be conflictual, meaning two people are coming together, trying to unify as one unit and to navigate life accordingly. Well, that unification process, like that intentional, conscious, deliberate process needs to take place in that way. And for a lot of people they don't realize that. They just go on about life and they never negotiated, navigated, figured out their boundaries. They never came to be on the same page. You have to have usul. You have to have foundational principles by which your marriage works on. And a lot of people don't take the time to even figure out what that is. You know, you just go into marriage and you go into marriage without even figuring out how do we fight? What are our rules of engagement? What do we want for our children? What are our shared goals? What are our shared dreams? What do we want out of life together as a couple? What do we want for our family? That all needs to be like, it needs to be brought out. It needs to be talked about. It needs to be, you know, shared together in conversation and constantly developed as we grow with each other. You mentioned sharing. We're going to have to share mics. We can share it together. I know there is a mic going around now for questions. So as that mic goes around, are you taking it? Yes, folks? Okay, great. I'll get a question in edgewise. This lovely young man has the mic. If you can grab him, you will get your question answered. So follow the mic. So a question for you. Excellent point, right? It's two individuals coming to form a totally different dynamic. And I'm pretty selfish. I like to take time. I write children's books. So I am dedicated in that. I go to conferences and do different things in addition to my day job and having a family. And my husband has his interests. So how do you encourage that to be an individual? Because if you're not an individual, you're not really bringing your whole self to create something that's whole. So how would you encourage that? Yeah, we can share. We can share. Okay, okay. Bismillah. So, you know, it's important that individuals are allowed to be their individual selves within the context of marriage so as to be fulfilled. For me to have fulfillment in my life, I need to be able to participate and do and be active in what I like doing. And of course, my wife is the same. But it's also important that we don't get lost in those two different worlds and that there is a common ground. You know, ultimately, there was a survey that was done a few years ago. They called the American Muslim Marital Quality Survey. And they found the five biggest problems between marital couples. One of them was that two people have differing interests. And differing interests can split people apart because your interests is what you spend quality time participating in. And quality time is time that's very valuable to me. And if our quality time is spent in two different worlds and we never connect and there's no, you know, mutual, you know, time that we enjoy doing activities, we enjoy participating in something together, then that's a cause for division. Where you just will slowly, emotionally divide from one another and that's dangerous for a relationship. I actually have a question right here. Can I go ahead? Okay. So one question that I have which usually comes up often with the clients that I work at NISA as well as in therapy is that most of the clients that I work with before actually seeking whether therapy or support services from NISA, they try, they attempt to work things out with their husband, right, with their spouse, whether it's a husband or wife. And usually when that doesn't work out then they seek support through other means but oftentimes what they ask is since we're in the Quran it says that we're garments for each other, does that mean that means that we protect our spouse and that protection involves not seeking support from a third party and if you can touch on that a bit what would be, you know, a good response to that. Right. And this is more of a cultural reality that we have in many cultures where we feel that well we can't go, we can't reach out. We're shaming ourselves when we put our when we acknowledge to some other party, some other individual about the fact that we're not getting along and we need help. And the one when we seek help it's important that we seek it from the right sources right, if you need medical help you go to a doctor, if you need religious advice, you go to Imam Tahr Allah bless him and preserve him or if you go to, you know, XYZ you go to the expert as Allah says, ask the people of expertise and the same thing goes here right, you go to people that are going to be able to help you bridge that gap who know how to bridge that gap and that is not putting yourself, that is not erring your dirty laundry that is seeking to help to repair the rip in the garment that's seeking to fix what has been broken that you don't have the ability to repair yourselves because there's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of argumentation and there's a lot of emotions that don't allow you to get to where you need to get to and put your attention to where you need to put your attention to there's a famous incident that's related about Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab a man, he comes to the door of Sayyidina Umar and he was having trouble with his wife and he comes to Sayyidina Umar to complain to him my wife doesn't listen to me he comes to the door of Umar and he hears Sayyidina Umar's wife giving it to him right and so the man he hears from outside what's going on inside and he's like let me get out of here man he has his own problems so the man starts to walk away and finally Umar comes to the door and the man is walking he says come come what did you want what did you need and the man he says well I needed to come to you to get advice how to deal with my wife because I can't deal with her but I found you O Umar Ya Amir al-Mu'mineen that you have the same issue so Sayyidina Umar he says this is my wife she cooks my food she takes care of my needs and even though she doesn't have to and even though she's doing this on her own accord and so can't I be patient with her because she's patient with me and so SubhanAllah you know the point here being related to the question that they saw they would seek advice they would seek to speak with each other to kind of figure out how to deal with their marital needs this is the time of this habah even so we have that precedent there as well now there's time for one more question so anybody has the mic has a question brave souls and asking questions in this audience I'm making my husband nervous I think no mashallah we are adoring how beautifully both of you are sitting there being true couple mashallah mashallah make dua for us make dua so what advice would you like to give us so called kind of young couples to do or not to do maybe just like two or three advice that's a wonderful question beautiful question make time for each other every single day every single week and then on repeat you guys are extremely busy for both professionals or someone's you know whatever it is that makes your schedule so busy and I know they're so busy I know that they are make time for each other make sure that when you're leaving the home you give each other a quick kiss a quick hug make that normal or talk about obviously family appropriate in front of your kids make that normal right a lot of times in our homes we grew up it's like and like never touch like you know come on I know that there's social norms and that's okay but so you know not only should that be displayed amongst before your kids that they can see that that's something healthy to look forward to but that's a very important touch point for you and your spouse and when you come back home same thing give a hug give a little appropriate kiss you know peck on the cheek on the forehead some type of love tap something but make that consistent you guys have really busy schedules text each other you know text text what you're having for lunch you know text you know I miss you whatever right do that once a day as much as it is possible try to have that 5 10 15 20 minutes of having tea together actually talking something beyond the bills and who should have done what and how come you didn't do the dishes and look at the trash that's outside and you still didn't fix the leaky pipe what's wrong with you right beyond all of that connect connect connect then when you're when when when when troubles happen as they will do as so how mentioned and as you mentioned it's natural those fights are going to be less caustic c-a-u-s-t-i-c right that kind of you know it's going to be less corrosive because you've connected so there's like a nice saying what is it fighting is less about how you actually you know what is it what you actually fight about but it's how you fight we don't want to be mud slinging we don't want to be nasty towards each other name calling so the more we can connect with each other in a loving way build that friendship spend time together ask each other questions like get to know each other always there's things that are changing as human beings we change all the time the nature of our relationship will change all the time so keep up to date with you know what they like what they don't like try to facilitate that both husband and wife right speak the loving which that you're that your spouse speaks and that can really really strengthen foundation so that when tough times fall as they will it doesn't really crumble the house inshallah what does that look like Allah SWT He says that we have taken from you O men a weighty heavy covenant as it regards to your women and so marriage is a serious matter right and it's not something to be taken lightly we don't at the slightest you know at the slightest difficulties just you know over drama ties and catastrophe catastrophize what's taking place in marriage and to make marriage work there's a nice saying they say that marriage is not about getting what you want but marriage is about wanting what you get and what that means is everybody's mind is spinning what does that mean marriage is not about getting what you want you can't mold your spouse into the person that you want them to be but it's about getting what you want meaning wanting what you get even I did right it's about making the best of what you have in your relationship learning your spouse understanding them loving them for who they are not who you dream them to be and putting your energy into that accepting their shortcomings the Prophet SAW he told us you know that a believing man a husband should not despise their wife in there's something that you don't like about her then there's other things that you like about her focus on the positive right and marriage is so much of that just focusing on the positive accepting them for who they are loving them for who they are and may Allah SWT bless you all well honestly I could have spent another half an hour listening and you're hearing the great questions but I know they have a flight to catch but I want to thank you so much sister Lubna, brother Subahil you really really first of all you're funny as heck so wonderful as my son was it was just a wonderful interaction and opportunity to be with you and please keep doing the amazing work that you do so thank you very much