There’s a version of marriage we see celebrated everywhere – the wedding photos, the anniversary posts, the couples who seem to glide through life together with ease.
And then there’s the version most of us actually live in.
The one where you lie awake wondering when things started to feel so distant. The one where you can’t remember the last time a conversation felt truly easy, or the last time you reached for his hand without a second thought. The one where you love him [you know you do] but somewhere between the years and the arguments and the unspoken things, the connection has grown quieter than you’d like.
If that’s where you are, I want you to know something important: you’re not failing your marriage. You’re just being honest about it.
This is for the woman who wants a marriage rooted in sakīnah, and is ready to begin with what she can actually change.
The Problem with Most Marriage Advice
Most of the advice that reaches Muslim women about marriage falls into one of two camps.
The first is all technique. Say this. Do that. Ten ways to improve communication. It can be useful, but it rarely touches the root. Techniques without inner transformation are like repainting a house that needs rewiring. The outside looks better, briefly. But nothing fundamental has changed.
The second type is all spiritual reframing. Make ṣabr. Make duʿāʾ. Have tawakkul. Beautiful words. True words. But said in isolation, without any real, embodied guidance on how, they can leave a woman feeling more alone, as if her struggles are a sign of weak faith rather than unmet human needs.
Real, lasting change in a marriage requires something different. It requires you to go deeper than a list of tips and more grounded than vague spiritual aspirations. It requires you to work on yourself, not because your pain is your fault, but because you are the one thing in your marriage that you have the ability to change.
And to be clear: self-work is not a command to endure harm, it is a path to clarity, strength, and wise action.
Your Marriage Begins With You
The Qurʾān reminds us beautifully:
“Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.” (Ar-Raʿd 13:11)
This āyah is often quoted, but rarely fully absorbed. Change begins within. Not with a better strategy. Not with getting your husband to finally understand. Not with waiting for things to be easier.
It begins with a woman who is willing to look honestly at herself, at her patterns, her wounds, her defaults, and choose differently.
This kind of honest self-accounting has deep roots in our tradition. Ibn al-Qayyim, in his Madārij al-Sālikīn, mapped out three interior movements that precede any real change: mushāraṭah, setting a sincere commitment before acting; murāqabah, watching yourself honestly as you act; and muḥāsabah, accounting for yourself after. This was not abstract theory for the scholars. It was a living practice. A daily discipline of inner truthfulness that they understood to be the engine of transformation.
When a woman begins to shift from the inside, choosing presence over reactivity, softness over defensiveness, genuine connection over the need to be right, the atmosphere of a home begins to change. Not always overnight. But always meaningfully.
Your Deen Has Always Had the Answers
Here’s something that quietly breaks my heart about a lot of marriage advice aimed at Muslim women: it either ignores our tradition entirely, or it drops in a hadith at the end like a garnish, something decorative, rather than something load-bearing.
Our scholars understood people. Deeply.
On character and change Imam Al-Ghazālī wrote about the competing pulls inside the human heart with a level of insight that still feels startlingly current. He observed that character isn’t simply something you have or don’t have, it’s something you build, through practice, through repetition, through choosing the better action even before it feels natural, until gradually it becomes you. The act shapes the heart. The heart shapes the act. Round and round, in a continuous loop of becoming.
On the layers of love Ibn al-Qayyim wrote about love not as a single feeling but as something that exists in layers. At the surface: a love that rises and falls depending on what we’re getting. A little deeper: a love based on fairness, on reciprocity, more stable, but still fragile when the scales feel tipped. And then, at the deepest level: a love whose source is Allah. Where your patience isn’t hostage to his mood, and your kindness doesn’t depend on whether he noticed. This is the love that can hold through the hard seasons. And it’s not a feeling you wait to arrive, it’s an orientation you choose.
On the need to be known And then there’s Ibn Ḥazm, writing in his beautiful Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah about something so tender and so human it stopped me the first time I read it: the soul’s ache to be truly known. Not just loved. Known. He understood, centuries before any researcher gave it a name, that genuine closeness, that feeling of real belonging, is not a luxury. It is a need built into our fiṭrah.
Our deen has never been short on wisdom. We just haven’t always been taught to look for it there.
What Transformation Actually Looks Like
The Qurʾān describes the relationship between husband and wife with an image of extraordinary intimacy:
“They are a garment for you and you are a garment for them.” (Al-Baqarah 2:187)
A garment covers, protects, warms, and adorns. It sits closest to the skin. It is not performative. It is not displayed for others. It is quietly, consistently present, and its absence is immediately felt.
It’s not grand gestures This is the texture of the work. The quality of your presence when you’re tired. The choice to respond with softness when you want to snap back. The decision to see the good in him before cataloguing what’s missing.
It’s prophetic character, made daily The Prophet ﷺ modelled this himself. He didn’t only express love when circumstances were easy. He upheld his wives’ dignity in the ordinary moments, voiced his appreciation, made them feel seen. And he ﷺ said:
“The most perfect of believers in faith is the one who is best in character, and the best of you are those who are best to their wives.” (Tirmidhī)
It’s iḥsān – not performance The Hadith of Jibrīl (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 50 / Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 8) defines iḥsān as worshipping Allah as though you see Him, and knowing that though you do not see Him, He sees you. Applied to marriage, this means that every act of patience, every generous word, every choice to lead with grace, is not a performance for your husband. It is an act of worship directed toward your Lord.
That changes everything.
The Striving That Is Never Wasted
Here’s what I need you to hold onto, especially in the moments when nothing seems to be shifting:
“And those who strive for Us – We will surely guide them to Our ways.” (Al-ʿAnkabūt 29:69)
“Indeed, Allah does not allow the reward of the doers of good to be lost.” (Hūd 11:115)
There will be moments when you choose well and nobody notices. When you hold your tongue and he doesn’t thank you for it. When you soften, and he doesn’t soften back, not yet.
In those moments, the work is still sacred. Still counted. Still building something, even when you cannot see it.
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (RA) said, in what has become one of the most enduring invitations to inner honesty in our tradition: “Take account of yourselves before you are taken to account.” The woman who learns to do this, who develops the habit of gentle, honest self-examination, is the woman who grows. Not just in her marriage. In her soul.
Where to Begin
If you’ve been waiting for a sign to invest in your marriage, this might be it.
Not because things are broken beyond repair. But because you sense they could be so much more than they are. Because somewhere inside you there is still hope, still love, still a woman who wants to experience the kind of marriage the Qurʾān describes, one that is a place of sakīnah, of mawaddah and raḥmah, of the peace and love and mercy that Allah has placed as a sign of His own existence:
“And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquillity in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy.” (Ar-Rūm 30:21)
That marriage is possible for you. But it doesn’t arrive by accident. It’s built, carefully, prayerfully, step by step, by a woman who is willing to begin.
Start tonight – 10 minutes is enough: (Don’t look for an overnight shift. Look for honesty, then consistency.)
Sit quietly with a notebook and write your honest answers to two questions:
- What do I keep doing that creates distance between us?
- What would I do instead if I genuinely wanted sakīnah in my home?
Then make this duʿāʾ: “Yā Allah, give me truthfulness with myself and beauty in my character.”
That’s it. That’s the beginning.
If you’d like a guided path for this work, you’re welcome to join Rise Transformations, where I share structured resources and live support to help you build from the inside. In the meantime, start with one small change, and let it be sincere.
