welcome my name is there to sherman and i am your host and my guest today is susie she is the founder and communications counselor at cornerstone she's also the author of several books on the topics of marriage divorce and ethnic minorities in the workplace and today we're going to talk about her book modern muslim marriage finding the right match and making your marriage succeed welcomes thank you you've been here before i'm always happy to have you come here and talk about your books educate us inform us so let's talk about this book about modern marriage because we typically think of you know western marriage  kind of not doing well and other communities possibly doing better and are there differences in the way we approach it so maybe you can just let me know absolutely i think across the board today we are seeing families struggle families in all shapes sizes you know ethnicity faith based all sorts of things and we're seeing these struggles occurring for a variety of reasons and many of the struggles that we see occurring in non muslim marriages that in families are also occurring in muslim marriages that in muslim families among those struggles are the stress of raising children in homes where largely today both parents are working financial stress is another huge burden and you know my specific area of expertise is a lack of communication so we are seeing among families across the board regardless of faith and regardless of background that these same problems are existing and occurring frequently  you know it you know shoot me with so you know absolutely i think without a doubt you know education is the key you know we take a lot of time to educate ourselves in terms of our careers in terms of you know our day to day you know lives making a living things like that but when it comes to the most important elements of our life which is our relationships we tend to think about that learning is common sense that we don't need to be educated you know nelson mandela once  that education is the most powerful tool with which we can change the world and i feel like education is the most powerful tool with wished we can change the dynamics of our relationships and this is i think the key that is that magic bullet education prior to marriage education during marriage education we're learning not only about yourself as an individual but also about the dynamics of your relationships and what makes it work here you know it's interesting because there are other religions where you know they prepare people for marriage you know the world is changing and we're changing along with it one of the things that for really i think it makes so much sense to kind of go into premarital counseling not because you have problems but because you want to get educated and one of the things for me is defying expectations i think there's so little of that michel you know especially in a non religious sector it's like all about you know the stars and the adrenaline and all of that and everybody thinks that there is it's going to last and that was really only it doesn't and it's not a bad thing it's just a natural thing but then we don't think ok what about after that what do we need to pay attention what are the expectations financially and in terms of the kids and family extended family so maybe you can talk a little bit about that absolutely absolutely so when my book came out modern muslim marriage back in twenty twelve it was a direct response to an earlier book that i had written in two thousand and ten which was called the muslim marriage fails the first book address the problems with marriages and the breakdown in marriages and what we're seeing happening that is causing a huge rise in the divorce rate among the muslim community just as we see in the larger american community as well in responding to that you know the book modern muslim marriage came out with a focus on all right how do we do this right and what i found in my research and in writing that book is that a lot of our building towards our marriages and our relationships actually begins before we even set our feet on the path towards finding a relationship starting a relationship or entering a relationship and it begins with knowing ourselves so when you talk about expectations that is an absolutely huge part of a relationship but for many of us we don't understand ourselves well enough and we don't know what our own expectations are before we begin to engage with another individual and try to understand their xpect it's and until we get a better handle on who we are as individuals it becomes very hard to enter into a relationship and make that relationship a success you know it really make sense but you know that whole journey of self discovery can you know it's like you know yourself well i know myself today in ten years i'll know myself differently so that's an ongoing journey i think one of the things i heard in a talk you gave was if you going into marriage thinking that this other person is going to complete you you're not ready for marriage so i think to me that's a great starting point you're not looking for somebody to be your you know completion feel the power it's really your you feel that you want to share your life and who you are and travel the journey together but not expect the other person to be the one who completes the missing pieces of who you are absolutely absolutely and that's kind of the concept that our counseling center cornerstone is built upon the idea before embarking on a relationship don't look for the relationship look for yourself first understand yourself and you are absolutely right that self discovery is a journey and who you are today may not be who you are tomorrow but the process of knowing yourself is knowing how to know yourself you know how do you get to know yourself how do you know the person you are today how will you know the person you are tomorrow and how do you make time for that in your life when things get so crazy busy between now and what's the matter what is the answer of knowing yourself you know part of it is understanding what motivates every human being you know what are your desires you know for many of us we don't understand the motivation that pushes us toward something so let's say there is someone who feels that you know they really want to get a certain degree and this is their that they've always had the strive to get this to great you can have that drive and say i want x y z you know i want to achieve x y z without really knowing why so being able to answer that question why why do you want that degree why do you want that car why do you want seven kids you know why and being able to answer why is the first part of knowing how to know yourself you know it's great again it goes back to expectations you know  so i have this desire but what do i expect as a result of that yes and work for motivating factor and i think most of us will follow our passion without actually exploring that yes so then another thing you talk about is the reach of and i'm going to jump around because i want people to get like an overview of what you write about the infidelity is on the rise in the muslim community and so let's talk a little bit about why do you think that's happening and i think you know when we talk about infidelity for example being one of the many factors that we see increasingly causing breakdowns in marriages it's across the board you know again we see it in the muslim community we see it in many other communities as well what we're finding these days and particularly regarding infidelity is that the infidelity that we're seeing is not necessarily you know the affairs of maybe twenty years ago the klan this time meetings that you know you know hidden behind a barn or something like that that's not what we're seeing what we're seeing and said is a great deal of emotional cheating and emotional betrayal and a lot of that emotional cheating is being facilitated by the easy access to a variety of individuals a variety of of  attitudes personalities through online venues so we see it happening a lot through facebook we see it through texting we see it through you know twitter through all sorts of different avenues through you know that the swipe left right type of  interesting because what it really points to is it's a way to let yourself off the hoax from addressing what's right in front of the you so it's like shifting your gaze away from your relationship because it's much easier to you know find someone who you don't have all those daily struggles with the and then they understand you better and i like that and i think a lot of our views of love and marriage is built upon this concept of you know euphoria and instant gratification and as we move more and more into the realm of instant gratification and the idea that you know you send a text message you want to response within twenty seconds you know you know we're losing about that concept of the slow simmer that marriage really is you know essentially marriage is a slow simmer it's not a constant boiling it's not a constant you know fireworks are feelings of intense passion at all times instead it's meant to be a place of tranquility and serenity and when you think of tranquility and serenity you think of something that's mellow but we tend to not view love and marriage in that way we have the hollywoodized version of love and marriage is constantly being exciting and passionate and filled with fireworks and a lot of times when you don't get that instant gratification when you feel like you're missing it because you're in that flow similar state you will look elsewhere for those pops of satisfaction or for that need to feel appreciated that need to feel desired which sometimes within a marriage when things are in the slow simmer phase either you know one or the other may not be feeling those particular emotions it's hard for us to give up on that fantasy are so brainwashed with it i remember years ago  reading this article i think it was in the new york times but years ago saying has our version of romantic love destroyed relationships you know and it's kind of like that but it's hard it's almost like a drug how do you you know say hey listen you know here's what you have in these like fireworks moment but let's look back here and here what are your commitments so i don't know how you convince people of that in terms of like counseling what is the main thing that you deal with and you get to work with people and well i think you know just to respond to your earlier point before we head into the counseling round a lot of you know what you're describing in terms of how romantic love has changed our view of marriage and possibly depleted our marriages we also see a great deal of dependency these days and the concept of almost like the attachment theory where when we marry we begin to assume that this other person is supposed to fill in all the empty holes in our lives and that this person should be our best friend our best spouse the best parent the best provider the best partner you know the best in so many realms and as we move into more of an individual eyes type of a view in our communities and we lose that sense of collectivism we wind up seeing a great deal more of this dependency on husband and wife as being this nuclear y go wow that's really interesting that whole you know losing your dependence on community and then expecting that other person to be your one and only remembered being in this training about the difference between men and women and one of the things they said in the beginning was  very clearly they said women stop expecting your husband to be your best girlfriend that's what you have your best girlfriend for and i think as we start to distinguish like there are different places that we can get those differently it's best to be for community and the view for male companionship the need for female companionship so that we're being nurtured on a lot of different levels i think that's you know that's absolutely the case that we see and that kind of leads right into our counseling paradigm as well so our cornerstone center is focused on communication counseling faith based relational communication counseling which mean is it just for muslim families or what when we opened our doors about a year ago  our intention was to address the muslim community because you know that special area that we felt needed the most addressing because there isn't a lot of counseling centers that focus on that but what we found over the past year is that maybe about twenty percent of our clients now are non many people today the reason for marriage is starting to get a little bit lost you know why do i need to get married if i can live with someone and enjoy their company and not necessarily have to have that the whole bond and so what we're seeing a lot of today within our center is yes we do have the larger part of our clientele are muslims but a lot of non muslims who are seeking understanding and trying to see what does marriage mean what does family life mean you know why it's important why do i need to fight for it you know what are the downside i think you know if you take it out of the religious context and certainly get you know keeping the family together in the children's interests and everything else but if you look at pretty family so the question is if there is no compelling faith based reason to get married why why get married and i think that's that's a very deep philosophical type of a question you know that we probably won't be able to answer in just a half hour episode but i think the underlying need f our age it's you know as age old as like humanity itself you know what regardless of the fate that you would hear to any of the monotheistic faiths kind of start with the concept of adam and eve and this connection between partners who build upon something that is bigger than just themselves so when we look at marriage rather than just you know a legal binding paper or as something that's greater than that it's a point where an individual is able to look beyond themselves and to say it's not just about me anymore that there is someone else something bigger and what binds that something bigger is that sacrament of marriage regardless of whether or not you have a religious ceremony or if you know common law you've lived together for seven years and now you're considered married but something that is more binding than i am going to live with you and be your partner but taking it to that next level of this is bigger than just you and me this is something that we're going to work towards an entity an institution something that is has more sanctity in it then possibly just saying i love you you love me because the concept of love is defined differently i think for different people yes and again you know it's and i'm going to survive a question and a half an hour like why you know is marriage even valid viable whatever but if you look philosophically at it there is the potential for human growth and this idea it's not only about me it's about somebody else and it's funny i knew someone who was in a breakdown in their marriage they were talking to a counselor and he said you want to make your marriage may twelfth between you and him and god  it's like you know bringing that into it that it becomes something bigger than just the two of you so i could see inside of a faith based commitment where it would be very important to remember that yes yes absolutely  and like i said you know a lot of the people that come to our counseling center are people that have been away from faith for a long time where faith doesn't play an intricate part in their day to day life but they feel the need to bring that back into their relationship or into their family life because hope possibly of beyond just the day to day sometimes that answers that question of what is the purpose of it all and regardless of what you your belief kind of directs you to do on a day to day basis sometimes just having that purpose of there is a greater meaning to life is a right or maybe a greater meaning to marriage a greater meaning to family sometimes that alone even if you can't fully define what that purposes but that purpose gives you guidance and allows you to say this is worth it i'm working towards something bigger than just you know a lie limited understanding even if i can't grasp it completely right so then the question is you know how do you print here how do you teach people to communicate  you know when it's so easy to not do it directly and how do you because the reward is going to immediate someone else somewhere else that you don't have this history with so how do you create the value of that again you know i think we're taught from a young age that you know the idea of communication is this common sense you know something you're born with it you know how to do it but the reality is that it's probably harder than calculus or t when i say the word tree you know the tree that i may be thinking of could be a palm tree but when i say treat the one you might be thinking of as an oak tree or a willow tree so when i say something it's not always translated the way that i want it to be translated in your mind now add to that baggage and history and you know the past and suddenly everything i say may be taken in a in a way that is different and vice versa so where we begin with our kind of restructuring the communicative view or how people communicate within relationships and within the family dynamics as well is we begin with listening because we do a lot of talking and not enough listening most of the time and you know there's a saying that you know god gave us two ears and one mouth so that we could listen more than we speak but unfortunately it's often the opposite and it's not just listening to the other person but we do a lot of listening to yourself so oftentimes in our counseling sessions we will actually know with the permission of the clients of course will record a counseling session just as the couple is speaking we'll put something out there you know a situation that happened last week something that you know the couple has brought up in the past we put it out there and then we tell them you know talk about a lot some direct questions and then we record the conversation when they're done with the conversation you know often it'll get a little fiery or heated up and we replay the conversation and we have each person listened to themselves and nine times out of ten you know one person or the other will say yeah i said that but i didn't mean for you know as doing i said as we replay and as people listen to their own  voices they'll say well that came out not the way i meant it or you know what i meant by that and being able to put pause even when you speak yourself and really think about your words and think about how they're impacting the other person is the first step towards heading towards a communication dynamic that's you know successful for both parties involved you know what's interesting about it is you know as a life coach it's really about i work with people to work on themselves but relationship such a powerful structure to do your work on yourself it provides you with all the grist for the mill you know so that it's not just about the relationship it's about your personal development so that every time you're confronted and it's what you're doing you listen to yourself oh my god i didn't mean that i didn't yes yeah so that's really great you know so if you look at it it's just a vehicle for growth even absolutely so one of the things you talked about also in a talk you gave was this whole idea of you know so i love this idea of you know we have to bring back the support of the community extended family extended to networks so that we're not looking to one person to fulfill every role possible on the other hand there's clearly when you get married the family plays a huge role and sometimes that can be problematic rather than at some orderly absolutely one of the the levels of  you know communication counselling that we provide is about creating boundaries and boundaries not just for yourself but boundaries for you as a couple and you as a family boundaries as parents and boundaries as you know for the in laws as well and creating those boundaries from the get go very early on in the marriage it's critical for being able to navigate together you know as a couple or as a family where your marriage is going to head afterwards so as important as it is to have that work whether it's with friends or family or you know extended relatives the boundaries are key you know there has to be that ability to say ok you know yes i love my family i love my parents but i'm going to visit my parents or sell visit your parents to say you know we're going to spend one family vacation with this side w  he had an arranged marriage so i asked him questions about you know did you have did you get to say no and he said yes and i said what were your criteria and he was very clear about his criteria he wanted someone who was educated but not more educated  wanted someone who's going to be willing to work and he wanted someone who was going to be fully devoted to family life so again expectations clearly defined and so he found the one that he thought would fit the bill and he got married and when i was interviewing him this was years ago he had been married for twenty five years they had children and i said to him do you love her and he said with all my heart from the day i said i would i thought that was like that now you know where young love is this kind of feeling that overwhelms you but what was a commitment and i think that conscious decision making is something that we may have lost sight of in these current times you know because we are very much ruled often by the feelings and the emotions because we feel that that carries so much weight rather than by the mindfulness and the conscious mind fullness of saying i choose to love this person i choose to be with this person and i choose to be good to this person and it's something that even as parents like we need to do that with our children each and every day as well  after and that consciousness that ability to make those decisions and say you know this is you know the by my mind i'm choosing that doesn't lessen the impact of the love it doesn't take away from the emotion i think sometimes it strengthens  it yeah yeah absolutely and i think again you know in the premarital stage it's like very powerful to identify that and say i'm committing to love you even when i feel you're being hateful or whatever i that moment i may not love you but my overwhelming commitment is to continue to love you and to cross that every day and that's much more sustainable absolutely and i think that's one of the key reminders that we actually give our clients as well as we ask them to change their narrative and to change our dialogue with each other where every night rather than you know giving each other the pack on the cheek and saying i love you instead to say i choose you and that  day every man every day everyday yeah and then again you know so the conditions of satisfaction are different and changing so i think i heard you say very one of the ways that you're getting people to meet one another is to create community events because you're not allowed to date right absolutely yes and so to create community events and other you know take the next steps does that work well so in the start when when modern muslim marriage kind of came out in two thousand and twelve we began an initiative that really focused on trying to facilitate marriage you know and part of that marriage facilitation was we came upon this difficulty where we found a study that had been done a few years back that said people who live with each other or date each other for one to two years prior to marriage or more had less chance of success in their marriage than people who didn't know how and to us that was mind boggling because you know we always put so much emphasis on i need to know this person and i need to make sure this is the right person when this is to sticks clearly showed that it didn't matter whether or not you thought you knew the person that wasn't the defining factor as to whether or not a marriage w succeed so we went about trying to research you know what does it take to make a marriage succeed you know what is it that strengthens a marriage and we found that a great deal of that was having that shared sense of community having friends that are you know we're both for both husband and wife you know having family that could get together that could not necessarily be best friends all the time but that there was that kind of a connection so what we want about doing was we created social moderated activities which consisted of really focusing people's interests on doing things that they enjoyed rather than meeting people that they enjoy you know right because we thought that the dynamic would evolve interview meeting people who are like minded if you're doing like minded things so each month we would have an activity you know such as kayaking or roller skating or bike riding or a trip to the music things that different activities you know that people might enjoy and individuals who are interested in joining these activities were required to take a weekend education course on marriage on rights responsibilities commitments communication understanding you know the opposite gender things of that sort once they completed the course they could turn into any of our social moderated activities and one there if they found someone that they might be interested in and again it was just a very comfortable atmosphere a group of friends going out together you know what if they found someone they were interested in they could speak to one of the moderators and then what we were doing was smaller dinners where we would call up the person who they were interested in without telling them who issued the invitation and tell them you're invited to a smaller gathering and at the smaller gathering there would be a handful of people or less number of people and they would be able to talk to each other again if there was interest again we will kind of he move things along in the right direction and if there was no interest there was no awkwardness there was no feeling of you know oh my goodness this person really great in transit and you know for sure you were out of time but i think that's such it makes so much sense and it's kind of very intentional as opposed to all this random stuff and again waiting for the sparks and waiting for the right moment and it's really great so we thank you so much for being on the show and i invite people to check out your website to check out cornerstone and then of course there are your other three books one muslim marriage fails ninety five muslims in the western workplace the b f s sisters jen has a new friend