The relationship training that destroyed my marriage

One morning, a couple of years ago, I was getting my twin boys ready to go to nursery and the older twin who is a whopping three minutes older than his brother was a little bit on the grumpy side. He hadn’t slept through the night and woke me up a couple of times. So he wasn’t in a particularly great mood and to be honest… neither was I.

I once had a female client who was quite frustrated, because after going through the “Meet Him and Marry Him” program, she would end up meeting great guys… but sometimes the guys just didn't know how to interact in any kind of attractive way.  There was one guy she was telling me about who - the first time they met in person - was dressed in a hoodie and really ugly, torn, dirty shoes...

The other day, Rachida and I were having a chat about our goals for 2025. We were talking about our intentions, the kind of energy and experiences we want to share together. By the grace of God, we're in a wonderful phase of life where we're living in Marrakesh… and it turns out this is our dream. It feels like we're on vacation the whole time, even though we're both still working and fully engaging with all the good things in life.

Want to know one of the main reasons why I love doing Jiu Jitsu and how I have the discipline to train daily? It's not because of the mind-body connection. It's not because it's the “gentle art”. It's not because I have some kind of super-human discipline.

Exactly one week ago was “Blue Monday”.  This is statistically supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, for a number of reasons...  

We've all heard about the importance of willpower and discipline when it comes to achieving our goals.  But what very few people talk about is the importance of “Allah will” power.  One of the biggest mistakes people make is they set big, audacious, hairy, scary goals, and then they try to force themselves to be really disciplined and achieve the goal all by themselves. Then, they get stressed, frustrated or give up on it altogether.

Back when I was a single, lonely, divorced bloke I went through a phase of not seeing anyone or considering anyone, which lasted about 9 months.  Then I had a life-altering insight that I wrote about in the book, “Inside the Soul of Islam”.  And after that, I was basically a magnet.

Back in 2010, I had just started my coaching business and was taking every coach training course I could get my hands on.  One of them was to become a certified relationship coach. Which, I’ll admit, was a little ironic given how my marriage was constantly filled with conflicts that I didn’t know how to resolve. But I figured this course might help me - I wasn’t planning on helping others in an area I was struggling....  

During the last year of my first marriage, right before it crashed and burned in divorce, I was online searching for answers to the marriage problems I was having.  I started with trying to learn the Islamic laws of marriage. It turns out that improves your relationship about as much as the Islamic laws of sacrificing an animal improves your cooking.  

True story:  Once upon a time a couple goes to a very wise marriage therapist and starts spilling the beans on how terrible their marriage is. It starts with the husband. The more he talks about his wife and everything she’s doing wrong, the more upset and heated he becomes. Pretty soon, he starts ranting...