All praise is due only to Allaah. We laud Him and beseech His

“A person complained to Moulana 
Fadhlur Rahmaan Saheb Ganj Muraadabaad (rahmatullah 
alayh), ‘Hadhrat, I do not attain the same pleasure in my Thikr 
as I used to initially.’ He replied, ‘Have you not heard that an 
old spouse becomes a mother.’”
Subhaanallah! What an apt comparison. The meaning of this 
statement is that the pleasure derived in the initial stages is 
always 
nafsaani
. Just as the urge and enthusiasm with a wife 
lasts for the initial stages of the marriage when it is at its most 
intense, and as the years progress this fervour lessens, but the 
relationship matures and becomes more mature, so too is the 
pleasure felt by the 
Saalik
when he starts the Thikr program. 
Initially he does it out of pleasure and enthusiasm and later its 
effects settle on him, and his attitude matures. 
Regarding an old spouse becoming a mother, I recall an 
incident of an affluent person in old India, whose wife passed 
away. One day someone came to him to console him and told 
him, 
“Sir, we are grieved by the passing of your beloved wife.”
He started crying and said, 
“She was not my wife, rather she 
was a mother, who would feed me bread and rub my body.”
Indeed an old spouse does become (like a) mother. 
I recall another incident where an old man resolved to remarry 
in his advanced age. His wife had passed away and his sons and 
daughters-in-law rebuked him for wanting another wife. They 
told him that he is old now and that they are there to see to his 
needs. He ignored their taunts and remarried. 
After some time, he became very ill. He developed diarrhoea 
and started vomiting. All his other relatives did not come near 

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delicateness of the marriage union, then we will note that there 
is no other relationship as delicate and fine as this. 
The delicacy is finer than that of the spider’s web, where many 
years of union can be broken up in a split second and with one 
utterance. If the couple have a heated argument and the 
husband lets go three ‘bullets’ from his gun of divorce and 
there the story ends, irrevocably. An entire lifetime of union 
and marriage cane be irrevocably broken up in a few moments, 
which will bring nothing other than regret and grief. 
Now what can be done? After the bullet has left the gun, it 
cannot be returned. He has fired the bullet of 
Talaaq
, and now 
there is no return for that bullet. The grief and remorse of the 
wife is one, that of the children another and that of the husband 
another. What can be done now? 
The man should have thought and contemplated the matter 
beforehand. It is possible that the husband may have thought 
that all the years of marriage have strengthened the bond of 
marriage and that the bullet of 
Talaaq
will not break that strong 
bond. But alas, how wrong is he! 
Regardless of how old and strong the relationship may have 
developed to, but the delicacy of the union is the same -- a 
Talaaq
which is given in the initial stages of marriage and that 
which is given many decades after Nikah, has the same effect. 
Nevertheless, just as how a 100-year old kaafir recites the 
Kalimah and becomes a Muslim, so too will the words of 
Talaaq
sever the bond of Nikah, regardless of how old the 
couple may be or how long they may have been married. All 
those years of marriage will be of ceased and they will become 
strangers unto one another. 
Now look at the other aspect of a marriage -- the deep 
relationship. There is nothing more deep or intense than the 
relationship of an old married couple. All the service rendered 
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to you by your wife, can never be replaced by anyone else. All 
the time she spent with her husband cannot be equalled. 
Hadhrat Moulana Ashraf Ali Thaanwi (rahmatullah alayh) 
stated in one lecture,