Don't Be a Wife Like Meghan Markle or Marry a Husband Like Prince Harry
By Northern Ireland Office - Prince Harry and Ms. Markle visit Titanic Belfast, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69336962
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are, collectively, one of the most instructive examples of how not to do marriage that the modern world has handed us. And I don't say that to be cruel or unrelatable to Muslims. I say it because there is a great deal we can learn from watching a marriage and a family unravel in full public view when two people are deeply unwell in how they relate to each other and to the world around them.
This is not about the monarchy, because we all know they are corrupt and not an example for us. And neither is about race or politics. This is about character, conduct, and the very real consequences of two people who lacked the self-awareness, maturity, and selflessness that a marriage and a family actually require. I felt this case study had many good lessons for us to learn from.
The Wife Who Needs to Control Everything and Call It Advocacy
One of the most consistent patterns we see in Meghan Markle is a woman who has an extraordinary need to control the narrative. Every grievance becomes a public statement. Every slight, real or perceived, becomes a documentary, an interview, a podcast, or a memoir. The world must know, the world must validate, and the world must agree that she was wronged. This is not a strength, but a woman who cannot tolerate a version of events that does not center on her suffering.
In a marriage, this manifests as a wife who is impossible to conflict with privately. Because private resolution means no audience, no validation from outsiders, and no record of her pain. A woman who cannot resolve conflict without an audience is a woman who is not truly interested in resolution because she is interested in being seen as the wronged party.
Ask yourself honestly: Do I fight to fix things, or do I fight to be proven right?
The wife who constantly seeks external validation for her marital grievances, whether from friends, family, social media, or, in Meghan's case, the entire world, is a wife who has made her marriage a performance. And no marriage can survive being a performance. Tranquility, which Allah SWT describes as the very purpose of the marital bond, cannot exist when one spouse is always broadcasting.
There is also the matter of control disguised as concern. Meghan did not drag Harry away from his family because she was fearful. She did it because a woman with a deep need for control cannot share her husband with a world that predated her. The in-laws, the institution, the traditions, and the staff all had to go because none of it was hers to manage. That is not a wife protecting her marriage, but rather is a wife consuming her husband.
The Husband Who Abandoned Everyone for One Person's Approval
And then there is Harry.
A man who stood at his grandmother's funeral looking like a guest. A man who threw his brother, his father, his stepmother, his friends, and his country under a bus, on camera, for money because his wife needed him to. A man who, when asked to choose between his family and his wife's comfort, chose his wife's comfort every single time, without even appearing to struggle with the decision. This is not romantic. This is a man who has no sense of self outside of whoever is in front of him.
The husband's role in a marriage is not to become an extension of his wife's grievances. A husband is a leader, not a follower, not a co-signer for every complaint, not a puppet whose strings are pulled by his wife's emotions. A husband who cannot think independently, who cannot say to his wife, "I hear you, and also, I think you are wrong about this," is not a protector. He is an enabler, and enabling is not love.
Harry watched his wife go to war with people he had known his entire life. And rather than bringing wisdom and balance to the situation, he handed her the ammunition and stood behind her. That is not a husband standing up for his wife; it is a man who has confused capitulation with devotion.
A man who has no spine in his marriage has no spine in his family. And children raised by a spineless father, however wealthy, however famous, are children being raised without a rudder.
The Conflict Problem: When Neither Person Can Self-Reflect
What is most striking about this couple when you observe them over time is that in all the interviews, all the documentaries, and all the public statements, there is almost no self-reflection. There are grievances, victimhood, and blame, but virtually no moment where either of them says, sincerely, "I could have handled that better." This is catastrophic in a marriage.
Healthy conflict resolution requires two things: the ability to hear the other person's perspective genuinely and the willingness to examine your own behavior honestly. Meghan and Harry have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they are only capable of examining everyone else's behavior. The family was wrong, the institution was wrong, the media was wrong, the staff was wrong, and the world was wrong. But the two of them? Unblemished. Perpetual victims of everyone they encountered.
When a couple cannot fight well, they cannot heal. And when neither person in a marriage is willing to be wrong, the marriage becomes a competition about who suffered more, who gave more, who deserved better. That is not a partnership but an exhausting standoff.
If there is one thing I want Muslim wives to take from this post, it is this: the ability to say "I was wrong, I am sorry, I will do better" is one of the greatest gifts you can give your marriage. Not as a weakness, but as integrity. The Prophet SAW and his companions modeled this, and it is the single quality most lacking in couples who end up either publicly imploding or quietly dying inside.
On Being a Bad Parent Without Knowing It
The parenting choices of this couple say something important as well. They made a decision, publicly and deliberately, to isolate their children from extended family. From grandparents, cousins, and cultural roots on both sides. They did this, by their own account, to "protect" their children. But what they actually did was deprive their children of a world larger than two people's unresolved wounds.
Children need to know they are part of something bigger than their parents' narrative. Cutting all of that away, no matter how it is dressed up in the language of protection, is not parenting from love but from fear, which produces children who are afraid of the world and can become entitled.
Good parenting requires self-awareness and the humility to say, "My child needs things that I, personally, cannot give them, and I will get those things for them." That is what it means to put your children first.
What We Can Learn from All of This
I did not write this post to mock two people from a distance, even though I highly dislike Meghan and Harry. I wrote it because I believe that when Allah SWT shows us examples in our own lives and in the lives of those around us, it is worth pausing and asking: “What is this teaching me?”
Here is what it taught me and what I want to pass on to you:
1. On being a wife
Do not be a woman who cannot be corrected.
Do not be a woman who mistakes control for love.
Do not be a woman who fights her way out of every community she enters because she cannot submit to anything that is not entirely on her terms.
Softness is not weakness, and adaptability is not defeat. A woman who can humble herself for the sake of her marriage and her family is a woman of true strength, not the hollow kind that broadcasts itself but the quiet kind that builds things.
2. On conflict
Learn to fight in a way that leads somewhere bigger than yourself.
Say what is bothering you, listen to the response, and be willing to be surprised.
Be willing to be wrong.
Be willing to apologize first, even when you believe you are right, for the sake of peace, because peace in a marriage is worth more than being right.
3. On self-awareness
The woman who cannot look in the mirror is the most dangerous person in a marriage, not because she is malicious, but because she is blind. And a blind person cannot navigate conflict, parenting, intimacy, or growth. Ask Allah SWT regularly to show you your own faults. It is one of the most powerful duas a wife can make.
4. On choosing a good husband
The woman who chooses wisely before the nikah saves herself from a lifetime of managing what she could have avoided. Harry was not a hidden character as the signs were there—a man still bleeding from childhood wounds he had never dealt with, emotionally unmoored, without strong convictions of his own, and deeply susceptible to whoever held his attention most completely. A man without a stable sense of self will always be shaped by the strongest personality in the room. And if that personality is wounded, controlling, or unaccountable, he will follow her right off a cliff and call it love.
Before you marry, ask not just "does he love me?" but "does he know who he is?" Ask whether he has dealt with his past or is still being run by it. Ask whether he has people in his life he respects and who can speak truth to him, because a man with no one to hold him accountable becomes entirely accountable to you alone, and that is a burden no wife should carry and a dynamic no marriage can sustain.
A man must come to marriage whole enough to lead, not perfect, but grounded. Not without wounds, but not controlled by them either.
5. On parenting
Your children are not yours to keep small. They are not your shields, your validators, or your companions in your wounds. They are amanah, a trust, and your job is to grow them into people who are larger than you, not smaller.
A Final Word for Sisters
Every marriage has problems, and every couple has moments they are not proud of. The question is not whether you will struggle, because you will. The question is whether you will have the character, the faith, and the humility to work through it with integrity.
Meghan and Harry are a cautionary tale for us not because they have problems, but because of how they choose to handle them—with exposure instead of introspection, with blame instead of accountability, with the world as their audience instead of God as their witness.
We can do better. We must do better. Because our marriages and the children we are raising deserve better.
May Allah SWT grant us spouses who push us toward Him, and may He make us the kind of spouses who do the same. Ameen.
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in this post are my personal opinions based on publicly available information. This post is commentary and criticism, not statements of fact. All observations are based on what Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have shared publicly through their own interviews, documentaries, and memoirs.
Salam, I’m Zakeeya!
A Muslim wife, mother of six, author, and mentor dedicated to helping Muslimas find peace, purpose, and barakah in their everyday lives. Since 2011, I've been sharing practical Islamic guidance on wifehood, motherhood, homemaking, and spirituality to help women like you navigate life's challenges with more faith and less overwhelm. If this post resonated with you, I'd love to have you join our community and say salam, grab free Islamic resources in the Member Vault, and explore my books, journals, and mentoring—visit my About Page. May Allah bless your journey! 🤍
