Atif Rashid, UK
Living in the West means we’re brought up with a very romanticised and idealised version of love and relationships. Boy meets girl, falls in love and happily ever after… apparently.
However, all the typical cliches like “love at first sight” and “it’s meant to be” come crashing down either before your rishta search (if you’re lucky) or a few months after you get married. Imagine the horror of suddenly realising your chosen partner is neither the perfect person you idealised them to be nor the object of those intense loving feelings which you had since you first met.
Whichever way you look at it, we’re brought up to think that once you’ve found the “right one”, then you’ll have a life of endless bliss. A loving marriage till the end without any major conflict, with feelings of infatuation that last forever, and it’ll be an easy union. But with divorce rates rapidly rising, despite supposed “love marriages” and unions where “it’s meant to be”, where is it all going wrong?
A lawyer who handles lots of divorce cases said the number one reason people separate is because they “refuse to accept the fact that they are married to a human being”. (Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, Drs. Les Parrott and Leslie Parrott, 1995, p. 29)
Love or infatuation?
In that initial attraction phase, otherwise known as “being in love”, we’re dazed by our hormones and the “feel good” chemical in our brain known as dopamine. So we don’t notice the many flaws of the other person as we’re quite literally “blinded by love”. The brain switches off or dampens the areas related to logic and rationale, so you stop thinking clearly. You’ll ignore all the red flags and chase after the person because you’re adamant there’s no one else like her and she’s “the one”.
When you’re attracted to someone, your brain releases dopamine. This chemical gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling of being “in love”, which leads to obsessive infatuation and addiction, similar to that of people addicted to cocaine and alcohol. This explains why you might feel good about the other person and start thinking that it’s “meant to be”, even though it might not.
Everyone has flaws, and there’s no such thing as the “perfect person”. There may be good matches, but even then, that’s not a guarantee of a successful marriage because, as we’ll explore below, every marriage goes through ups and downs and has to be maintained.
“God help the man who won’t marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her,” said Benjamin Tillett, a British politician in the early 1900s – he was definitely onto something.
Hazrat Musleh-e-Maudra mentioned in his nikah sermons that those people who marry for love and lust alone, when those feelings die down, their lives end up being destroyed. He said that one shouldn’t have too many prior expectations or rely on one’s own perceptions. Superficial things like age, name, and beauty become totally irrelevant in the long term. And if you ask every married couple, they’ll tell you the same.
Initial feelings aren’t reliable anyway. Having a good feeling when you “click” or thinking there’s a “spark” isn’t a reliable indicator of whether you’re compatible or a good match. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Hazrat Dr Mir Muhammad Ismailra, who was seeking advice about a rishta, the Promised Messiahas said: “Don’t depend on your hidden thoughts. Youthful and inexperienced thoughts are not reliable.” (Seerat-ul-Mahdi, Vol. 1, Part 3, Narration no. 809, pp. 736-738)
Matchmaking based on character
Paul Brunson, one of the leading matchmakers in America, says compatibility is in four things: attachment style, ability to communicate, values and attraction. He also says that we’re terrible at knowing what we want, as we’re rarely thinking rationally in these situations.
He said aligned values, in other words, religion, character and outlook on life (as mentioned in the hadith), are “incredibly important” as is attachment style. And as long as you can communicate well, make collaborative decisions and have minimal attraction, then such a relationship can work. Yes, you read that right: minimal attraction. He said if you have no attraction, then don’t do it because it won’t work. But it just needs to be minimal because that can and does grow in the future. At least one partner also needs to have a secure attachment and not be needy or distant.
But we all know that the Holy Prophet Muhammadsa told us this long before. He desired to impress this upon us so much that he went to the extent of saying, “Marry the religious person, may your nose be rubbed in dust,” emphasising that if you marry a righteous person, you will prosper; otherwise, you won’t. (Sunan ibn Majah, Hadith 1858)
In another Hadith, he said the best provision in the world is a pious wife. (Sunan ibn Majah, Hadith 1855)
Lowering your gaze
There’s a good reason Islam teaches to avoid all approaches to zina (adultery) and commands men to lower their gaze. When you start looking freely and watching even ordinary TV programmes, the women you see become the expectations you have in terms of looks from your potential spouse. But looks can be deceiving and don’t determine the future quality of marriage. If you’re allowing your eyes to wander, you’re potentially going to reject perfectly good proposals that come your way, just because your expectations have been warped by other women that you’ve seen.
It’s difficult to accept these things when young and looking for a spouse. But if your religion is saying this, and marital experts outside of religion are corroborating it, and married couples tell you the same, then you’d be unwise not to pay attention.
Love is not enough
Love itself is not enough to make a marriage last either. Those feelings will die down, and when they do, you’ll need to find something else to keep the spark alive and remain committed to one another. While love ebbs and flows, your commitment to the marriage should be fundamentally based on your duty to God. If you take love to be a verb rather than a feeling and treat someone with love for the sake of God, as mentioned in the ahadith, then that will create a stronger bond and deeper love in the long run.
A person who loves another for the sake of Allah alone, holds Allah and the Prophet dearer than anything else, and hates to revert to disbelief is one who has tasted the sweetness of faith, according to the Holy Prophetsa. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 21)
“Make each other happy for the sake of God. It can’t be that you do some work for God’s pleasure and obey His commands yet suffer and be destroyed because of it,” advised Hazrat Musleh-e-Maudra. “God opens the doors of His mercy to the husband and wife who interact with each other with the pleasure of God in view.” (Khutbat-e-Mahmud, Vol. 3, p. 81)
Preparing for marriage
Many people spend all their time preparing for the wedding, but rarely for the marriage itself. Because of false expectations, they suffer severe disappointment just a few months into the marriage.
Marriage is the solution to all our problems, we’re sometimes told. Don’t have a job? Get married. Feeling low? Get married. Have health problems? Get married!
Believe it or not, this does have an element of truth. Married couples tend to be happier, healthier and financially better off than non-married people, according to numerous studies conducted in the last few decades. And those same benefits aren’t found in cohabiting couples. There’s something about the contract of marriage and making a commitment that brings about peace, trust, security and happiness. You know you have a partner for life, are sharing everything and are playing on the same team. Whereas in cohabiting partnerships, there’s no commitment and no guarantee. Your partner can run out on you at any moment. (The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially, 2001, Linda J. Waite)
At the same time, however, marriage isn’t the automatic solution to all your problems. The above benefits are dependent on hard work, putting time and effort into your marriage, and sticking through all the rough patches. Your partner can’t cure your bad habits or turn your life around. That is still largely up to you. Your spouse can help, but you still have to bring a positive attitude to the table and be willing to work together for the sake of you both. Another way of looking at it is that marriage is just two flawed people who have made a vow to stick together through thick and thin.
So in marriage, the boy and girl don’t know what kind of result their marriage will bring. There are many hidden matters that no one has knowledge of, even years into a marriage, so reliance on God is the only solution.
“Besides the prayer for a pious change in one’s self, one should pray for his children and wife, as most of the trials humans face are because of children,” the Promised Messiahas advised. (Malfuzat [1988], Vol. 5, p. 456)
Marriages start with great hope and excitement, yet people don’t consider the difficulties that may lie ahead. It also affects society, families and friendships. The progeny born out of it could be a blessing or a curse for the world. Marriage is a serious matter and not all fun and games. With this in view, and having realistic expectations and a reliance on prayer, marriage can truly be fruitful and filled with many blessings.