Marriages that don’t last

So lately I’ve been hearing a lot of sad news about people whose marriages have ended. The most recent story had the marriage last for two weeks before it was over. I have to admit that being the selfish person that I am, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear of a divorce of a couple whose wedding I had attended, I think, “I shouldn’t have wasted my night going. I could have read a good book.”

But oh well. What to do?

Most people don’t enter a marriage with the intention of getting a divorce. But sometimes relationships reach a stage where even the engineering simulation program Aspen can describe…

“Unreconcible”

And both sides have to go their separate ways.

The sad thing is divorces are becoming really common nowadays and as usual society always blames the woman.

In the past, no matter how abusive the husband is, the woman would stay put for the children or for having nobody else to support her financially ….but nowadays more women are able to catalyze a divorce because they have a way to support themselves and their children. So of course society would blame the woman for having an exit strategy. But would they blame the man for being abusive?

I was reading the book Emotional Intelligence and the author, Daniel Goleman, writes about how many marriages break down due to lack of finesse when it comes to facing conflicts. Basically, the main point he was trying to make was that it’s not that healthy couples do not face conflicts, but they know how to face those conflicts. Lets take a case where the man always forgets to take out the trash. Instead of commenting on what he did – or did not do – she would attack his character, “You’re always irresponsible.”

Now of course, anybody could tell you that it would be normal for the male ego to respond and turn a small comment to a shouting match. So Goleman advised said to, “Tell them what they did wrong, just don’t attack their character.”

So there’s one nugget of information to take today in hopes that the divorce rate would go down in our society, because a divorce = 2 possible weddings down the road and that’s one equation I can do without since I’d rather be reading a book.

(c) Jaspal

Waiting

They tell me I should be jealous
Jealous of the woman waiting
By the window for her husband to return
The food turning cold
As hunger claws her stomach

They tell me I should be jealous
Jealous of the woman waiting
By the TV for his leave to be approved
So they could travel to golden sands
Smoothened by the crashing waves

They tell me I should be jealous
Jealous of the woman waiting
For her phone to ring with his tone
Or the TV to be switched off
So she could get his attention
Before he turns on his playstation

They tell me I should be jealous
Jealous of the woman waiting
Waiting to be happy
Waiting to be listened to
Waiting
For her life to begin

Photo under Creative Commons license by Anastas Tarpanov

What Happens?

My blogger friend wrote What Happens? about how friendships can go sour and she asks the question, what happens?
Being the expert on the topic I couldn’t help but write about it as well. The thing is, change is inevitable and not all relationships can weather the storms of change in terms of geographical distance and lack of communications, and so the two people may just lose touch with each other. So basically, the first answer to what happens? Is that “Change happens.”
But sometimes it’s deeper than that as two best friends who are working together or a married couple living together become estranged because of something that one of them did; an act that causes the other person so much pain it’s like they walk around with a heart in a clutch so tight it’s like those footballs that are made out of plastic bags in Africa (the ones that have to be made tight otherwise it loses the qualities of a ball). So when the hurtful event occurs, be it cheating or lying or having their trust broken, turning away from the person becomes a matter of self-preservation because they can’t have their hearts go through that again. And that’s when a change in the relationship takes place because they say that trust is like a glass that can’t be pieced together into its original form once shattered.
So sometimes it’s a matter of two people growing apart and sometimes it’s a hurtful event that changes the relationship and sometimes it’s just a dose of reality because one realizes that they gave a relationship more value than it is worth. Take for instance a maslaha friend, one who only calls up when they need something. You might consider them a close friend while they are only using you for money or something that you have, so what happens is that you wake up to the fact that the friend is nothing but a maslaha friend and that’s when you might try to stay away, i.e. you give the friendship its true realistic value after being deceived for so long.
But you know everybody in your life is there for a reason, some will break your heart, others will open your mind, and some will do both; it’s all part of coloring your life’s experiences. And what else to say but c’est la vie.

How a broken heart can sometimes feel (Image from Ecostreet.com)

Dear Single ladies – part 2

A friend of mine was talking about how lonely she is for being 29 and still single in a society where you turn into a spinster by age 23. She ended her post by saying,
“Everything is in Allah’s will, I understand but I can’t run away from the lonely feelings, the need to be cared for. Am still a human, and still a woman – I can’t run away from my hopeless feelings. I just hurt- and hide behind the masked face of being empowered.”

The words were really powerful but they really made me think of people who are at the other end of the spectrum, those who got married young and have half a dozen kids to take care for. Though I do not have direct quotes, but when they speak, they speak of not having any “me” time, of how they can’t do what they like to do because of a domineering guy, of how their movements and day plans are controlled by someone other than themselves.
So while the author of castle of words says she wants to share the long walks on the beach with someone she calls her husband, what if she got someone who doesn’t even like to take a walk (let alone take a walk at the beach) because their feet keep on sinking in the sand. I’ve seen women whose personalities have been shredded because of their husbands so they can’t even recognize who they are anymore, and there are those who are just sooooo tired of things demanding their attention that they just want to crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear. There are those who are going through the pain of discovering that their beloved husbands had been sooo loving, his love encompassed more than one wife, and there are those who don’t know how to talk to their children about a separation looming around the corner, and there are those who fall victim of domestic violence and there are those who are stuck in a loveless marriage just for the children, and there are those who had to bury their children because of a madman who entered a school with a gun or a mad president who just doesn’t want to let go of his chair (Syria).
So yeah, when you start looking at things in perspective, what single women go through isn’t so bad. Single women can take the edge off the pain of loneliness with a list of achievements that sees us move forward. I learnt all that by watching my single friends who yearn companionship as much as any other girl, but know better than to sit in bed, crying in self pity over romance movies while wolfing down a gallon of Baskin Robbins; young women who launched home businesses and keep on taking it to the next level, young women who volunteer to help orphans, those taking lessons to learn new skills and languages, those taking care of elderly parents and those who utilize their time to meet new people and go new places.

Sorry for the second post today but I couldn’t help responding to Castle of Word’s post, which I can’t link right now considering that I’m posting this through my phone.

Truth or Dare?

There are times when I feel society molds us into encompassing ourselves with deception, deception so deep that even we begin to believe it ourselves. Think of the people we smile to just because we have to, the people we call “dear” or “habibty” just because we’re expected to. Society teaches us to sugarcoat and mince words, because that’s what it takes to fit in. People should never be hurt by us, and if the truth would hurt them, then the truth should be buried.

Think of a really beautiful world where honesty seriously reigns. How much easier would it be when we do not need to refrain from saying some things just because we are worried how the other person would react?

I’m not talking about outright lying over here, but about avoiding the complete truth. Take a woman who can’t always let her feelings show in front of her husband because she hates it when he scoffs them off. So she keeps everything inside and the buildup of emotions eats her up bit by bit until one day she explodes, or implodes.

Deception takes another form that’s more common here in the UAE. Take the family that’s sinking under an avalanche of debt because they have to buy a specific car, rent a specific apartment and send their children to a high-end private school they can’t afford. We all know that living in debt is really bad, and yet we end up doing it to keep up appearances. Would those people whose approval we seek ever help us with our debts if things get really out of hand?

There’s a quote that says people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like.

In a Quibblo.com poll, someone asked whether people would prefer truth or dare, and out of 408 responses, this was the result.

poll made by person with screenname “Insaneangelchic”

Someone might argue that many people enjoy dares because they’re more fun, but what if they were just afraid of the truth? What if they were just afraid of letting people know their deepest secrets, and untold stories? It’s not easy opening up to people and being very honest to them, because it makes us vulnerable. It weakens us in a way.

So we’d rather wear cloaks and masks, and hide in a world of deception. Yet, it’s not always our exterior that can be covered in deception and dishonesty. Because just as Richard Bach said, “The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.”

Dear Single Ladies

A lot of my single friends are complaining that society is not cutting them any slack. When eid time comes or if there is some family event, suddenly the girl becomes the center of attention and her aunties start speculating on “WHY is she still single?” The girls don’t get annoyed by their single status as much as they get by society’s reaction to their single status.

Maybe that’s the point. Make her single life miserable enough so she’d get married. To the first guy who knocks the door, regardless of whether he’s suitable for her or not.

One of my fellow Kemeni blogger, posted about this recently in Being Single, ” You tell yourself “I am happy being single” then you hear a nikkah from a near by mosque. Your thoughts wonder, some one is getting a companion tonight, they will build their future together. Then you evaluate yourself why are you still single? Is there something wrong with me? Then you end up saying am worth the world! I am strong independent, Its not written for me yet!  But secretly you question your self esteem! At the end you go back to saying “I am happy being single”, all the horror stories about marriage that I have heard. Its such a vicious circle! Emotional blackmail to one self!“

One thing about the traditional Kemeni society is that if a girl’s age is around 22 then she’s by default a spinster until stated otherwise. When men go around searching for wives, they want someone who knows how to cook biryani just like his mother, and who likes children and has experience raising them (preferably her own siblings). There are some who explicitly state an age (15-18) because the younger, the less they know about the world.

Or at least, that’s what the guys think.

So someone like JJ, a women who graduated from college in the US and holds a proper job, and has a blog – OH MY GOD! WHAT A SHAME! – is too opinionated for the typical Kemeni man who wants a wife to go along with everything he says, stroke his ego, and make him sandwiches. So the other day, a question was raised, would you rather be divorced or single? The statuses are very close to each other, except that nobody bothers the divorcee about marriage anymore.

But when a girl is single, and is enjoying every second of her single life – from shopping to coffee outings with the other girls, to saloon appointments, and gupshup-filled sleepovers with her girlfriends- nooo, the aunties just want her to settle and be miserable, and tell her, “You’re nothing without a man, all those degrees you have amount to nothing (not that I would give your name to my friend who’s looking for a wife for her son because you’re too ‘modern’ and unsuitable for him), but still, this lifestyle of yours is just so wrong.”

And it’s even stranger when the advice comes from someone who is already miserable in their married life.

Ya3ni, seriously?

So how do you react to such comments. How I’d like to react is by quoting Sherlock from the modern Sherlock Holmes series, ”Listen. This (his head) is my hard drive and it only makes sense to put things in there that are useful. Really useful.”

Of course I never really say it out loud.

The thing is, they are the ones making us feel like there’s something missing in our lives because we are single; they are the ones who make us even feel guilty about our single status; they are the ones shrinking our self-worth by their comments. So what would they rather have us do? Sit in front of the mirror and ask, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, where is the charming prince of them all?”

Take an extreme example; society talks until the girl can’t handle the pressure anymore and marries someone unsuitable (just so they’d shut up). And because the person is unsuitable, maybe the relationship is rocky and ends up with a divorce. Would society help the woman get back to her feet after a divorce? No, they’d say that there must be something wrong with her, that’s why she couldn’t keep her husband for long. Then maybe she’d be shunned. So whether she stays single or gets married to the wrong guy and ends up in divorce, it’s a lose-lose situation.

So dear single lady, my advice to you is to focus on yourself. Focus on your building up your Imaan, focus on developing yourself mentally, socially, professionally…Focus on yourself, because life does not come with guarantees. There’s a nice quote that says, “Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.”

Think about how many people are married and miserable. Think about how many couples who stay together only for the children. Think about the sort of people for whom married life is a boring routine that they have to go through for the sake of going through…If you’re still single, don’t sit and get annoyed and frustrated, and believe that you must be single for a reason, so make the best use of it and capitalize on your assets, the main ones being your time and freedom. And for those who are pressured into marriage with unsuitable people just so that the train doesn’t pass them by. Isn’t it better for the train to pass you than crush you?

Ten Degrees of Perspective – On Love

So the other day somebody was saying that love is forever, so if you ‘fall out of love’ with somebody then by definition, it was not love to begin with. Personally, I thought the idea was a bit too idealistic, because the implication was, it should be perfect or doesn’t exist.

Growing up I used to simplify the concept of romantic love as being something that encompasses “lust” from his side and “need for company” from her side. Add to that all the pop culture that tries to tell us what love is, for instance ”love is like the wind.. you can’t see it, but you can feel it,“and it becomes more undefined. Nowadays we can always blame endorphin (happiness), dopamines (reward system) and other hormones for what drives people to behave in ways others could call love. Someone simplified it better, love is just a series of chemical reactions.

So my new idea in the issue is the 10 degrees of perspective. Let’s take love and all his friends, crush, infatuation. Some are more intense than others. Then let’s look at a thirteen year old who just started having estrogen flow within her bloodstream. Her idea of love could be, “OMG !! I’m so in love with him because of I love his hair!” So whatever she loves about the person is only 0.1 degrees or less of his total being. (I mean, seriously?? She sees his hair and  decides she is in love with him – true story by the way).

Then as the person matures (hopefully), their experience with different people make them judge better as to how good or not a person is. But the thing is, unless the two get married and actually live together, their perspective of each other will always be limited to something really small like 10 degrees. So if someone claims, “I’m in love with him,” it’s really, “I’m in love with my perception of ten degrees of him,” (because sometimes one’s perception is different than the reality. Take an extreme case where a person is married to an abusive husband and justifies it as, “He hits me because he loves me” – that’s her perception of the matter, not necessarily the reality).

For instance, unmarried couples might see each other only at their best and not at their worst. That’s where the whole devil-orchestrated dating system crumbles. Also you know how they say, “Until you’re broken, you don’t know what you’re really made of.” And that’s you talking about yourself. You live in your skin 24/7/52 year in, year out. So imagine what sort of crises would be needed to know what the other person is made of.

So in the end, you can really decide if you love someone through their Mawaqif (As much as I hate the parking company, I can’t think of any other word to use here). I mean you learn if they’re good by the stance that they make when facing a certain situation, how they react during times of anger for instance, are they insecure, temperamental, do they go childish when they want something being done their way? The claws – from both sides – normally start appearing after marriage because they’re both sorta stuck. Some people I know who knew their spouses before marriage admit to that, saying the same thing I said before, “You think you know someone but then you get married and live with them, and that’s when you realize you never knew much about them to start with.”

That’s why it’s better for a person to pray to Allah (SWT) to get them what is best for them because He knows best, and no matter how much you think you know somebody you’ll be surprised. As for us selecting people for ourselves, we tend to be limited to ten degrees of perspective, and even if a selection is to be made, one needs to pray istikhara to be sure.

So what’s your insight on the topic?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But It’s Just One Day….

I’m sure some people might be bored of the topic already because we’ve discussed it in The Four Wives Solution, On Weddings and On Weddings Part 2. But today’s angle is a little bit different. It’s a little bit more sober. It started with a discussion over the Hijab. There are some who argue that they don’t want to wear the Hijab because they’re waiting to get married, because they don’t want to take it off during their mixed weddings. So just don’t wear it until then, instead of wearing it and taking it off one day then putting it back on.

Now seriously, people… The argument makes it seem as though one option is better than the other, when they’re both wrong. The obvious question one must ask themselves is, can you really guarantee your life until you get married?

Then there’s the whole idea of starting off the marriage on the wrong foot, for example those who take off their Hijab for that one day, or those who find a nice can’t-breathe-in-this-thing strapless white dress, paint white on the rest of their bodies and tada! upgraded version of  the wedding dress to take into account that they are Hijabi’s in a mixed wedding. And don’t forget the topic of plucking one’s eyebrows, which is something that a lot of people in our MTV era are taking for granted, even though it is a major sin connected to la3na – or 6ard min ra7mat Allah. The argument is that some say they are doing it to beautify themselves in front of their husbands who they must obey. But is there obedience of people when it comes to disobedience of Allah?

As an analogy, when someone’s boss gives him a promotion, the employee focuses on bettering their connection with the boss, and his requirements to ensure that what they’re doing matches the new job description. By getting married, there’s a lot of things added to the married couple’s new plates – a new set of responsibilities- but how are they trying to better their connection with Allah (SWT)? The thing is, marriage is an important transition, it’s a shaky ground that can solidify or collapse with time. It’s an important time when we really yearn for baraka, yet some people may involve themselves in disobeying Allah (SWT)?!

Then there are those who take off the Hijab in front of the husband’s male members. Ya3ni, maybe the wedding is originally segregated but the guy walks in with his brothers and cousins, and the bride is looking pretty in her wedding dress which only the husband should see shar3an, but c’mon, dude we’re one big family now.

Then the people who argue, “But c’mon, we don’t usually wear such tight clothes, we don’t usually take off the Hijab, we don’t usually… This is just for one day.”

But death can happen in one moment, and we never know when.

Allah yihdeena jamee3an & yi7sin 5atematana

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