L stands for Love

One topic that has of course, been barraging my mind as of late, has been the issue of marriage, relationships and love.
In the year that I’ve been away, about 7+ of my friends have gotten hitched/engaged at ages ranging from 18 – 25. It’s shocking to say the least. Did I also mention that one of them was my brother marrying one of my friends? Intense. I discovered this over a Skype conversation + email.
In the hype of it all, I found myself someone who I actually considered a potential future spouse in China. Even when I denied the possibility and told everyone that I would not come back married, engaged or any other form of ‘taken’ in the relationship bar for the past year and some. To be honest, I met him only about two months before departure, so this made it intensely tight-stringed and especially rough on my mental understanding of the situation.
Recently I read an article one of my married friends posted on her Facebook profile (lovely aspect of social networking), and it was precisely in regards to this particular phenomenon of mass marrying/hooking up. It was essentially a list of ten points on whether or not you were ready to get married. Honestly, it was something I really needed at the time.
When I first met this guy, I honestly didn’t think of his looks, I was just like, “Okay, another Chinese Muslim dude, probably one who doesn’t know very much about what he’s doing or what the religion is about besides not eating pork and attending Friday prayer.” However, to my shock and eventually, happiness, I discovered this was certainly not the case with him. It turned out that he was the local Muslim youth leader (though not a local resident; simply attending school in the city) who organized several events for everyone to learn more about their religion and purpose in life. The more I met him, the more I became impressed with his dedication and knowledge about Islam, given the context I had seen of my “Muslim” relatives and the rest of the general populace in China. He never acted arrogant, was always respectful to everyone regardless of their opinions (some were so narrow minded, it made me clench my fists to hold back from grabbing their collars and screaming “WTF? WTF?? DO YOU NOT HAVE A BRAIN?!”) To see this beacon of knowledge and light amongst a mass of struggling fish was refreshing to say the least, and I fell head over heels for him.
It was the one and only time I ever told my mom about a crush, and the next thing I knew, all my family friends knew about it.
At first, I denied considering him seriously, especially because he couldn’t speak English, had never been to America and may not have even been interested in me in that way. However, the more I read and analyzed my own writing/emails about him, the more I realized that maybe my internal feelings were a sign from God that this one was different from all that I’ve ever possibly crushed on before as a silly girl.
Yet, even as I came to terms with the fact that yes, I did like him, I discovered that I suddenly had no idea what to do. First of all, what held me back most was the fact that I didn’t know if he even had any interest in me as a potential spouse, whether he considered me another Muslim sister who was a little different from the others, or perhaps simply a friend that his friend introduced to him in the hopes of expanding the Muslim community. The second reason, was that I was terrified that he would discover that I liked him. What would I do, especially if he didn’t like me back? What a huge embarrassment. I can’t tell you how much I sweated bullets over that. Particularly when I grew up with the innate tendency to ignore and pretend my crush didn’t exist for fear that they might discover I liked them. The third was essentially an extension of the second. When my mother, father, siblings, and aunts offered to help get to know his background, family, information and even see if he had any interest in me, I became terrified. Positively terrified.
Then, I had a little bit of recuperation time when I had to rush and pack to go home to America. In that period, I logically stepped backwards into the process and thought, why do I care if he likes me or not? The fact of the matter is, I don’t know whether or not we’re even compatible as a couple yet. Wouldn’t it be more practical for the both of us if we didn’t invest feelings just yet and tried to see if we could agree on views on life, religious practice and future life? If we couldn’t agree, what was the point of getting married to fight on our most fundamental beliefs?
Not that this thought was especially profound, but it allowed me to clear my head some. And it was upon my return to Phoenix that I finally faced myself and realized that I wasn’t ready to get married for a family yet. I just craved, wanted and needed that spousal love and affection, that one-streamed devotion to one person and vice versa. Not that such a feeling was wrong, but it certainly cannot found a marriage or family for the long term. At this point, my other question then led to, “what would be Islamically appropriate for me to do in order to keep in touch with him without overstepping my boundaries so that we could potentially discuss whether we could foresee marriage in the future?”
One of the hardest trials we go through as hormonal Muslim youth all throughout pre-marital life is precisely that. We are enamored by others, relationships, love and the concept of a single person devoted to you for you. However, in the goal of preventing ourselves from possibly falling down the wrong end, we try to stray from the vague possibility of any of that. Some of us can, some of us can’t. And all throughout this big, big abstract concept, we struggle to find ourselves, and fully understand what it is that constitutes a strong relationship between two objects of a marriage. Love is indeed a beautiful thing, but emotions are also easy to manipulate. Conflicts are always bound to happen and you can’t agree on everything, but in terms of foundational beliefs, it would be best to resolve that before investing your emotions. In essence, you can heal over time with conflicts before you are as emotionally attached to someone, but once that hook is in place, the scars left behind are stuck forever, and a majority of the time, they never fully heal.
I still dream of the day that I am married, happy and fully devoted to my husband and family, working towards a better tomorrow. But in the meantime, I have decided that my mental maturity hasn’t quite reached that state. In the development towards that process, I place my fate in God’s hands. If I am indeed meant to be with this person, God will give me signs and make it so that I can’t avoid it. And in the case that we are not meant to be, I will be given obstacles in my path towards it. God knows best, and I have no issues with that.