Bismillah irRahman irRahim
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
I met one of my batchmate in a conference after a long time. Like any other young batch-mates, we made a huddle during lunch time and were talking about everything under the sky. As we were talking, I observed that there is something wrong with her. I could see it in her eyes and she was taking everything directed to her in a wrong way. Also, something very abnormal, she mentioned more than few times that Men enjoy lot of luxury in this world and how she would always want to be a Man if given a chance!
Though, we were meeting after a long time and people change, this was something that I felt was very weird. I thought of taking her aside and asking if everything is ok with her. Initially, she was a little hesitant but was still saying that its best to be a Man in this world. However, when she opened up, I was really shocked!
I was more worried about the overall abnormal (not her usual) behaviour where she was misunderstanding everything directed towards her. So, I started off with asking what is troubling her but soon I realised it has something to do with a Man. On asking who is troubling her, she said her marriage!
Long story short, she never thought of getting married but was emotionally forced by her parents! She didn’t take much interest in the match making because she wasn’t interested anyways. She was just doing it for her parents. After meeting few guys, they (including her) finally selected one for her and she got married. The torture started after her marriage, in-laws were expecting her to do all the household work with her job and she wasn’t ready for it. In fact, she never did any house hold work previously! Her husband use to come home and relax/chill but she had an extra job after returning home! This lead to tension between her and in-laws and eventually her and her husband! She was literally crying as she was speaking it out to me! It also brought tears in my eyes! What was even more troubling was that she didn’t know what to do, how to solve this problem; she can’t manage two jobs for a life time nor can she run away! She was also pissed off because she didn’t know whom to talk to and how to get out of this!
After this conference, as I see many of my classmates getting married, I see the same story repeating with girl after girl! In my limited capacity, I can’t do much but Allah swt has blessed me with the power of speech and writing and InshaAllah I will address this issue in my writings (and many speeches offline).
To parents
You are our first teachers and the only folks who we think can never go against us. We have full faith in you and we tremendously respect you. Though, we as a generation are quite messed and we don’t know how to convey our love and respect for you in our actions and speech but believe me, we as a generation are madly in love with you.
However, we are humans and we commit mistakes. In one regard where I feel you have mis-understood us is Our Marriage. We have been raised with one goal in life and that is to study hard and get the best of the jobs in the market. I don’t know how many times did we hear this in a day but that was the whole objective of our life till we graduated. We were never (or not enough) taught about marriage. We were never (or not enough) told what marriage is? How to move in and start living in with complete strangers? How to deal with false expectation of in-laws? How to resolve the conflicts with husband esp if the cause is his parents? and so on.
Firstly, you emotionally blackmail us to get married and then you don’t help us choose the right guy and family and finally don’t set the right expectations with in-laws! What do you expect from us? Believe me, we as a generation are very messed up in terms of identifying right people and we need your help in this.
By, marrying us like this, you have not just made our lives miserable but also another family’s life miserable! Who likes to have arguments at home after returning from a tiring job! Given the society where we live in and the way divorce is seen, this has resulted in a very complicated scenario!
I request you to kindly stop forcing us into marriage and let us realise for ourselves when to marry. While choosing the guy and the family, please help us in choosing the right guy in attitude and also setting up the right expectation with everyone in-laws. We can’t do this and you will have to help us here. You are the ones who know us best and also know our priorities and capabilities so, please help us choosing the right partner.
To Daughters
The society is changing, women are playing a very different role in the current society. From being handling the home, taking care of the children, etc they are now moving on to becoming independent with their own career. I will have to admit that this generation is facing and will have to face the toughness/challenges of this changing phase in the society. Where the expectation from women in the society is one generation in past and the women have already started perceiving the future!
You need to change your attitude, you can’t expect a (formal) course for everything in life. Start learning by observing people around you. Take marriage seriously, you will have to, there is no other choice (provided you don’t want to stay single forever)! Whenever, the topic of marriage is brought forward, don’t shy away from it. Tell the family what you are looking in the dream-boy and his family. Talk about the role that you see yourself playing in the married home. When someone comes to meet you regarding marriage, talk to the guy about his ambitions, his exception from his dream-girl and his family’s expectation. Remember, you don’t get married to a guy, you get married to him and his family!
Also, bare it in your mind that you are choosing the father of your children. So, make sure you look for that fatherly qualities and both of you share the same vision for children. Believe me, if you don’t consider this point, you may have a good life after marriage but will run into big fights after children.
Ok, I get this, now that I am in this situation, what should I do?
This was the same question my friend asked me. I took few minute before I told her, I want to talk to your parents. I didn’t want to give any advice to her, she would have taken it in a very different way and given the situation, she would have just literally taken my words.
Well, if you are in the same situation, this is what I will recommend -
- Continue doing both the jobs for few days till most of the in-laws are happy with you esp. your husband. No, it doesn’t have to be forever, just for few days may be 15-20 days or a month.
- Once they have soft feelings towards you, talk to your husband. Explain him your situation and draw similitude with his own job. Make sure that you do it in a very nice and polite manner. He will mostly not accept it in the first attempt but don’t loose hope, talk to him repeatedly taking few days gap. Believe me, most husbands today will understand and do some other arrangement to ease your burden; they might help you themselves!
- Let your husband handle your in-laws, don’t get into spats and arguments with your in-laws. He will deal with them with ease and won’t get you a bad name.
- If the above doesn’t work, talk to your parents, tell them your situation and what all have you tried to make things better and how it did not work. Parents need to take things seriously here and not come-up with suggesting like ‘Don’t worry, the girl has to do this, you will get use to it!’. Understand the problem and give the best of the suggestions possible.
- Implement the suggestions given by your parents, you might think that they are stupid but they have seen more sun than you.
- The following suggestions are more damaging than helpful -
- Deal with it. You need to change completely!
- Ask you husband to move out and live-in separately. (I.e. separate from his parents)
- Fight with your in-laws. They are your enemies.
- Come back to our home, we can end this!
Given that you have genuinely and sincerely tried the above suggestions and nothing has changed, you need to take a deep breath, talk to your husband, your parents and let it go. Move on (and yes, Islam allows women to take divorce, consult a Qadhi)! InshaAllah Allah swt will give you a better husband.
And Allah knows best.
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