I didn’t wake up one day and decide I wanted to get married. I have always wanted it. However, my reasons for it have changed throughout the years. This is the final, honed version of all those years of reasoning.
Married is said to be half our deen, an scholars have emphasized that that is because it involves stepping up to a significant challenge. Conversely–divorce is one of the most hated acts by God, an allowance only made for extreme situations. For giving up on a marriage means giving up on that challenge.
I am getting married because
a) I am stepping up to the challenge, and
b) It is no longer in my path to keep being single.
What being single made me realize is that relationships—whether in the context of marriage or otherwise, inevitably involves the reduction, the shrinking, of both people’s realities. Even the most spirited and adventurous spouse will reduce the degree to which one is present in the world.
This became very clear to me when, upon reflecting on my previous prospective suitors, I remembered a very peculiar factor of things not working out. As disappointing as it was, there was always a glimmer, however small, that I would no longer be living a narrowed reality. That I was free to experience the world as I chose. With nothing anchoring me, I let myself go in my inner life.
And experience it I did. I took trips at the last minute, discovered dance as a form of self affirmation, and grew to love my family in completely new ways. Every day was full of adventure and possibility.
But with this, it eventually became clear why it was no longer in my path to keep being single.
It was too much.
It became emotionally and mentally exhausting to find equal potential and joy to have to seek joy in so many places. Seeing the unique beauty in each of these experiences and being open to them all left too much shakiness in the foundation of who ‘I’ was.
Getting married, I grew to understand, would narrow my experience of the world. Just like bing vegetarian resolved the paradox of choice when ordering at a restaurant, getting married would reduce the amount of experiences I can have. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s the whole point. In a functional marriage, two people lean back from life at least enough for the space of a marriage to remain intact. In a healthy marriage, they lean back further.
Having loved my life as a single women (well, most of the time), getting married is a bittersweet experience. My fiance is everything I want in a man. I already love the life we will have, and the children, God willing, we will bring to this world. Yet, sometimes, I wake up at night to the sound of a door closing. Shaytaan smiles. “Are you sure?”, he asks. I try not to pay him any heed. I say a prayer of gratitude that I no longer have to shine my light through all those open doors. There was a time I did—a time I described as a peculiar state of being One, just as Allah is One. But constantly shining through all of those doors are His ability and right alone.
A Muslimah Writes 