Can you as a Single Muslim, marry someone you don’t love?

[SeekersElite]

Actually this might seem very confusing. But it won’t be any more after you read what I have to say.

Let’s just say I’ve been single for a while now and wish I could get married soon. Now I happen to meet this guy and he fell in love with me immediately. He is very responsible, caring, perceptive, and most importantly a very good Muslim. But I simply don’t feel a thing for him. I simply don’t feel love, and I can’t imagine him being my life partner.

Despite my feelings, everything about him is appealing.

Now comes my points.
· Should I shoot him a straight-up “NO” and keep on waiting or searching for someone while leaving my life?
· Is it OK to get married to someone you don’t love.
· Is there any chance that love will come after marriage?

Please if you happen to read this thread, I really need your thoughts. I am looking for this information to help those who might need it. I recently published an article for Single Muslim Ladies on list of 10 men Muslimah should not marry. I will need your thoughts on this to get ideas in order to add value to this article.
Please this is a link to the article for your own perusal: http://seekerselite.com/searching-for-good-muslim-man-to-marry-10-men-women-should-never-marry/

Please note that this advice can be beneficial for both guys and ladies. So if your advice is going to be specific on it being a guy or a lady, then I think you should please state it. Otherwise, let’s hear your thoughts Insha-Allah.

 

[cinnamonrolls1]

well, love can come after marriage,however you yourself know if this is the type of person you would grow to love or have feelings for

 

[greenhill]

I don't know for sure, but love is not a prerequisite and should not be a prerequisite. Love is a wild unfathomable creature that has its own criteria and you have no say in it.

It affects people differently just like jealousy.

For me, I have to draw a list of characteristics that would complement my life. Faith in islam is a prerequisite. General intelligence, confident with self, having a sense of humour, sharing common interests, would be more important. That way, a person can remain interesting and fits better for an all round involvement.

If the person ticks the boxes, I'd say why not? If he triggers alarm bells and sirens, why stick around?


eace:

 

[sister herb]

And for me, the love comes the first. It´s propably a cultural thing. I couldn´t think to marry a person I haven´t strong emotional ties. We can call these ties as love. Well, I would call it by that word. To me love comes before the marriage. Of course I keep in mind that a person I marry is also that kind of personality I like and has good habits but without the feeling of love there is no future together.

And now, please do not :hiding: me as this is how I think and feel.

 

[Umm♥Layth]

Well, I have been married twice. The first was a love before marriage and the second was a love after marriage. Hands down, the love after marriage is far superior in every way.

Love is grossly misunderstood because it isn't supposed to be black and white. Look at how many ways of saying "love" there is in arabic, spanish and other languages. There are different forms and different levels of love.

The so called love people feel when they meet somebody they are not married to is actually a combination of infatuation and lust which usually wears off within a year or so after living with a person. People manage to drag it out for a few more years and then they get the "5 year itch" or the "7 year itch" and this is often when couple split. Their reason is usually that they fell out of love and have irreconcilable differences or found somebody else that sparked those same feelings they once had for their spouse. It's all a misunderstanding of the nature of emotion really.

Emotions fluctuate and they should never be the foundation to anything. Love comes and goes in a marriage. Some days your spouse annoys you so much, you don't know why the heck you ever decided to marry in the first place some days you wonder why it took so long to meet them and have them in your life and feel dumb for ever having negative feelings. If the foundation of that marriage is Islam, it will be indestructible, insha'Allah.

Marriage isn't meant to be a fairy tale. It is actually the best form of self development that there is. This is why it is half your deen. It isn't because the person makes you whole or miraculously completes your religion. It is because yo have to shape your character in order to make the marriage work and THIS is what completes your deen. The best of you are the best in character.

So no, love is not a pre-req. You just have to be sure the person is ready for marriage and has a similar outlook in life and similar goals. This person is going to be your partner in everything you do and partners need to cooperate with each other. Also bare in mind people change either for better or worse, so the idea is to always keep each other moving in the right direction and change for the better together, even if its at a super duper slow speed. You have a life time insha'Allah.

My two cents.

 

[SeekersElite]

Wow. That was a brilliant reply. Your experience is wonderful.

 

[Abz2000]

Firstly, since your gender description says "male", if you are asking whether you should marry another male in a literal marriage (where people have sexual relations), and not a metaphorical one such as a union or merger of two companies where sexual relations with the same gender is not involved, please don't marry him bro.

Now that that bit's clarified hew:
If you are reposting the question of a female as a general question about the opposite gender....
...........If love is understood as it is in Islam, (as it should be) justly, where what pleases Allah is given priority, and also the compatibility of the couple where personal likes are acceptable to each other, then yes, it would most likely work out in the long run if both of you want to stay on track, and children also benefit from a good harmonious marriage.

if it is misunderstood/misinterpreted as i was taught to understand/interpret it by peers and secularist media up to and around college age, something i've now come to understand as a dopamine surge similar to what a heroin addict experiences without any justly rational reasoning other than blind desire (hawaa), where the materialist "i want that one!" urge dictates, then it'll likely wear off after a peak, and children are forced to suffer through an unstable household, especially if compatibility is not present.


كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الْقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرْهٌ لَّكُمْ وَعَسَى أَن تَكْرَهُواْ شَيْئًا وَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ وَعَسَى أَن تُحِبُّواْ شَيْئًا وَهُوَ شَرٌّ لَّكُمْ وَاللّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لاَ تَعْلَمُونَ {216

Fighting is prescribed for you, and you dislike it.
But it is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and that you love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and you know not.

since, Allah :swt: knows best, it is best to evaluate based on what Allah likes,

i speak as a person who was madly in love with a girl who's likes and desires were not compatible with mine, when most of both our likes and desires were not compatible with Allah despite our base neural attraction to each other, separated from her, and went and got arranged married to another who's likes and desires seem not to be compatible with mine, nor with Allah's.
so i've learned that regardless of whether it's personal infatuation or arranged convenience marriage, if Allah is not top priority, it's most likely a failure unless Allah becomes top priority for both before breakdown.

Were you looking at me neo?
or were you looking at the woman in the red dress???

 

[SeekersElite]

Jazaakallah khairan Katheeran. That's a wonderful advice.

 

[Umm Malik]

.....
may Allah help you to do the right decision and put pace in your heart

 

[Umm♥Layth]

The issues with expecting to "fall in love" before marriage is that you HAVE to know a person to love them. This involves lots and lots of talking and lots of time spent. A relationship doesn't develop overnight, which is what I said, this "love" most people feel before marriage isn't love. You can't fall in love at first sight, you can fall in lust and infatuation, which is a good incentive for marriage but it quickly leads to haraam if marriage isn't done right away.

Another problem that presents itself is that once you develop feelings, you become blind to the reality of a person. Their flaws become unimportant and women begin to compromise everything for the sake of marrying this charming man they "love". Then a few years, reality hits them like a pan on the back of the head and she finds herself constantly complaining and unhappy. Her expectations of love are the ones she sees in films and so on and so forth.

If the focus is Islam, life goals and self development, these shocking feelings never come. The love slowly builds up with time as the couple gets to know each other and learn how to get along. You don't need love to feel sexually attracted to another person by the way. That's why lust exists, and Allah is most wise! What one feels at the start of a marriage is more than enough to get the relationship through the first couple of years while that love brews. Slow and steady wins the race That's the kind of love we want to see between married couples.

 

[sister herb]

The issues with expecting to "fall in love" before marriage is that you HAVE to know a person to love them. This involves lots and lots of talking and lots of time spent. A relationship doesn't develop overnight, which is what I said, this "love" most people feel before marriage isn't love.

Well, feelings are very personal matters and only a person himself can say what is love to himself, others can´t define what some feeling is to someone else. If I feel love, nobody can say is it real love or not as only I know my the deepest feelings and how or how fast they can happen. That´s why I would avoid too strict comments about how others can or cannot feel. Also how well I have to know a person is a matter what nobody else can know or define. It´s far better if everyone talks only about himself.

 

[Umm♥Layth]

Well, feelings are very personal matters and only a person himself can say what is love to himself, others can´t define what some feeling is to someone else. If I feel love, nobody can say is it real love or not as only I know my the deepest feelings and how or how fast they can happen. That´s why I would avoid too strict comments about how others can or cannot feel. Also how well I have to know a person is a matter what nobody else can know or define. It´s far better if everyone talks only about himself.

You do have a point, however, what I speak of here is feeling prior to marriage. As I said before, there are different kinds and levels of love. When two people meet, they can be physically attracted and like each other's presence, but try and translate those feelings to english and you get this word called "love" that is used very generally for a huge amount of different feelings and emotions, hence the confusion people go through.

This doesn't apply just to love for people. Let's take our relationship with Allah as an example. Your love for Allah will change and develop as you get to know him. You get to know him by studying his 99 beautiful names. You learn to love him and deepen your trust in him by the experiences he gives you. It is a life long relationship that we can nurture and it grows, or leave it and it doesn't grow.

If you want to love the messenger of Allah, you have to study his seerah and his description, that is how you get to know him and fall in love with him. In other words, without building a relationship, it would be very difficult to "fall in love."

If we are talking about a halal marriage, then, in my estimation, love should be reserved for after marriage because it takes a great deal of time, attention and getting to know a person to develop love. Otherwise, we would walk around falling in love withe very person we see, make sense?

I'm not saying that people don't and shouldn't develop feelings and attraction. There's a reason we have segregation in Islam you know It is natural. After a few conversations with the opposite gender that one finds physically attractive, feelings of attachment can and probably will develop. We should only allow for that if the intention is to marry.

Of course, as you said, feelings are very personal and subjective, however, they are not uncontrollable. Since the OP asked if it was a requirement to marry, I felt I should contribute what I have learned

We have been taught in Islam that our emotions are tools and we should learn how to use them. We can also choose to allow an emotion to develop or change our thought processes, circumstances and surroundings to stop an emotion from developing. It is quite fascinating, but another subject all together.

 

[Hamza Asadullah]

How do you define what "love" is? Is it the love that is portrayed in Hollywood/Bollywood movies? Or in Dramas and love songs? Many of us have the wrong perception of what love is and we feel that we must be able to feel this "love" before we commit and marry someone. But it is this very "love" that hurts and scars many. It is this very "love" that blinds one to the true reality of a person. It is this very "love" that makes a person weak enough to give themselves to that person and commit forbidden relations before marriage.

This is not true love. It is strong feelings of lust. Many a people have supposedly been in "love" before marriage and had many failed relationships until they finally married and realised that it was never true "love" that they had felt but strong feelings of lust. For true love can only be put into the hearts of those who partake in the sacred contract of marriage.

Therefore we must not take our perception of "love" from what we read, hear, listen to or see on TV, movies, dramas, songs and from other people for this is the false perception of "love". Relationships before marriage do not result in "true love" but from lustful feelings which lead to destruction, hurt, pain and scarring.

Therefore we must pursue finding the right partner and getting to know the person in the right way and manner that is most pleasing to Allah and doubt not that it is only he who is the matchmaker. So we must ask of him sincerely for the right partner or for a particular person we are pursuing marriage with, especially in the latter part of the night. Then surely he will bless our pursuit of finding the right partner and establish whether we should pursue that particular person for marriage or not.

Then after that we must put our trust and reliance in him and marry for his pleasure and then only by his will "true love" will flourish in our hearts for our marriage partners and we will look back and realise that our perception of what we thought "love" is was nothing near to what true love actully is.

 

[sister herb]

This is not true love.

Again; how a person feels this matter what is called as "love" is a personal matter. Only a person himself can define what is true and what is not true love. Others can´t go to inside of other person´s mind and feel the same what other person feels.There is no way how you could be sure if my feeling bases to the real love or not.

Only person knows it by himself. And Allah of course. I prefer to leave this matter to Him.

But of course it´s ok to warn people about falling in some lunatic, romantic dreams and keep some sense in their minds when they are planning the marriage. But I am not going to change the basic of myself (I wonder is it even possible to change some so fundamental element like the way to feel as it is like my character - way to think is different matter) if someone says that his/hers understanding what love means is so different than mine. Then it´s a matter how people understand things, not how things really are. And no, I don´t think I can explain how I see what love is. Maybe if I would, then explanation would means something else to some others. Anyways, to me the true love hasn´t nothing to do with the lust or Bollywood films.


I leave this matter to this post and hope this discussion will be usefull to the OP about how different opinions we Muslims might have about this matter. (It´s not the first time I face this same difference about love or understanding what love means.)

 

[azc]

First love then marry. In this case your heart decides, which, sometimes chooses a wrong person but on the other side if your mind tells you to marry (without falling in love )someone who has all qualities of a good husband, is experienced that Allah swt fills your heart with live for him.