Romanticized and idealized preconceptions often lead us to picture marriage as a beautiful garden full of all that we long for in life: companionship, friendship, unconditional love, romance and intimacy. We tend to look to our future spouses as the source of our happiness and the providers of ultimate marital bliss. In reality, however, on the wedding day the couple receives the keys not to a beautiful garden but to a vacant plot of land. They must work the soil and sow something into it, before harvesting any blessings. There is no companionship in marriage – people are the ones, who can develop and nurture it. There is no romance in marriage – the spouses themselves have to infuse it into marriage. The couple must learn the art of giving, serving and loving, in order to keep their marriage garden always green and ready to yield the fruit.
We are not born as ready-made gardeners of marriage gardens. There are no books that can truly teach us how to ‘do marriage’, because we tend to learn as we go along. We can, however, take conscious steps to prepare for this duty: acquire some gardening tools, explore the different garden designs, decide, which plants we would like to grow and learn the skills of caring for them. For giving your marriage a good head start, it is vital to come to the point of wedding day with good understanding of yourself as the gardener, of your marriage garden expectations and of your future partner as the co-gardener.
Understanding Yourself
The first task we must undertake is understanding our relationship with ourselves and learn to respect ourselves. If we will have a healthy, happy and holistic relationship with ourselves, only then we will be able to form fruitful relationships with others.
“Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right partner, but through being the right partner.” (Barnett R. Brickner)
Reflecting on our own selves may require good courage, as we would need to open up our depths and become vulnerable – to think about our flaws, faults and failings, analyze our life thus far and work on solutions for a better future. We would have to examine the behaviours and tactics that are driven by our Nafs (self, ego) and come to accept the reality of being human, which comes with realization that we do and will make mistakes and that we don’t and won’t know everything. If we live in the illusion of being perfect and knowing it all, our Nafs has won. However, the moment we understand how little we know about this life is when our Nafs has surrendered – this is the point, when we have attained a sense of self-freedom, have put judgments aside and are ready to grow.
The development of relationship with self is a lifelong journey. Often we hear the words ‘self-help’, ‘personal growth’, and ‘personal development’. You can find plenty of books, videos, websites, blogs and even online coaches on a wide variety of topics for facilitating your journey. Focus on what matters to you personally, be it health, nutrition, mastering your emotions, communicating effectively or building a strong and meaningful relationship with your Rabb.
Taking a journey within yourself may become one of the toughest yet the most rewarding journeys you would ever undertake. Polishing and fine-tuning yourself and your perception of the world will be hard work but the fruit you will reap later on will surely be worth the sweat. Think of qualities that will turn you in the kind of ‘gardener’ that your future spouse would wish to marry, the kind of ‘gardener’ who will be ready to contribute positively to building a beautiful and meaningful marriage.
Understanding Your Marriage Expectations
Different people may have quite different expectations about marriage. The background for these expectations may be formed by an entire spectrum of influences, starting from trivial Bollywood movies ‘fairy tales’ and ending with true life ‘horror stories’ of marital abuse. However, the only true learning we have ever really had has subconsciously come from our parents and their example of married life. We see in our mother the example of how to be a wife, and our father teaches us what it means to be a husband. Having witnessed their companionship firsthand, they are our living example and our benchmark.
Below are some questions that you may want to explore before marriage:
- What is my perception/ expectation of marriage?
- How would I describe my parents’ marriage? Whether we like it or not, we are imprinted and influenced by the relationship that our parents have with each other. Very often we either become exactly like them in our relationships, or become the exact opposite of them. It is useful to be able to recognize how you have picked up these patterns and carried them forward.
- Why do I believe marriage is right for me at this point in my life?
- What are my reasons for getting married? For example: Because I’m totally in love and I don’t want to be with anyone else. So that I don’t fall into sin. To escape stressful or abusive home. To get freedom from my parents. To live my own life. For money.
- Am I happy within myself without being married? Is there a possibility that you are looking for someone else to make you feel better about yourself, to anchor you, to make you feel happy? Or are you already someone who is happy within themselves and their life, and your partner just makes your life happier. We should never look to someone else for our happiness because as soon as our ‘honeymoon’ ends and the attraction phases are over, we need to consider what is left in the relationship.
- Do I believe marriage will make me a better or happier person? Looking externally for someone else to heal or fix you is not the healthiest motivation for getting into a relationship.
- Would I want to marry someone like me at this point in my life? What is it that you have to offer to your partner? What do they get out of marrying someone like you?
- How much of an influence do my parents, siblings, friends have over me? Once in a relationship, how would you manage the influences of those external to your relationship?
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Your answer just need to be brutally honest so that you can consider whether you are truly ready for marriage or would it be better to hold off for a little while for you to prepare yourself.
Understanding your future partner
Once you have had these honest and open conversations with yourself, the next critical conversation that needs to take place before we embark on the journey of marriage are the conversations with our potential spouses. Below are some types of questions and conversations that we could be having with our potential spouses to be. It is important that you are able to answer all of these questions for yourself honestly, before asking your partner:
- What is your expectation and view of marriage?
- Are you looking for a traditional marriage or a modern one?
- What are you looking for in a partner?
- Why do you think I’m the right person for you?
- How would you describe the role of your father/mother?
- How would you describe the culture of your family?
- What is your view on conflict and how do you resolve conflicts?
- What triggers your stress levels and how do you manage your stress?
- How do you communicate when you are unhappy about something?
- If we both are working, would we contribute equally, or would the Islamic law apply?
Two things that we must always keep in mind are that whether we like it or not, we always marry the family and we need money to survive.
- Would you like to have children? If so, and if Allah (swt) wills, then how many would you like to have?
- For working women: Would you expect me to stay at home and raise our children?
- What are your views on raising children?
- What do you believe the role of a mother/ father should be?
- What place would your parents, siblings, extended family and friends have in our marriage?
For a marriage to be healthy and peaceful, there should only ever be two people in it.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, as they are open ended and designed to make you think about subjects that you may never have even considered before.
It is an illusion that we get married to ‘be happy’ and when you step onto the path with the expectation that your partner ‘should’ make me happy, you are already setting yourself up for failure. In a marriage, you will bring out the best in each other and at times you will bring out the worst in each other. It is in these difficult moments where the true test of your soul comes in. Because it is in these moments that you make a crucial choice and that is do I grow for the betterment of myself and my marriage or do I destroy just to hold on to power and control? Always remember, the choice is yours to make. If you can keep the goal and focus on the health of your marriage rather than your own power and ego, you are already working from a winning place.
In marriage, it is sometimes wiser to be kind, than to be right. For kindness is of the soul and being right is of the ego. As it happens in life, so it happens in marriage – there is a continuous battle between the two.
Marriage is the perfect greenhouse, because whether you like it or not, you will have no choice but to grow, you will challenge and stretch each other in ways that you never imagined possible.
“It is said in Islam that marriage completes half of your faith. My interpretation of this is somewhat different, I do not believe it is the single act of Nikah that does this. I believe it is the ability to stay married and grow from it that completes half of your faith.” (Nazrana Jassat)
About author
