Apparently, the author of the piece in the OP responded to some comments and gave some follow up on what happened in her life:
Response by 'Anon'Hello everyone,
First of all, let me thank all of you who took the time to respond and to advise me not to go through with this, those of you who sympathized, and yes, even those of you who criticized. Heaven knows I go through my share of self-loathing most days at being the weak pathetic woman who caved.
I was a victim. But I also made a choice.
This piece was written a couple of months ago, and I got married.
But even if I had posted it here just before the wedding, your beautiful advice would have unfortunately made no difference. Khalas. My emotional and psychological state was such that it would have taken an act of God for me to call off the wedding.
So I sat crying with my best friend in my hotel bathroom on the day of my wedding, up until the makeup artist showed up to turn me into a happy bride. And I pulled it off beautifully. I was a happy, beaming bride –and every single member of my family, young and old, grandma and aunts and cousins and uncles, even the wedding dress seamstress pinning me into my dress during the dress rehearsal while I cried, knew I was in love with another man, and that I did not want this marriage.
If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to write some more. Not to justify – I need to justify myself to no one except God – but because I hope my words can somehow help another woman who might find herself where I was.
So let’s backtrack a bit.
My father is a dictator. A paranoid maniac depressive who refuses treatment. He grew up in a village back home, and controls the lives of everyone around him—his sister, who has three kids, one in high school, calls him up to ask permission when she wants to travel with her husband of twenty years.
My mother wanted a divorce a few months into her marriage. But, divorce being the shame it is, she stuck around and had a bushel of kids, losing herself in the process and becoming a weak and passive woman. “We are all puppets in the hands of a madman,” she would tell me. “And I sacrificed my life for you and your siblings. Don’t let me down. Make me proud.”
I was the golden child.
Nothing ever pleased my father. Nothing. There is always something lacking, something more you can do. No matter what you did, what you sacrificed, there was more. Power and control over our lives, he believed, was a God-given right. And everything was forbidden.
I did everything right. I was perfect. And because I was perfect, I was loved.
I remember a conversation we had when I was 12. I wanted to go to a school birthday party. He said no. I swallowed and said “Okay. But why not?”
I got a slap for that. You don’t ask why. He decreed, and as such, you do it. You don’t question, you accept with a smile. There was no logic, no discussion, and no debate. You learned how to deal with it.
It seems ironic to say this, but out of everyone he has ever dealt with in all his life, I am the only one who had ever rebelled. The only one who was permitted to semi-rebel, and only because he loved me so much. Rebel by asking to travel, by going on to graduate school, by not getting married at 18.
Everything was a struggle.
And he loved me so much because I was so good.
My sense of self-worth came from his approval. From everyone’s approval. And I had never, in my entire life, seen anything other than approval and praise.
I believe myself to be a good person at core. I am the person who can never enjoy doing a little wrong, because the guilt would kill me. I am the person who cannot stand to be the cause of another’s misery.
Marriage was the only way to get out of my family’s home, to escape the stifling constrains of a life that as time went on, I was becoming unable to balance. And I simply could not just move out. I couldn’t.
My parents waltzed the first suitor through our door when I was 17. From my country. A week later, I was engaged. A couple of months later, my father called it off, on a whim.
But I fought. I persevered. For ten long years.
I got engaged to another man I did not want but my parents did halfway through that period. Again from my country. My father called it off, again on a whim.
I spent ten years hoping that one day a man would come we both could agree on.
But deep down I knew it never would happen.
I liked men who at least had a dual nationality. Men like me. I did not want a man from ‘home.’ Men who did not want their women to travel or work etc.
Twice, men I really liked proposed. Twice, they didn’t make it through the first interview with my father, who would ask them questions like “do you masturbate?”
And then I fell in love. And the man I loved was shown the door so fast I’m sure it hit him on the way out.
We tried. God knows we tried everything.
No go.
The day after my father finally met him? “Okay, I said no. Now remember this other man I told you about? You can marry him tomorrow now.”
Yes, my father is semi-crazy.
And at that moment, I crashed. I finally realized how stupid I was to ever think he and I could ever agree upon something as important as the man I could marry. I had been deluding myself.
But still, I stood up to him. Not getting married was better than marrying a man I did not want.
But I was all alone.
No one supported me. No one. Not a single solitary soul. Not my mother, not my siblings, not my aunts, not my cousins. The common refrain?
“Take this chance. Your parents won’t allow you to marry the man you love. So marry this wonderful kind man who is somehow blinded to the fact that this crazy man will be his father in law, and leave. He will let you do all the things the men your parents like would have never let you do. You will never again get another opportunity like this.”
I was reeling from severe emotional trauma.
Brokenhearted and confused, I thought, I asked advice, I tried to figure out what God’s plan was for me. If these were signs. I prayed istikhara.
Everyone was of the opinion that this man my father liked was a God-send. But more than that. He ticked all the checkboxes that were my bare minimum.
My parents locked me up in a room. Gave me the odd slap. Forbade me from working. Forbade me from traveling. Hid my passport. Forbade me from seeing my friends. Kicked me out of the house.
And when that didn’t work, they resorted to what eventually did work.
I had brought shame to the family. Me, who had always brought so much pride, was now unworthy.
They fucked with my head. I’m sorry to say it, but that is the only word to use. And I believed.
I believed when they said I would forget.
I believed when they said so many women do this and live normal lives.
I believed when they said making my parents happy would make God happy and that would make me happy.
I believed when they said time and good treatment can make you fall in love with anyone.
I believed when they said I was emotional and we went through stories like this and we’re your parents and know what’s best for you.
I believed. I believed. I believed.
I was naiive.
And I was good. So good. I listened to my elders. I learned from their mistakes and their advice. I refused to be the ungrateful daughter. I wanted to be perfect.
And I was.
There are costs we are willing to pay to get what we want. The loss of my family is something I wasn’t willing to, and still cannot, pay.
The manipulation of religion. If I hadn’t been such a strong believer, I think by now I probably would have given up on Islam. As it is, my faith is hanging on weak threads, and it is only because I am still able to distinguish between culture and religion that it’s still there.
My parents made me question if I truly was a good Muslim. Isn’t Islam about submission? Isn’t it about jihad against what your nafs wants? If it isn’t written for you to marry this person, it won’t ever happen. Be stronger. Be better. They threw verse after verse and hadith after hadith at me. Brought me sheikhs and made me listen to horror story of love marriages and success stories of arranged marriages.
So I was stronger. I shoved myself into the tiniest corner of my being that I could, and I brainwashed myself better than anyone else. I could do this. I could make my brain triumph over my emotions and heart. I was strong. I was good. I was a wonderful daughter. I would bring pride. And when God saw what a good person I was being, He would help me somehow.
So I made istikhara. I asked God to give me what was right for me.
And the engagement proceeded.
And one very, very important point: I told my fiancé that I loved someone else, but someone I had accepted I could not have. I told him I did not want to marry him, but that he presented the freedom I now felt I was going to die without. That I would not be the wife he deserved.
And he still wanted me.
He believed that if I married him, left the hell that was my home, was given all the freedom I never had, and saw what a good person he was and how much he loved me, then I would one day love him.
He was naiive too.
There is so much more I can say. I can write a book about what led me to make the decision I did. But suffice to say, when I made my decision I honestly saw no other way.
So I gritted my teeth, cancelled out my spirit and heart and mind and soul, and went through with it.
One clarification I need to make since it got a little lost in editing: I did not mean I advise women to do what I did. I meant that if I went through with the marriage, and lost the part of me that people told me I would lose, then I would become like those women who advised me to get married, and so I would advise women to do what I did.
Unfortunately, as so many of you told me might happen: I didn’t.
I didn’t lose that part of me.
So here I am. Married. And miserable.
And more trapped that I ever was before.
With the irony being that I have freedom I never could have imagined in a million years.
I married a wonderful, patient, kind man with one of the most beautiful hearts I have ever encountered.
And I don’t love him.
I try. I fail. I try. I fail.
And I can’t imagine spending a life like this.
And I can’t imagine going back to my father’s house.
And I can’t imagine – even after all this – to tell my parents I want a divorce and I’m not coming back.
I still can’t shame them like that.
Still trapped by the person I was—or used to be.
My parents see my misery.
And they don’t care.
We haven’t talked in months.
I lost pretty much everything.
And I gained nothing—nothing but the freedom to move around in a bigger cage, one of my own making this time.
I am pathetic, in a way. I admit that. A coward. A slave to society and culture that has killed something in me. That has made me a ghost of who I once was. I want it all. I want their approval and my happiness. My cake and to eat it too. I was never willing to sacrifice anything but myself.
But I have never had anything but the best of intentions and reasons. And I know God knows that.
I am living in a torturous limbo.
Unable to accept and adapt, and unable to walk away.
I cannot find the courage I need.
Perhaps I never will.
But perhaps one day I will.
Topic: Arranged Marriage