Teen Session 2 – Boyfriends V Marriage’

You

know, maybe sometimes you might look at some practicing sisters, and you might think they've never had any problems. I've never had any tests they've ever done anything weird or dodgy, or, you know, everyone's been on a journey. At the end of the day, all of us have been on a journey, and you're gonna go on a journey in your life.

But the best, the clever people are the ones who learn from other people's journeys. Now, you don't have to experience every mistake yourself. You can learn from other people who've made those mistakes.

Some of the other questions?

How do you balance seeking knowledge with family life? So when I was getting married, I got married when I was 19.

I was quite young, nowadays, I think. But I actually had that conversation with my husband in meetings, you know, before marriage, and I said to him, I really want to continue with my studies.

And he said, Well, and we just negotiated that, you know, how would we manage that? And I think I made it very clear that my family would always come first. But if there were ways that I could study around family commitments, then I would, and that's what I ended up doing, you know, so it might have taken me longer. But it was worth it. Because I didn't neglect my children. You know, I made them first, I put them first.

Now, but all the

dangerous questions about boys, also, we got a job

application,

and lots of other things. So I'm going to try and get through as many of these as possible.

And any that I don't get get through, it could be because maybe I need to look into it a bit more I need to research because you know, even when you graduate or you reach a certain level in terms of your studies, you still have to go to people who are more senior than you, you know, sometimes or books or, you know, resources in order to find the answers to certain to certain questions, you know, and it's better to say that you don't know than to just give an answer. That's not based on knowledge, you know, because with knowledge comes of huge responsibility as well. And I'm very aware of that. So let's go. Let's go into the boys. I think that's what everyone wants to talk about.

Boys.

Why can't we date before marriage? Why can't you date before marriage? Okay.

Well, let's think about this a little bit. what's what's the purpose of dating? You tell me what is the purpose of dating? Why do people date?

Sorry.

To get to know them? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. To get to know somebody. Okay.

What else? What other reasons? Why do people do nowadays? Why do people date?

To experience love? Okay, yep.

What else?

To get? Yeah. Well,

what about the wider society? What's the purpose of dating for them?

Okay.

Yeah. So I think you know, you're probably feeling shy to say. So basically, we know that the purpose of dating for the wider society is that the culture in wider society is what you call hookup culture, right? is basically, you go out with somebody, you have a nice night out, and you sleep with them. Yeah, let's be honest. That's what it is. And that's the way that you experience whether you like that person or not. And if you don't like them, you'll probably drop them, then you'll move on to the next person. But if you do, you might have you might stay with them for a bit, but you're not going to really commit to it. Because that's, you know, commitment isn't really something that

people do nowadays. And you're just gonna wait till the next better looking person comes along. Right? That's basically what happens in society.

What I call try before you buy it, is called the try before you buy it. So you feel like you're gonna try somebody out before you commit to them, right. So you see, that's why looks and

having an intimate relationship with someone and all that is important in that situation, because

The end result? What is the aim? What's the end result? was they trying to get? Pleasure, right? It's pleasure. And it's a temporary type of pleasure. Just want to get temporary pleasure. That's one aspect. Another aspect is, people have grown up, not knowing what love is.

People don't know what love is. They think love is this kind of feeling that you have, right? That just comes over you and then just overwhelms you. And that's how that's what love is. And that's how it should feel. And if you feel like that about somebody,

that's true love.

But that's something that they've been sold through Hollywood,

which isn't actually real.

Because when they go out go out in the world to actually experience it. What happens?

A lot of heartbreak, a lot of disappointment. Right? statistically, women really want to get married, in society, even non Muslim woman, they want to be married, they want to be

they want to commit they want somebody to commit to them. And men, statistically run away from marriage.

Why? Why do you think that would be?

Right? So there's, there's like a bigger impact on women isn't there is a bigger effect on women

from having an intimate relationship with somebody, then there is for a man because apart from emotionally, right?

Physically,

the potential is always there for them to get pregnant.

That's the reality. So women, naturally it's in our nature that we would like somebody not to just use us, right? Because that's what's happening. Yeah, I'll just use us and drop us that when they see the next person who they like, but to actually commit to look at you and say, You're so valuable, that I am going to commit to you. That's real value. That's real. Love, that's real security. Right.

And for men, as well, even though in wider society, men think they can just have lots of girlfriends, and they can go from one woman to another. And there's a big toll that that has on their psychology, and their emotional well being, you know, men are more likely to get depressed because of that.

And also, just, it has a very depressing effect on a on a male psyche. When anyone psyche when they go through different people, right? So anyway, that's just to understand what what, what the dating culture is in the wider society.

So what do we want? That's what we have to ask ourselves, right? anytime you want to make a decision about something, you have to think of what is it that I really want? What is it that I really want? What do you want from marriage? What do you want from any kind of union with a man? What would you want?

Tell me

a family. That's one aspect, very important aspect, right? There's something in our nature, that makes us want to have children, even if it's not right now, at some point, it becomes like that, you know, I've met sisters who couldn't, who didn't end up getting married. And they're like, now getting towards their 40s

because I didn't get married. And now it's become very hard for them to find somebody to get married. And they say, I just want to get married because I want a baby. They have that really deep yearning inside to have a child. And they feel really like they're missing something. It's called the maternal instinct, right? At some point it kicks in. So unfortunately, even though society keeps telling women that you can keep delaying, settling down, you know, put your career first put other things first,

unfortunately, at some point, because usually human beings only especially women, they can only have children,

easily. between, you know, the time when they reach puberty until about, I would say 3540, we could say 40, right? A maximum 40 years pushing it.

Because of that, suddenly with a woman start realizing, oh, my God, Time's running out. I need to settle down. I need to find somebody, and then they settle for anyone. Because they just realize that they can't be too picky.

So yeah, having having children what other things do we want from marriage?

Love, of course want to feel that every human being wants to feel loved. You want to feel like somebody

He loves you, somebody. And as women, we like it that somebody likes looking at us. That's true. We want to be looked at, we like male attention. It's just a natural, natural thing.

You know,

we want to be admired. Would you agree?

Of course, that's just it's natural, there's nothing wrong with that. One of us wants to be admired, want to be loved, want somebody to commit to us. And if you think about it, somebody committing to you is the most romantic thing they could do.

Because it's too easy to just go out with somebody, enjoy their company, enjoy looking at them, enjoy being with them, and then just

leave them right. So Islam, it's not wants us to have all those good things, it wants us to have a love He wants us to have so Allah Subhana, Allah creator, he wants us to have all of those things, he wants us to have security, all those things that are important. And so Allah subhanaw taala gave us something in order to give us all of that in the safest, best way. And that is marriage. Marriage is that way. Okay. And he gave us guidelines. One thing I want you to all bear in mind, okay? Is that anything and I want you to write this down. Anything Allah commanded us with

his because it's good for us.

And anything Allah forbade us from

there is harm in it.

So let's say again, anything Allah commands us with,

there is good in it.

And anything a lot forbids us from

something harmful, painful, difficult, negative in it for us. Yeah. If you keep that as your guiding statement.

through life, it'll make your life easy because you realize, okay, Allah said, I shouldn't do this. That means something bad. And even though I can't see there's something bad in this, there's something bad in it, it's gonna hurt me, it's gonna do something. I might not realize it now. At some point, I'll realize it.

And anything Allah told me to do, it might seem really hard right now.

But you know what? I'm going to obey Him. Fight obey Him, I'm gonna get the good results from that. There's something good in it, even though I can't tell.

So

if you're talking about dating before marriage, as in dating somebody before you marry them, okay? Then I'll say, look,

anyone that you are, can we are considering for marriage? Right? We're allowed to meet them, that's fine. You can meet them with your family,

with a male member of your family or your family, especially right. And that meeting has to be a purposeful meeting. It's not going out. You know, like for fun type thing. It's not like that.

It's meeting with a purpose. So you're meeting them to discuss, for example,

marriage, discuss the formalities. In terms of trying to find out about somebody, right. Let me tell you something. I actually went to a talk a few days ago by this author called Malcolm Gladwell. And he was saying the worst way to find out

what somebody is like, is to

just interview them.

That's the worst way to find out. He was talking about four jobs and like, a nanny who to look after your child or something that he was saying, the worst way to find out what they're like, is just to meet them and interview them.

He said, The best way is actually references.

The best way is to find people who've lived with that person, or worked with that person. Or, you know,

what else lived worked? We know that person done some sort of dealings with that person, and get them to tell you, what is that person really like? And when I heard him say that I was thinking so Paula, that's excellent, because that's what Islam actually says that you should do before you get married. Right. So one of the things you should ask your father or whoever your Willie is the person who's like, your guardian responsible for you in terms of your male relative, you should ask them to find to get

references for any person that you're looking to get married to. Now, that might seem into wider society that might seem like oh, my God, references is like a job, right? Yeah, it is. It is like a job. You're going to get married for life, hopefully. So you want to do the due diligence now? Not find out stuff later, right? You want to do the research now you want to find out things now, right?

So that's something for example that my dad did with all of his daughters. Yeah, he would always when somebody came from marriage, and we were seriously considering that person, he would

find people who had worked with that person, or knew them, and privately contact them and meet them, meet them and ask them, you know, what's he really like? What's his personality? Like? What's his background, or even get them to write something about that person? And islamically you have to tell the truth. When you're giving a, you know that we're not allowed to back bite, right? But the one time you're allowed to back bite, is when you're giving. One of the times is when you're giving a testimonial, or you're telling someone something about somebody for marriage, when you're telling them what kind of person this is for marriage. Okay. So, that's one way we can deal with that

getting to know them. As for the love aspect, okay.

The best type of love is the love that peaks within the marriage. Unfortunately, what happened? I don't know if you've heard of this thing called.

They call it post nuptial depression. Okay. Post nuptial depression means after marriage depression.

In their magazines and stuff you can read, it says things like, you know, you might suffer from post nuptial depression. And the reason for that is that before marriage, they've already done everything, right.

They've done everything they've been out. They've had the excitement of being together. They've had the intimate relations. They've lived together, they've done all the laundry together, you know, they've done all that stuff, right? And now they're getting married.

What's left? Really, what's, what's left to be excited about.

You get married. And the next day, you're like, Oh, it's you. I've been waiting for the law. I've been with you for the last few years anyway. And hope haven't made the wrong decision to now commit to you, right? So people actually get depressed after they get married.

Right. hamdulillah the way Allah designed it for us, and we should be thankful for this is we get the high of marriage within marriage, we get the high of the relationship within marriage. And every relationship, every marriage goes through stages. Yeah.

This life wasn't meant to be like heaven. It wasn't meant to be like heaven, that you're always going to be on a high throughout the whole of your life. Okay, but one of the beautiful blessings Allah gave is marriage.

And so when you commit to somebody, and you get married, from the wedding night onwards, or you're just in a beautiful honeymoon period, that you can enjoy, right? And that person has committed to you, you've committed to them, you feel secure, that person feels secure. How many girls like when you read articles about what it was like to go, you know, to be dating? And how many girls were so insecure? They're like, with some dude, right? And he's basically getting to be intimate with them. And they don't have any, any commitment.

In the morning is going to leave basically, right?

They've just been used, but society has kind of, I would say, groomed them. I'm telling you this type of grooming, yeah. That society does to young girls, to make them think, No, you shouldn't, you should allow a man to do that with you. You should allow a man to say whatever he wants. And then, you know, he says you're beautiful and whatever. And then you get drawn into it. And then

you should allow him to be intimate with you. That's the type of grooming. I'm sorry. That's the only word for it.

Because naturally speaking, a girl wouldn't want to do that.

It's not natural. I had friends at school. None. Listen, friends.

One of my friends used to actually cry to me in private because she knew I was a Muslim. I wasn't really part of that dating type stuff, right? She felt safe enough to talk to me. And she would come to me and she'd say, she would cry and she'd say, I feel people are pressuring me. They're saying I don't have a boyfriend. I don't. They're calling me names and you know, all this kind of thing, right? All this pressure.

She wasn't ready to do all of that stuff. But she was being pressured into it.

So

Don't think that the society out there has got something amazing that you haven't got? No, you've got something amazing that they haven't got one of my friends. She was in her 30s. I was in my 30s. I had children by then she was still looking for any somebody right to settle down with. She said, How can we so easy for you? Just how can I was so easy for you to get married, you know, to find somebody? And I said, Well, the thing is, our whole community is geared towards marriage. Yeah, so the community helps you to get married. And right from the beginning, I wasn't looking for a boyfriend. I was looking for a husband. So our community is helping us yeah, to be able to do that.

We're looking and we're, we have meetings, I described it to her like, well, we have a meeting and then you meet somebody, and they're interested. And you might have another meeting. And you know, like, have a relationship, like a physical relationship, but you can start to build rapport you, you find out about them. And they're serious about marriage from the beginning. And you know what she said to me, she said, Oh, I wish we had something like that.

Because there she is in her 30s. She's had multiple boyfriends.

And it was funny because she was, she was asking me, she was saying to me, okay, this is, uh, I hope you don't mind me talking really openly with you. Yeah. So she was talking to me about what's it like to lose your virginity? Right? What's it like to have that first intimate relationship? And like, obviously, I'm not going to talk to her about it properly. Yeah, like about myself. But I said, while I was married, you know, so I felt very safe. It is a very positive experience. And she said,

It was horrible. She said it was horrible. It was a mistake. That's what she said. For her. It was a mistake. Basically, she got pregnant, she was at uni, she got pressured by some guy, right? And she probably just, she thought, well, this is the way you're supposed to do it. Right? Because they don't have any other way. And so she just went along with it. And she felt terrible afterwards. And she regretted it. But hey, that's society's told her all her life, that that's the way that you find a man. Right?

So I'm just trying to make you aware that look, what we've got is not a bunch of restrictions. Islam is not giving you a bunch of restrictions, actually made you free to be a woman is freed you to actually say to a man, no, you don't get to be intimate with me. without committing to me. Yeah, that's empowerment. That's not that's not, you know, some kind of position of weakness. That's a position of power.

It's easier for men to just be with somebody and then not commit, that's easier. A lie saying no, you don't get to do that boys, you have to commit to this woman, if you want to be close to her, you want to enjoy her company, you have to commit to a lot.

So

you can meet that person, you can have as many meetings as as necessary. You know, if you say to you, and you have to think of your parents as your friends in this, they want the best for you. Sometimes they might seem overly strict or overly whatever. But it's usually because they could see something long term that you're not seeing. Yeah.

So for example, some parents, they might be a bit like

this, they're like, they want you to marry somebody from your culture. Right? That's the typical one, isn't it?

Okay. Now, I'm not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing. Because to be honest, in Islam, in Islamic law, is actually recognized that that people might actually prefer to marry somebody in their culture.

Okay, why? What do you think of the benefit? I'm not trying to promote that, by the way, I'm not saying either way, like in my family, you know, so we've got lots of different like, it's just so it's not something that we really worried about. But I know some parents do. And there are actually benefits to any situation, right? So

some of the benefits of marrying somebody from within from your own culture can actually be that

you share a language, okay? that that person can speak to your parents, especially if your parents don't speak English, or they find it hard to speak English. You know, that person can speak in the mother tongue. There's certain type of connection that it gives. And remember that when we're getting married, I know that it feels like it's all about a man and a woman.

But it's actually about families as well.

And right at the beginning, it might not seem like the family is that important.

At some point, especially when you have children,

you're going to really want to have good relations with your family.

You're going to need your mom's support, you're going to need your family. Yeah. So it's really important not to discount your parents views. But if they seem to be being a bit unreasonable, right, and there are there is somebody that you would like to marry and they're not. They're just like getting hung up on the culture thing. And

the best way to deal with that is to try to persuade them

not to build a relationship behind their back. Because that's just gonna hurt you. That's gonna end up hurting you.

You love we're nowhere near as close to

handling