How to decentre marriage and why we must
There are other worthwhile pursuits too; faith, friendship, community, world-building.
Two weeks ago, I made a big mistake, a fault so grave that it unravelled my sense of self and destroyed my idea of who I am and where I’m going. My imaan (faith) suffered as a result and, in the classic devilish whispers, I found myself feeling worthless, misguided and reluctant to face the only One who could mend me. I texted one of my best friends about my feelings of despair. She responded with a heartfelt message, meaning well and offering me sound advice. Except, she interpreted all my emotions simply as frustrations at being unmarried. Still.
It’s understandable why she would interpret it this way; I am a 31-year-old Muslim woman from a South Asian family, of course I am expected to be married, I write about love and romance, of course I want to be married, and I have expressed my jadedness at the dating market, so it’s natural she would think I was referring to this now. But my drop in imaan had nothing to do with my struggles of finding a husband, I wasn’t even thinking about it. Instead, what I was really expressing to her was shame at having failed at piety in the way I had imagined I wouldn’t, not after I started wearing hijab. It was about my relationship with God. And my relationship with Allah isn’t solely about being granted a husband.
Marriage, famously, is half your deen (religion). But what about the other half? We speak of Allah like He is a duaa machine. You slot in a prayer and wait a reasonable amount of time till it’s granted. Rinse, repeat. One of the most common things single Muslims ask for, unsurprisingly, is marriage. And why shouldn’t it be? Allah is the creator of the Heavens and Earth, He simply has to say be and it is, so ask to your heart’s content. My concern, however, is that marriage has become the biggest, and sometimes the only, aspiration we keep coming back to. But being married is not our purpose for existence, no matter how much society and meddling aunties will have us believe.
I know everyone knows this in theory – that we exist for reasons beyond matrimony – but it seems romantic love is universally put on a pedestal, as if it’s better and more meaningful than anything else. Of course, like the Aquamarine quote, love is the closest thing we have to magic, but in its pursuit or in its maintenance we’ve started neglecting equally significant endeavours, like friendship, community, world-building. Or from an Islamic perspective, even God. Some of us have began worshipping and glorifying a hypothetical romance over Allah. Astagfirullah.
We’ve grown accustomed to art that moves us as it speaks of lost love, unrequited love, and chasing love. Music, film, television, books, social media all speak to this grand, elusive and beautiful experience that we should all, in theory, have. But not all of us will get to have it, and you haven’t failed if you don’t. We must learn to be okay with that. And the only way we can do that is to build a meaningful and fulfilling life to the best of our ability, that works towards our own goals but also serves others; family, biological or otherwise, friends, neighbours and even strangers. Especially strangers. We’ve become so untrusting, skeptical and surveillant of one another that we clutch our pearls, gatekeep resources, judge, ignore, belittle or abandon anyone outside of our bubble.
Do you know how we decentre romantic love, and thus, marriage? By showing up for other types of relationships and purposes. Famously, inconvenience is the price we pay for community but how many of us are actually inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of other people (not just our loved ones’) happiness? And community isn’t just people that orbit our neighbourhood, culture or background, it’s the stranger you don’t know or the future you might not be around for. It looks like moving a Lime bike laying on the pavement out of the way because you don’t want a person in a wheelchair to be stuck, it looks like offering a cooked meal to someone you don’t know all that well because they may be enduring a hardship, or giving money to a homeless person questions unasked, it’s picking up litter you didn’t throw, and not filming someone in public, it’s not waiting for a bystander to do something and just doing it yourself, it’s helping someone with a pushchair or luggage up a flight of stairs, it’s supporting a cause financially or otherwise because they do important work, it’s donating, recycling, upcycling, mending, it’s compassion and understanding, it means paying to support people’s art, to not have a scarcity mindset, it is trying all over again the next day.
To be clear, doing these things make you a better person, but they may not fill the void of wanting companionship, which, as humans, we are wired to want. And we shouldn’t simply do these things in hopes that someone will one day notice it and want to marry us. These actions are just worthwhile in their own right. They may make a lonely life a little better and remind you of the value you have.
Don’t get me wrong, you can have romantic love and friendship, community and world-building – in some cases, love can make those things easier – but we know there’s a hierarchy among it all. That you may be treated as though you lack something if you don’t have the former over the latter. But surely marriage can’t be at the centre of it all. If it is, then what does it mean for those who can’t acquire it, or don’t even want to?
We’ve got to a place where it’s acceptable to make grand gestures, to make sacrifices and show up first and foremost for romantic relationship. But why can’t we chase a friend down the airport to catch one last glimpse of them before they leave, or move homes or countries to be closer to them, a sibling or even a work friend turned bestie, or fly across the world to be there for them at an important moment? Why are our friendship anniversaries less celebrated? Why are milestones mostly individual or romantic? Why is a wedding supposedly the best day of our lives? Why does everything have to pale in comparison to romantic love?
Love, like death, will come when it’s ready, you can anticipate it but don’t grow paralysed at the weight of its expectation. Find love and meaning in other things too. Muslims, especially, remember happiness is a byproduct of the worship of Allah. Nothing is more meaningful than the remembrance of Allah. In His cause, follow the actions of the Prophet (SAW), embody the lessons of the Qur’an, become more ummah-minded, rack up your good deeds in pursuit of Jannah (heaven). That is truly our purpose.
None of this is to say I am anti-marriage, and if you’ve read my Substack before you know I’m such a lover girl, but I only want to find a husband if he, and our marriage, is genuinely something that will bring me closer to my Lord. In the meantime, I’ll remind myself of the virtues of patience and try to pour into everything else that makes me, society and the world better. Inshallah.
وَمَا هَـٰذِهِ ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَآ إِلَّا لَهْوٌۭ وَلَعِبٌۭ ۚ وَإِنَّ ٱلدَّارَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةَ لَهِىَ ٱلْحَيَوَانُ ۚ لَوْ كَانُوا۟ يَعْلَمُونَ
“This worldly life is no more than play and amusement. But the Hereafter is indeed the real life, if only they knew.” (Qur’an, 29: 64)
I’m not Muslim, but this piece resonated with me deeply. The way you described the weight of shame, the struggle with identity, and the quiet ache of unmet expectations—it felt so familiar. I’ve also had moments where I questioned my worth, not because of romantic loneliness, but because I felt I had failed myself, my values, my sense of purpose. And like you, I’ve had people misread that pain, reducing it to something simpler, something more socially acceptable.
Your words reminded me that meaning isn’t found in milestones or validation from others—it’s in how we show up, how we care, how we build lives that matter. I loved your call to decentre romantic love and invest in community, friendship, and compassion. It’s something I’ve been trying to do more intentionally, and reading this made me feel less alone in that effort.
Thank you for writing with such honesty and grace. You reminded me that even in our lowest moments, there’s a way back to ourselves.
Jzk for writing this piece. I remember as early as being in high school when my friend and I met some girls from another school and I was the only one not in a relationship. One of the girls looked at me with so much sadness and literally apologized to me. She said, “oh I’m so sorry you don’t have a boyfriend.” And I was taken aback and immediately said, “oh no, I’m perfectly fine.”
Later in my late 20s when I was actively looking for a spouse, I had a friend tell me “oh it must be so hard, don’t worry there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” And I said, “actually it’s more like a walk on the beach because I’m so blessed to have so much love in my life, Alhamdullilah.”
This is such a poignant and powerful piece because we as a society do value romantic relationships as some holy grail of success. And Alhamdullilah as a married woman now, I want to say it’s STILL UNHELPFUL to center my romantic relationship above others. I love my spouse but I am so grateful to have other passions and people in my life that fulfill me in so many ways, most importantly nothing fills my soul more than the remembrance of and my connection with Allah SWT.
I’m currently reading Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn and her book explores this concept too, it’s been so helpful to read. Natasha also talks about another aspect we overly praise as a society which is parenthood and how painfully difficult that is for those couples who want to conceive but struggle to.