Halima Abdurahman, a Muslim lady, lives in the United Arab Emirates. My choice to divorce my hubby was made. Everyone is born with the gift of “innocence,” but this “gift” is swiftly outgrown by the horrible reality. As time passes, the lenses will become increasingly smaller until they no longer fit. For most of my youth and adolescence, spectacles dominated my peripheral vision. It’s as if you don’t even realize they exist at the age of twenty. It didn’t take me long to say goodbye to something I’d been looking forward to since I was a small child: marriage. During my undergraduate years, I saw patterns in my and my friends’ family situations that piqued my curiosity about marriage and its significance. The parents of several of my acquaintances, who looked to be happy and loving, were caught up in deception and adultery. Everything I’d learned about marriage seemed to be fake and phony all of a sudden. As I searched for solutions, I realized that the scenario was all too familiar: a young couple marries, everything goes well for a time, and then the expected problems develop. Because of their regular conflicts and verbal abuse, the couple is soon unable to sleep together. Their lives are pervaded by the continual suspicion that their spouse isn’t the person they expected and that they made a mistake. In the next 10 years, they can either divorce or stay together “selflessly,” generally for the sake of their children. It’s understandable to be perplexed given how quickly these relationships have collapsed. Is it possible to go from being a complete stranger to feeling like you’ve known each other for years? Why do almost half of all marriages end in divorce in the United States? When it comes to marriage, I’ve concluded that individuals enter it for the wrong reasons. People frequently believe that marriage is all about finding someone to “complete” or “fix” them. To have a long-lasting and meaningful relationship, one must first learn to love and accept oneself as is.
