Am I Wrong to Reject a 'Perfect' Proposal?

Dear Hadi,

Dear Reader,

Thank you for trusting us to offer an opinion on this matter.  We’re so sorry to hear that you are feeling stressed and suffocated by this situation.

Let us start by saying that the decision whether or not to marry this person is entirely yours.  Although it may be practiced in some countries, forced marriages are un-Islamic.  Simply stated, in Islam, you cannot be compelled to marry someone you don’t want to marry. 

That being said, let’s delve a little deeper and look at two lessons from the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).  The first involves a man named Al-Mughirah ibn Shu’bah who had asked for a woman’s hand in marriage.  When the Prophet (pbuh) learned that Al-Mughirah had not yet seen the woman, he instructed Al-Mughirah to visit and meet the woman so as to ascertain if he found her appealing.  Using this reasoning, if you do not find the person who has proposed to you appealing, then putting yourself in such a marriage has a high likelihood of ending up in an unhappy relationship for both of you.

The only thing we might encourage you to do is to continue your self-reflection to gain a better understanding of why you are not interested in this person.  The reason we encourage you to do this is based on the Prophet’s (pbuh) hadith, “If someone proposes marriage to you whose religion and character satisfies you, then you should accept it.  If you do not do so, there will be trials on the earth and the spread of corruption” (reported by Abu Huraira and considered Sahih according to Al-Albani). 

Please understand that we are not sharing this hadith in order to say that you should accept this man’s proposal, but rather because we think it’s important for each of us to engage in honest introspection when it comes to our relationships.  You are probably too young to have heard of a book called “Marry Him: the Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” by author Lori Gottlieb.  Although not grounded in Islam, the book challenges the concept of waiting for “Mr. Right” and the author instead encourages her readers to focus on the characteristics that actually make for a high quality, long-lasting relationship.

These characteristics are well-elucidated in the Quran, in verse 21 of surat al-Rum:

“And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.” (Quran 30:21).

The question to examine is whether you believe you would be able to find tranquility for your heart and mind in this relationship and whether there could be affection and mercy between the two of you. 

Our biggest advice is to try to answer this question free from the cultural norms we have grown up with  -- i.e, the “love at first sight” paradigm which has become a pervasive standard of judging relationships in our society.  That paradigm has proven itself a failure, with between 40-50% of first marriages in the U.S. now ending in divorce, usually within the first 5 years.  Compare this to an only 1.5% divorce rate in the first 5 years in the early 1960’s.  Many authors believe that one of the main reasons for the current high divorce rates (and the sharp rise form the 1960s) is unrealistic expectations.  This is bolstered by a bevy of statistics that shows that divorce rates are higher for couples who lived together before getting married than for couples who waited until after marriage to live together.  Presumably, the couples who lived together first have had an opportunity to test compatibility on all fronts from emotional to sexual before embarking on marriage, and yet divorce more frequently.  Compare this to a 4% rate of divorce in arranged marriages. 

We emphasize, of course, that we are not specifically supporting arranged marriages, and we stress again that we are not saying these things to tell you to agree with your parents.  Rather, we are saying that it is important to understand that we all have cultural biases (that we are often unconscious of) which influence our decisions, and that in the area of marriage, the Western cultural biases may do more harm than good.

We believe that the correct question to ask is not whether love is present before marriage, but whether it can blossom in the marriage.  This depends on many factors, including the character and kindness of the spouses, shared interests, compatible personalities and physical attraction.  Think of it as a mixture of these elements, and ask is the mix conducive of producing the characteristics of marriage mentioned in the Quran.  For example, the person may not be an amazingly good-looking guy, but be very kind, and as long as his appearance is okay to you, the mix may be enough. Let us again go to the extreme of arranged marriage, leaving Islam out of the mix.   In a 1982 study, psychologists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajas, studied arranged marriages in India.  They used the Rubin Love Scale, which gauges intense, romantic, Western-style love.  They found that love in “love marriages,” in India does exactly what it does in love marriages in the United States: it starts high and declines fairly rapidly. But love in the arranged marriages they examined started out low and gradually increased, surpassing the love in the love marriage about five years out. Ten years into the marriage the love was nearly twice as strong.  So, the question to ask is whether this could happen between you and this man in the long term. 

There are many legitimate reasons why the answer may be “no.”  For example, he is not of good character, or you find him very boring, or very annoying, or thoroughly unattractive, etc.  What is not a legitimate answer, in our opinion, is that you didn’t “feel the magic,” right away.  Of all the factors, of course character is the most important.

You mention that your parents find this man to be of good character, but you don’t say what you think of his character.  It is important you also have the opportunity to know him and make that decision for yourself.  You may end up being pleasantly surprised.  However, if you don’t find his character, his looks, or his personality acceptable, then again, there is no reason to put yourself or him on a path to an unhappy marriage.  But if you haven’t gotten to know him, I would at least allow yourself the opportunity to do so.  This way, if you don’t accept his proposal, you and your parents can insha’Allah feel more comfortable in that decision.

In peace.