Posting on behalf of a sister 🤍

She knows this is long 😭 I offered to condense it, but she feels like cutting it down would take away from the rawness of what she’s trying to express. So please be gentle with her — she’ll be reading the comments herself. 🤍

She’s genuinely looking for Islamic/spiritual perspective, comfort and hope, not judgment or analysis of the men. If you don’t have anything kind or constructive to say, please just scroll past. JazakAllah khair. 🫶🏻
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I don’t want relationship advice. I want to understand what is happening to me spiritually.

There is so much going on inside me right now, and honestly, I don’t even know exactly what kind of advice I’m looking for. Maybe religious advice. Maybe some perspective. Maybe hope.

But please, I am NOT looking for advice about the men. I don’t want to hear who was good, who was bad, why someone didn’t marry me, whether I should have done this or that, etc. That isn’t the point of this post. I’m trying to understand what has happened to me emotionally and spiritually, and how I’m supposed to move forward from it.

I’m 23 now, but I was very, very young when this started. I was in Grade 7.

I saw a guy, fell for him, and we started talking back and forth. Eventually, things became an absolute shitshow. Our families became rivals. There were serious conflicts between them, to the point where people were literally being called on each other. Whatever possibility there may have been between us basically became impossible.

But I loved him.

It was that completely naive, childish kind of love where you don’t think about what a man can offer you, whether you’re compatible, whether he has the right career, family, finances, personality, etc. You just love him. And I loved him so fucking much.

For years, I did everything I could think of religiously:

Countless wazifas.
Nafl.
Tahajjud.
Making dua constantly.
Praying throughout Ramadan.
Asking people going to Makkah to pray for us.
Begging people to make dua for me.
Doing literally every religious practice anyone suggested might help.

I was practically sitting at a darbar asking Allah for this one person. That’s how intense it was.

I don’t think anyone can understand how deeply I loved this boy. I genuinely felt like if I ever got him, I would have washed his feet and drunk that water. I know that sounds insane, but that’s genuinely where my head was. All I wanted was to have his name. To be his wife. To be in his nikah. That was my entire hasrat.

For years, he never actually made things clear to me. We talked, but I didn’t know whether he loved me or not. I barely even got to meet him.
I first saw him at a wedding. Then everything with our families happened. His father passed away. Years went by.

About five years later, we met again. I still remember that meeting because I literally couldn’t process it. I said salam and khuda hafiz and almost nothing else. I had loved this person for years, and suddenly he was sitting right in front of me. What the fuck was I even supposed to say?

Later, he told me there was another woman he liked and that his mother didn’t agree with her. I spent a long time wondering what was wrong with me. What wasn’t enough in me? Why could he love someone else?

And despite everything, he kept me close. There was always this strange element of respect and affection between us.

I had a gold ring that he liked, so I had the exact same ring made for him in silver. He still has it. He’s had it for years and apparently never takes it off.

Eventually, after years of this, I reached a point where I thought I hated him. I blocked him. Unblocked him. Got angry. Told him I hated him. Said all sorts of things.

And then one day he said:
“Would you allow me to say something?”
And he told me something that completely broke me.

He said I was the girl he had been in love with all those years. He said he had simply never told me because of everything that had happened between our families. He had spoken to his parents about me, and they refused.

He showed me notes and messages he’d written during the years I had blocked him. Things he’d wanted to say to me. He told me that if the family situation had never happened, he would have done everything he could.

But now it was impossible.

It was basically: we loved each other, but the circumstances made it impossible.

And I cried even harder.

Because this was literally the one thing I had spent more than ten years wanting to hear. My entire hasrat was to know that he loved me. And when I finally heard it, I almost hated him for giving it to me so late.

I spent years thinking about another woman. Years wondering what was wrong with me. Years thinking I simply wasn’t enough.

And then, after all that time, he tells me it was me.
The person I had spent my childhood praying for was actually praying for me too.

But it still didn’t change the outcome.

We still couldn’t be together.

I’ve also spent years trying to get over this.

I went to therapy consistently. I tried everything I could. But there are still things that trigger me.
There are memories associated with this entire situation that still make me physically shiver. There have been times I’ve had panic attacks and ended up in the hospital because of everything surrounding this.

My entire family knew how completely obsessed I was with him. And I was just a little girl when all of this started.

That’s the part I struggle with the most.

I grew up physically, but sometimes emotionally I feel like I’m still that Grade 7 girl sitting there thinking:

“If I could just have him, I would be happy.”

Now I’m going through the rishta process, and sometimes I find myself thinking: If I had gotten him, everything would have been so simple.
I wouldn’t have had to make cost-benefit analyses. I wouldn’t have had to think about compatibility, careers, families, finances, personalities, whether someone is suitable, whether someone is going to make a good husband, etc.

I would have just been happy that I had the person I loved.

And I hate that I never got to experience that.

At the same time, I know that I have a responsibility towards whoever my husband eventually is. I know I cannot rob another man of the love and devotion he deserves from his wife.

I genuinely believe that I would be deeply devoted to my husband.

But sometimes I wonder if maybe everyone doesn’t get everything.

I have an exceptionally good father. I have a good family. I’ve been blessed in many parts of my life.
And sometimes I wonder: Maybe I was simply meant to be blessed in those areas and not in love.

I don’t know.

And then there is the spiritual part.

I haven’t been praying properly for a long time. I want to. I know I should.

But if I’m being completely honest, I have some serious shikwa with Allah Ta’ala. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Because I begged. I begged for years.

I wasn’t asking for wealth. I wasn’t asking for some impossible worldly thing. I wanted one person.
And I genuinely believed that if I kept making dua, kept praying, kept doing everything I could, Allah would eventually give him to me.

He didn’t.

And I know all the answers people give:
“Allah knows what is best.”
“Maybe Allah has something better for you.”
“Sometimes Allah doesn’t give you what you want because He knows it will hurt you.”

I know. I know all of that intellectually.
But emotionally, I’m still struggling with it.
Because I loved him with everything I had.

And I didn’t get him.

Then something happened recently that has brought all of this back.

I met another guy.

Again, there is nothing between us. We’re not together. We’re not going to be together. That’s not what I’m asking anyone to analyze.

But I fell for him.
And that terrified me.

Because I haven’t genuinely liked a man in years. I usually get the ick. I don’t like men easily. I don’t develop feelings easily.

And then, after all these years, I met someone and felt that same kind of feeling again.

That same ishq.

And for circumstances outside of what I’m asking you to analyze, we can’t marry. He likes me too, but basically we met too late and he’s getting married soon.

And suddenly I’m standing in exactly the same emotional place again.

I finally felt something for someone after more than ten years, and I’m not getting him either.

And this is what has completely fucked me up.
Because now I keep thinking: What is wrong with me? Am I cursed? Is this just how my life is going to be? Why is it that whenever I finally love someone with my entire heart, I can’t have them?

I know this is not rational. I know millions of people experience heartbreak. I know people lose people they love

But this isn’t just heartbreak for me anymore.

It feels like the same wound has been opened again after more than a decade.

And now when I think about this new guy being someone else’s husband, I somehow end up thinking about the first guy all over again.

I think about all those years of prayers.
I think:
What did I get after praying that hard for more than ten years?

So how am I supposed to believe that this time will be different?

How am I supposed to pray for this new person when part of me is thinking, “Why bother? You already know how this ends.”

And I feel horrible even saying that because I don’t want to have shikwa with Allah. I don’t want to become bitter. I don’t want to stop praying. I don’t want to believe that Allah doesn’t listen to me.
But I’m hurt.

I’m genuinely, deeply hurt.

And sometimes I feel like I have spent so much of my life suffering over love that I don’t know how to separate my relationship with Allah from that pain anymore.

At the same time, another part of me thinks: Maybe Allah will reward me for all of this. Maybe the fact that I never entered into haram with either of these people means something. Maybe all those years of crying, praying, waiting and trying to remain within what was halal will eventually mean something.
Maybe Allah will give me something so beautiful that one day I’ll understand why I had to lose these people.

I want to believe that.

I desperately want to believe that.

But right now I’m struggling.

So I don’t want advice about the men.

I don’t want to know which guy was better, whether either of them secretly loved me enough, why they didn’t marry me, whether I should have done something differently, or whether I should move on.

That’s not what I’m asking.
I’m asking about me.

About this wound that seems to have followed me from childhood into adulthood. About why, after 10–11 years, I still feel like that little girl sometimes. About why falling for someone again has brought everything back. About how you actually heal from something like this.

And, most importantly, about my relationship with Allah.

How do you make peace with a dua that you begged for with your entire soul and still didn’t receive?

How do you stop feeling like you’re being punished or cursed?

How do you pray again when you’re carrying so much shikwa?

How do you trust Allah again when the thing you wanted most was something you prayed for relentlessly and it still didn’t happen?

And when does it actually get better?

When do you stop carrying it?

When does the trauma finally stop hurting?

I don’t even know exactly what kind of advice I’m asking for.

I think I just need someone to tell me that I’m not broken, I’m not cursed, and that there is still some meaning in all of this.

And there is another part of this that I don’t even know how to explain properly.

With both of these men, I have this strange, almost physical ache when I think about how deeply I was capable of loving them.

Sometimes I genuinely sit there and think:

What did these men do to deserve this kind of love from a woman?

Not because I think they are necessarily extraordinary or because I’m trying to put them on a pedestal. I mean me. What was it about these men that made me capable of loving them like this?
Because this is the kind of love where you don’t just want the person around you.

You want them halal.

You have haya. You have boundaries. There are things you won’t cross. There are things you won’t do because you know they’re not permissible. And so your entire heart starts begging for the one thing that would make all of that love legitimate:

“Ya Allah, make him halal for me.”

You imagine being in that man’s nikah and being able to look at him without that feeling of guilt or helplessness. You imagine loving him openly, caring for him, serving him, building a life with him. You imagine being his woman, his wife, the person he comes home to.

And when you love someone that deeply, you genuinely start thinking:

“Ya Allah, just make him mine in the halal. Let me love him properly. Let me look at him and have my heart full of love for him, and let even that love become something I can be rewarded for.”
That’s the kind of love I’m talking about.

It’s not casual attraction. It’s not “he’s cute, I like him.”

It’s devotion.

It’s the kind of love where you think you could mold your life around that person. Where you think you could live wherever they had to live, adjust to their circumstances, make sacrifices, give and give and give, because all you wanted in return was to be their wife.

And after eleven years, I felt that again for another man.

Again.

After everything.

And I’m not getting him either.

So sometimes I have this incredibly painful thought:
What did these men do to receive this kind of love from me?

And then the thought turns inward:
What did I do to deserve having to carry all of this love without ever getting its completion?

Because in my mind, and perhaps this is something I need to unlearn, mohabbat ki takmeel nikah hai.
That’s what I always wanted.

Not an endless almost-relationship. Not memories. Not confessions that come ten years too late. Not knowing that someone loved me but couldn’t have me.

I wanted the nikah.

I wanted the person I loved to actually become my husband.

And when that doesn’t happen, sometimes it feels like all of that love has nowhere to go.

What was the point of being loved if I wasn’t the woman they chose to build that life with?

I know this may sound irrational and I know human relationships don’t work like some kind of divine reward system.

But emotionally, this is where my mind goes.

I don’t understand why Allah Ta’ala would give me this capacity to love someone so completely — twice — and then leave me with the loss both times.
And this is where the “am I cursed?” thought comes from.

Not because I literally believe I’m cursed.
But because I cannot understand the pattern.
What did I do wrong?
Why couldn’t I just have one of them?
Why was it always almost?
Why was I allowed to love this deeply if I was never going to get the thing I was actually praying for?

And I know there are bigger blessings in life. I know marriage isn’t the only form of love.

But I’m talking about the ache.

The very specific ache of loving a man so much that your only prayer is:

“Ya Allah, make him halal for me.”
And then having to accept that he won’t be.
And then, years later, finding that same love inside yourself again and realizing:

“I’m standing in the exact same place.”
That’s the part that is breaking me.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of it spiritually.

I don’t know whether I’m supposed to see these loves as blessings, tests, lessons, unanswered duas, protection from something I couldn’t see, or simply things that were never meant to be mine.

I just know that I have loved very, very deeply.

And sometimes I can’t understand why Allah gave me a heart capable of this much devotion if the only thing I’m repeatedly being taught is how to let go.