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So, we live in a society where, for doing something traditional, you are judged for being backward, and for doing something inappropriate, you are considered “cool”. But, why? I am amazed at how things which once used to be considered unacceptable have now become so common. Whatever happened to our desi culture which taught us basic ethics, morals, and principles, not to forget, our religion? Why are people openly doing things they shouldn’t be?

I will begin by telling you my story of a failed relationship. (Promise, I won’t make it too long).

So, it started off with a friends request. Now, I never believed in pre-marital relationships, in fact, I still don’t. Being from England, it would seem like a British girl would believe in extreme liberalism, but that didn’t apply to my mindset. I have always kept a limit when it came to the interaction with guys, and I don’t believe I have to be religious to be this way. I am like any other girl, who takes a deep interest in fashion, hair, makeup etc. but, a relationship wasn’t my thing.

So, I never really was involved until that friend request!

Moving on to the story. I was engaged to my cousin from Pakistan, kind-hearted, rich, but, never of my type. But, as the usual Pakistani cultural situation is, I was promised to him from a very young age. I was not happy but my parents strongly believed that he would be best for me.

Many years later, logging in to an old friends’ Facebook account, I came across a person. Yes, a guy. He used to help me through my situation, offering me advice on how to back out from my rishta without my parents’ getting upset with me. I had never met someone so caring, decent and interesting. It was wrong of me to have a selfish intention, which was to get rid of him after he had helped me. However, I failed at even doing that.

I trusted him very blindly!

I spent too much time on Facebook with him. He lived in Pakistan, and I don’t even know how I trusted him when I can’t even trust the decent guys here in England. We found it hard to just block each other because I guess, our feelings grew a little too much. So, yeah.. it turned into a relationship, I spent 2 whole years with him. Even though we’d make plans to travel overseas to see each other, it just never happened. I didn’t know how to tell my family, especially my mum, as I knew how upset she would be. But, then, she found out.

I was made to stay away from him and block his number. But because that was too hard for me, my mum took away my phone and any other thing that will lead me towards contacting him again. However, behind her back, I would still find other ways, like spending £20 on a pay-phone/phone booth every day just to speak to him and find a solution to convince my family to accept him. It felt as if he was willing to do anything for me, but it was also a vice-versa situation.

Who knew it would turn out to be this way!

This was on-going, until a couple of a months later, he had left me to be with someone else. I felt as if my life was over. I invested so much time in this relationship, but it ended so brutally. Months later, he came back to apologize and pleaded for another chance. I couldn’t resist and gave him that chance. But the same thing happened; he left me again for the same girl. I couldn’t believe that those 2.5 years meant nothing to him, but meant everything to me. Now, I feel very worthless. I felt as if I will never be able to love again.

Moral of the story is that unless your relationship doesn’t end in marriage, it certainly isn’t love, rather, it is infatuation. A person should invest their time in remembering Allah more than anything else because happiness certainly is everlasting when spending it with the one who will never hurt you. That is what I have learned.

People announce their pre-marital relationships so normally to the public in our culture these days, even doing worse than that. I miss those “sharam” and “haya” times. May Allah guide us all. Ameen.