Ep. 20 – Single and No Mingle

Samia and Samar discuss the hot topic of singledom. They discuss:

• How to be content as a single person.
• The eastern expectations from a women.
• Fallacy of living the life you want after marriage.
• The role of spirituality in all of it.

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Basic Breakdown

Samia poses the question which was asked to her by a listener on how to be content while being single and alone. She mentions that she discussed the answer as a married women in a previous episode, “On Being Alone,” but wanted Samar to answer since she is single and seems to be content.

Samar is happy that she was not blind sided by this question and had some time to prepare her thoughts. She says that she is single and alhumdulillah content. She presents that this question has a lot of facets starting from the assumptions that it is difficult to be content while being single when it is important to be content while being single.

She shares the Will Smith video where he mentions that both people in the relationship must be 100%.

Samia mentions that women who are from eastern background being “obsessed” in marriage and even the convert sisters are being pushed to “complete their deed” by setting them up with someone.

Samar shares that she is not ready for marriage because she does not feel 100% and does not want to bring baggage into a marriage, it needs to be figured out before bringing it into a relationship.

Samia asks what is baggage in this case and the answer is that the lack of contentment is the baggage.

They both discuss the cultural expectations to “fix” a person through marriage.

Samar discusses the perfect-post-marital life that is expected while the reality might be different, with marriage and children, and then retirement and kids moving out. The situation is not necessarily what is expected when each of the two individuals are single first before being married.

They both discuss the matters between a husband a wife, with the wife completely not knowing who she is before and tends to forget herself and later realizes her unhappiness since she never took the time/got an opportunity to find who she is as an individual.

They discuss some normal relationship hardships (marriage), being a different person after marriage than before and both being individual.

Finally, they discuss what is required in a romantic relationship and how it can be fulfilled with platonic relationships which are deeply fulfilling due to them being spiritually uplifting in nature, the “spiritual family.” Samia shares her personal experience with what it means about “fulfilling my deen” and that if we are feeling incomplete, it is not that we are missing a relationship, but that we are lacking a relationship with Allah ﷻ.

Samar shares that it is important to change the way that discuss marriage. Also she hopes that the pressure on men to carry all of the burden regardless of the situation can be lessened by women understanding their value and what they can bring into a relationship.

Samia shares a talk where the dhikr is mentioned where we exclaim that “I am content with Allah as my Rabb, Islam as my religion, and Muhammad ﷺ as the messenger.” The world can burn but a person feels content since, in the end, we are content with Allah ﷻ and have those foundations set.