I saw your reply when advising the girl to keep her past to herself. I do agree that people should keep their sins to themselves but in terms of someone you’re trying to marry I’ve noticed the question of previous relationships if they’ve happened is bound to come up. Also I can’t help but be honest as I wouldn’t want to hide anything like that. What would you advise to reply if a guy asks because if you say nothing you must look like you’ve got a lot to hide. And if you say you’ve never gone on dates/spoken to anyone they would think somethings wrong with you or you’re not desired.
I feel like people are too much in their own heads about this. Keep it short and simple when they ask. You’ve been searching for a relationship but all the guys you’ve met didn’t want the same thing etc – boom that’s it.
Or say that you were committed to your education/career so really didn’t have time to invest properly in a relationship.
But lowkey in my experience, me and my SO never really gave a shit about the others previous talking stages because we were more happy with the fact we actually found each other. I genuinely feel like men who harp on about someones previous relationships are 1) either looking for some to manipulate into believing they are better than them 2) They are extremely immature and lack emotional intelligence.
Like unless you met someone when they were 16, there’s no reason for you to assume someone in their mid 20’s would have never spoken to anyone else before. This is the kind of delusion people in MT community have.
Anon
1 year ago
Omggg welcome back!!!!!! After soo long- tried CC but I’m sure you guys have so many question and stories !!
After taking you advice on sister CC – I have put myself out there ! To find the guy of my dreams honestly to get to know what I like and what don’t like. Totally understood what you were saying many months ago ! Girls can have a list however finding, speaking or courting a person is different ball game!
Alhumduiallah everyone I have spoken have been good but not the one for because communication/ timeliness/ red flag
Plus I have made dua during the process – suhhanallah the way Allah swt exist people out quicker than you think is amazing!
My question is – how to improve or move on talking stages process further ! Some people what you to take the initiative ( I don’t want lead with that Masculine energy) ! Some guys have natural asked which was good however due to timeliness we have to end things.
Some people want you to the work and chase – that isn’t for ! I will chat and be myself but I will not pull teeth to have a convo
When you’re getting to know people, keep it light and just keep talking.
Find out more about them. People always like to talk about themselves. He’ll also like you better if you allow him to open up.
So ask him open-ended questions. I’ve been in sales for 45 years, the only way to learn things is to ask questions. You can’t learn anything by talking. Which goes to the point that you can’t talk him into liking you. Nor do you want that to happen. You want to like him and he to like you for all the right reasons.
Just ask random questions, because they always lead to something much more interesting about themselves. For example: Do you have any brothers and sisters? where did you grow up? – Now all of a sudden they are talking to you about the family dramas from however long ago (maybe not to someone who looks judgemental soz). Basically the point, theres a so many questions to ask and every one of them you’ll learn something and either like or dislike what you hear and you’ll have practice at asking another good question and listening intently to the answer so that you’ll understand which question to ask next.
Have fun. That’s the main thing. You want to find somebody you can be with for a long time I’m assuming. So take your time and find somebody who you like and who likes you.
Make sure that you don’t invest more time in a guy than he’s investing in you. If a guy you’ve just started dating or have been dating for just a few weeks sees that you’re willing to drop everything for him before you’re even exclusive, he’s going to put you in the casual category.
I don’t know how to figure out if a guy is actually interested in me. I’ve never really dated and there have been some guys that have shown real interest in me but its never the guys of my calibre and that I’m attracted to. I end up feeling ugly and even though ppl always tell me I’m pretty, I feel like I’ll never believe it until it comes from a guy I like. It sounds crazy to say it.
I know that I need to not attach my view of myself on men, like I know they are really not worth all of that.
By staying single and not pursuing men for validation.
Go out by yourself, for yourself. Go out to brunch. See a movie. Dress up for no occasion and just enjoy feeling pretty while doing something you enjoy. Make YOU the focus of your affection and attention.
Majority of men aren’t that great. They are not the prize, trust me. Also a guy liking you or any girl is not a true indication of how awesome you are when they go for any woman that’s available to them. The only people who genuinely have standards for the most part: are us girls.
The only thing YOU need to do is develop a solid and independent sense of self. No one can chat shit to you- mentality. You’re that B****. Wallahi it’s so crucial to have that because then it doesn’t shift and change based on attention from others. The journey has to do with taking stock of your character qualities, your values, and how well you’re living your values. For example, you’re healthy, educated, beautiful, successful – you won’t give a fenty f*ck what a man thinks of you because you already know you’re that girl.
Anon
1 year ago
What advice can you give me regarding a friend who is an emotional dumper? I’ve known her for whole of uni, and she is someone who constantly nags and complains about life. It’s so off putting at times because one little incident in her day ruins her mood. And she’s super emotional. I’m tired of being an emotional crutch and distanced myself. She’s been making plans but I tell her I’m busy. I’m always trying to motivate her to think positively and she calls me her shrink. It’s annoying. It’s almost as if she can’t live without living in doom. Her concept of Qadar is terrible. I have advised her sooo many times. But she applies nothing! How do I share this with her without making it so “it’s a you problem”? It sounds terrible when I try to think of what to say. All it comes down to is “I’m tired of listening to your issues”. And I have mentioned therapy or counseling. She has got offended before. She was fun to be around when she’s not like this, but now it’s literally 24/7.
I would walk away, genuinely. I know there are people who will guilt trip you because according to them, this makes you a ‘bad friend’. But under these circumstances, they aren’t friendships. It’s a give it all, take all you can give and more. There is no reprieve from the neediness or want of the taker.
Years ago I had a friend as such. She’d call me at all hours in desperation every time of course, and I’d drop everything to run to her aid. We’d meet and go out for food, where strangely I’d end up paying the bill everytime because, well, she would spend her money on the guy she was complaining to me about. She’d talk and whine, then it turned into wining and talking, and I started to dread the phone ringing in fear it would be her calling me with another crisis. Everyday crisis, and majority of it was her own doing. Of course this commitment to an unhealthy relationship ended up affecting every other area of her life, to which she would expect me to fix. And me being captain save a hoe, I grabbed my cape and would usually get to work. Wallahi I was a fat mug
I finally started to be honest with myself. For the longest I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t help her and that I couldn’t force her to be happy. I also didn’t want to admit that eventually I stopped enjoying her presence. She always talked about herself, never inquired about my life. I was going through a lot at the time and despite being on the phone everyday for hours, she didn’t know because we always spoke about her and her problems. As well, I paid for everything, I felt exhausted after our visits, and I felt used. All my other friends advised me to cut her off but I felt really bad, which meant the friendship lasted longer than it needed. It wasnt easy, but I started turning her down on her so called invitations to talk about her problems, and she started to notice. She finally called me and ask me what was wrong. She wanted to know why we weren’t going out or getting together anymore. I just was clear to the point but not rude “Im taking care of myself first.” That’s all I said. No explanation. It wasn’t long before she replaced me with another person to use. At least that person wasn’t dumb like me, the other girl ended up cutting her off a few months later (good for her).
I would say emotional suckers are very good manipulators. It’s not worth the energy expended to be around such negatively. Once someone has gotten used to using you, its very hard to change the relationship even after you’ve addressed the problem. Because they are entitled to you.
My advice? Just slowly start cutting contact until she gets the message. And don’t feel guilty about putting yourself first either.
Anon
1 year ago
No question, I just wanted to comment I love Nimo’s insights as an older woman
Hey girl , I’m not sure if this will make sense but I have a problem with being visible, over the past few years I’ve gained a lot of weight and I have Become so insecure and now I hate going outside , meeting new people , dating or even going to work because I don’t want to be seen in this state I’m so disgusted in myself , which is crazy because I never used to feel so bad about myself I used to be super confident and would never deep things too much , any tips
Omg this was me literally a few years ago, I got so sick and gained a lot of weight from medication and not being able to physically move for a long time. So when I got healthy again alhamdulilah, I couldn’t even recognise the new body I was in. I’ve lost over 50lbs and wallahi there’s so many things I’ve learnt during that entire experience and I want to be as honest as I can.
1) If people kept it a buck, they’d tell you a lot of your problems and anxieties stem from you not addressing the real issue: weight gain
2) Being overweight likely brought on your social anxiety/other procrastination issues. Because how you feel about yourself has the biggest impact on how you deal with things.
3) A lot of your mental health is affected by your weight.
4) How people treat you is dependent on your weight (fucked up but true). That was the cruellest thing I’ve learnt throughout that entire experience.
5) How you dress and what clothes you wear is affected by your weight, so naturally being bigger and not finding any options, will in turn affect how you feel about yourself.
Not sure if this will be helpful to you, but I personally didn’t appreciate when people would say just be happy or its fine, because one thing about anxiety is it will never ever go away if the root cause of the anxiety hasn’t been addressed. And for me, I didn’t want to ignore the problem because that anxiousness was just making me so unhappy.
The only thing I can say to you is, if genuinely hand on heart the only thing right now is making you so unhappy is the weight: nothing will make you happy until you lose it. Acknowledging that is the first step, because now you can make a commitment yourself to getting healthy again.
For one, don’t think about being skinny. That shouldn’t be your goal and you won’t want it, trust me. At the start of my journey naively that’s want I initially wanted, and before I even got to my goal weight I realised I should stop trying to lose more and focus on gaining muscle. Having discernment is really important.
Don’t be half hearted about your goals, realistically it took a long time for you to gain weight so it’ll take you a long time to lose it. Using fad diets, water fasts, you’ll just end up gaining it all back and then some. The goal should be that this is a lifestyle change. Start walking 10k steps a day, cut off meals after 6pm, don’t snack. Then when you’re used to that, incorporate cardio twice a week. Then up the amount of days you go. Don’t go ham from the jump because you’ll just burnout. Take small steps.
Anon
1 year ago
Salaam sis, so glad this page is back!!
I’m 21 and I feel like I am slowly becoming influenced by my surroundings and social media to desire marriage and companionship. However, at the same time I do not think I am ready in terms of my career and life ambitions before I am tied down.
As hard as it is to ignore the void I have no men on social media, don’t speak to men at work, ignore men wherever I see them. Yet despite this I still expect to find the love of my life spontaneously and be swept off my feet Lol. I guess I am wondering how to always have peace of mind in Allah’s timing and take advantage of the free time I have now. The muslim community is so relationship and marriage centred it’s just hard to not want it for yourself despite the difficulties it comes with.
I never used to have this mindset and i’m
getting sick of myself for feeling this way.
First of all, 21 is so young. You have so many years ahead of you inshallah. And I can give you all the canned responses that you’ve already heard – focus on yourself, etc but I’m sure you already know that.
Yes it is okay to feel your emotions. It’s healthy to feel them and acknowledge them.
You’re allowed to feel anything you feel. How you choose to act on those feelings is another question but you’re allowed to have whatever feelings you have.
Honestly the most solid concrete advice I can give is to delete and stay away from social media. At some point you gotta be honest with yourself and take a step back from it if it’s affecting you. It’s important to remember as well everyone is just posting their highlight reel of life and it’s not reflective of real life.
Realistically, if family is not going to set you up with anyone, you’re most likely not going to meet people at home. Go out, go to more events, create more opportunities for things to blossom for you. I could suggest all those things to you but wallahi you are so young babe. You’re fresh out of your teens. Opportunities are not running away from you and trust me, the kind of marriage in your early twenties will be vastly different to a marriage in your late twenties when both parties are more stable and emotionally mature.
Anon
1 year ago
Hiya darling,
I’m a 22 yr old that has learnt a lot when it comes to friendships and feel like I have somehow accepted that friends do come and go. Recently, I’ve seen myself go in a little cage and became a little smaller when it comes to my personality. The way I interact with friends and new people, all because of a situation that I experienced a year ago. (Insight- had a big friendship for a few years and truly considered these girls my family until I felt liked got betrayed by a few of them)
I’m seeing myself become quite anxious and just feel like that I’m really struggling to make friendships with other people as well as talk to guys because I’ve internalised that I will be “done dirty”. I do attend therapy feel like that has helped me but I still struggle with building platonic emotional relations with girls and also (very highkey) struggle with building emotional connections with guys.
At this point I feel quite helpless and directionless in which direction to take when it comes to these things because I am a person who loves being social and definitely puts friendships on high pedestal. I don’t know if I’m being quite harsh on myself and other people by not giving them a chance.
It’s understandable. If you’ve been traumatised, you’ll need to work through that, although you can form new friendships while doing that. If it’s simple anxiety that is in your way, learn to work around it. There’s nothing wrong with being picky. Friendship is about more than liking people, it’s also based on common interests and normal give and take.
Finding people with common interests is a good way to locate friends. Find things you like and go do it, you end up making new friends along the way
Anon
1 year ago
I went on a date with a guy in London last year October. It was a lovely date. He’s from London and I’m from Stockholm. In November, he made plans to visit me in Stockholm and wants to spend his birthday with me in March. I don’t understand why he didn’t wanna visit me during the Xmas and New Years holiday. But he said he had an issue to sort out. Little did I know the issue was a court date and he would be finding out whether he will be sentenced or not in December. Anyways, he did get sentenced and was released in August 2023. We have each other on Snap, he has changed his username and covers his face with emojis whenever he post on his stories. I haven’t really been watching his stories like that, probably only once. But then again, I never use to watch his stories when we were talking and he didn’t care. Then he posted something yesterday it was a picture of him and his friend and the caption was free my homie. Hours later, I was blocked. Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release? He can be delusional sometimes expecting me to text him first when we have a disagreement even though he was the one who left me on read. But we weren’t even talking two weeks before he got sentenced. Or did he do that because he realised he still has me on his Snap and that wasn’t something I shouldn’t have seen? Because he has never mentioned his criminal past and insisted that he was never involved in stuff like that on our date. But then again, he’s always throwing gang signs and shouting “300” (i’m assuming that’s his lil gang) in his stories and I’ve seen it before. I’m not interested in him anymore because I know I dodged a bullet. But I’m confused because I’ve always heard men don’t block. I get unadding but blocking is a bit extreme on Snap. He blocked me after 3 weeks after his release. I think he was waiting for me to reach out. What do you think is the reason behind this?
“Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release?”
– Why do you care? He’s a criminal. One that lied to you about his lifestyle.
For people to agree to doing long distance, it has to because it’s worth it. How are you doing long distance with a lying criminal? Why do you think THIS is what you deserve.
“I’m not interested in him anymore because I know I dodged a bullet.”
– Who are you fooling? Because it’s not me.
I would have only believed you if you were embarrassed about this entire situation, instead you’re trying to make sense of it and come up with reasons why this is all your fault for example: “Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release?”
Please. Stop trying to figure this man out. Instead have a good sit down with yourself and be honest about why this is the type of men you’re going for. No none of this is your fault. This whole situation is actually a blessing from Allah. TO FREEDOM!
Hey sis, soo random but could you drop the garlic pasta recipe pleaseee it’s looks SOOO GOOD! My mouth watered when i saw the pics allahuma barikkkk
I’m going to post it later on my instagram today!
I saw your reply when advising the girl to keep her past to herself. I do agree that people should keep their sins to themselves but in terms of someone you’re trying to marry I’ve noticed the question of previous relationships if they’ve happened is bound to come up. Also I can’t help but be honest as I wouldn’t want to hide anything like that. What would you advise to reply if a guy asks because if you say nothing you must look like you’ve got a lot to hide. And if you say you’ve never gone on dates/spoken to anyone they would think somethings wrong with you or you’re not desired.
I feel like people are too much in their own heads about this. Keep it short and simple when they ask. You’ve been searching for a relationship but all the guys you’ve met didn’t want the same thing etc – boom that’s it.
Or say that you were committed to your education/career so really didn’t have time to invest properly in a relationship.
But lowkey in my experience, me and my SO never really gave a shit about the others previous talking stages because we were more happy with the fact we actually found each other. I genuinely feel like men who harp on about someones previous relationships are 1) either looking for some to manipulate into believing they are better than them 2) They are extremely immature and lack emotional intelligence.
Like unless you met someone when they were 16, there’s no reason for you to assume someone in their mid 20’s would have never spoken to anyone else before. This is the kind of delusion people in MT community have.
Omggg welcome back!!!!!! After soo long- tried CC but I’m sure you guys have so many question and stories !!
After taking you advice on sister CC – I have put myself out there ! To find the guy of my dreams honestly to get to know what I like and what don’t like. Totally understood what you were saying many months ago ! Girls can have a list however finding, speaking or courting a person is different ball game!
Alhumduiallah everyone I have spoken have been good but not the one for because communication/ timeliness/ red flag
Plus I have made dua during the process – suhhanallah the way Allah swt exist people out quicker than you think is amazing!
My question is – how to improve or move on talking stages process further ! Some people what you to take the initiative ( I don’t want lead with that Masculine energy) ! Some guys have natural asked which was good however due to timeliness we have to end things.
Some people want you to the work and chase – that isn’t for ! I will chat and be myself but I will not pull teeth to have a convo
Any advice
When you’re getting to know people, keep it light and just keep talking.
Find out more about them. People always like to talk about themselves. He’ll also like you better if you allow him to open up.
So ask him open-ended questions. I’ve been in sales for 45 years, the only way to learn things is to ask questions. You can’t learn anything by talking. Which goes to the point that you can’t talk him into liking you. Nor do you want that to happen. You want to like him and he to like you for all the right reasons.
Just ask random questions, because they always lead to something much more interesting about themselves. For example: Do you have any brothers and sisters? where did you grow up? – Now all of a sudden they are talking to you about the family dramas from however long ago (maybe not to someone who looks judgemental soz). Basically the point, theres a so many questions to ask and every one of them you’ll learn something and either like or dislike what you hear and you’ll have practice at asking another good question and listening intently to the answer so that you’ll understand which question to ask next.
Have fun. That’s the main thing. You want to find somebody you can be with for a long time I’m assuming. So take your time and find somebody who you like and who likes you.
Make sure that you don’t invest more time in a guy than he’s investing in you. If a guy you’ve just started dating or have been dating for just a few weeks sees that you’re willing to drop everything for him before you’re even exclusive, he’s going to put you in the casual category.
https://thesisterguide.com/comment-page-111/#comment-3128 – The advice you girls shared here really hit me.
I don’t know how to figure out if a guy is actually interested in me. I’ve never really dated and there have been some guys that have shown real interest in me but its never the guys of my calibre and that I’m attracted to. I end up feeling ugly and even though ppl always tell me I’m pretty, I feel like I’ll never believe it until it comes from a guy I like. It sounds crazy to say it.
I know that I need to not attach my view of myself on men, like I know they are really not worth all of that.
By staying single and not pursuing men for validation.
Go out by yourself, for yourself. Go out to brunch. See a movie. Dress up for no occasion and just enjoy feeling pretty while doing something you enjoy. Make YOU the focus of your affection and attention.
Majority of men aren’t that great. They are not the prize, trust me. Also a guy liking you or any girl is not a true indication of how awesome you are when they go for any woman that’s available to them. The only people who genuinely have standards for the most part: are us girls.
The only thing YOU need to do is develop a solid and independent sense of self. No one can chat shit to you- mentality. You’re that B****. Wallahi it’s so crucial to have that because then it doesn’t shift and change based on attention from others. The journey has to do with taking stock of your character qualities, your values, and how well you’re living your values. For example, you’re healthy, educated, beautiful, successful – you won’t give a fenty f*ck what a man thinks of you because you already know you’re that girl.
What advice can you give me regarding a friend who is an emotional dumper? I’ve known her for whole of uni, and she is someone who constantly nags and complains about life. It’s so off putting at times because one little incident in her day ruins her mood. And she’s super emotional. I’m tired of being an emotional crutch and distanced myself. She’s been making plans but I tell her I’m busy. I’m always trying to motivate her to think positively and she calls me her shrink. It’s annoying. It’s almost as if she can’t live without living in doom. Her concept of Qadar is terrible. I have advised her sooo many times. But she applies nothing! How do I share this with her without making it so “it’s a you problem”? It sounds terrible when I try to think of what to say. All it comes down to is “I’m tired of listening to your issues”. And I have mentioned therapy or counseling. She has got offended before. She was fun to be around when she’s not like this, but now it’s literally 24/7.
Been there. It’s awful.
I would walk away, genuinely. I know there are people who will guilt trip you because according to them, this makes you a ‘bad friend’. But under these circumstances, they aren’t friendships. It’s a give it all, take all you can give and more. There is no reprieve from the neediness or want of the taker.
Years ago I had a friend as such. She’d call me at all hours in desperation every time of course, and I’d drop everything to run to her aid. We’d meet and go out for food, where strangely I’d end up paying the bill everytime because, well, she would spend her money on the guy she was complaining to me about. She’d talk and whine, then it turned into wining and talking, and I started to dread the phone ringing in fear it would be her calling me with another crisis. Everyday crisis, and majority of it was her own doing. Of course this commitment to an unhealthy relationship ended up affecting every other area of her life, to which she would expect me to fix. And me being captain save a hoe, I grabbed my cape and would usually get to work. Wallahi I was a fat mug
I finally started to be honest with myself. For the longest I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t help her and that I couldn’t force her to be happy. I also didn’t want to admit that eventually I stopped enjoying her presence. She always talked about herself, never inquired about my life. I was going through a lot at the time and despite being on the phone everyday for hours, she didn’t know because we always spoke about her and her problems. As well, I paid for everything, I felt exhausted after our visits, and I felt used. All my other friends advised me to cut her off but I felt really bad, which meant the friendship lasted longer than it needed. It wasnt easy, but I started turning her down on her so called invitations to talk about her problems, and she started to notice. She finally called me and ask me what was wrong. She wanted to know why we weren’t going out or getting together anymore. I just was clear to the point but not rude “Im taking care of myself first.” That’s all I said. No explanation. It wasn’t long before she replaced me with another person to use. At least that person wasn’t dumb like me, the other girl ended up cutting her off a few months later (good for her).
I would say emotional suckers are very good manipulators. It’s not worth the energy expended to be around such negatively. Once someone has gotten used to using you, its very hard to change the relationship even after you’ve addressed the problem. Because they are entitled to you.
My advice? Just slowly start cutting contact until she gets the message. And don’t feel guilty about putting yourself first either.
No question, I just wanted to comment I love Nimo’s insights as an older woman
Awww she’ll love this
Hey girl , I’m not sure if this will make sense but I have a problem with being visible, over the past few years I’ve gained a lot of weight and I have Become so insecure and now I hate going outside , meeting new people , dating or even going to work because I don’t want to be seen in this state I’m so disgusted in myself , which is crazy because I never used to feel so bad about myself I used to be super confident and would never deep things too much , any tips
Omg this was me literally a few years ago, I got so sick and gained a lot of weight from medication and not being able to physically move for a long time. So when I got healthy again alhamdulilah, I couldn’t even recognise the new body I was in. I’ve lost over 50lbs and wallahi there’s so many things I’ve learnt during that entire experience and I want to be as honest as I can.
1) If people kept it a buck, they’d tell you a lot of your problems and anxieties stem from you not addressing the real issue: weight gain
2) Being overweight likely brought on your social anxiety/other procrastination issues. Because how you feel about yourself has the biggest impact on how you deal with things.
3) A lot of your mental health is affected by your weight.
4) How people treat you is dependent on your weight (fucked up but true). That was the cruellest thing I’ve learnt throughout that entire experience.
5) How you dress and what clothes you wear is affected by your weight, so naturally being bigger and not finding any options, will in turn affect how you feel about yourself.
Not sure if this will be helpful to you, but I personally didn’t appreciate when people would say just be happy or its fine, because one thing about anxiety is it will never ever go away if the root cause of the anxiety hasn’t been addressed. And for me, I didn’t want to ignore the problem because that anxiousness was just making me so unhappy.
The only thing I can say to you is, if genuinely hand on heart the only thing right now is making you so unhappy is the weight: nothing will make you happy until you lose it. Acknowledging that is the first step, because now you can make a commitment yourself to getting healthy again.
For one, don’t think about being skinny. That shouldn’t be your goal and you won’t want it, trust me. At the start of my journey naively that’s want I initially wanted, and before I even got to my goal weight I realised I should stop trying to lose more and focus on gaining muscle. Having discernment is really important.
Don’t be half hearted about your goals, realistically it took a long time for you to gain weight so it’ll take you a long time to lose it. Using fad diets, water fasts, you’ll just end up gaining it all back and then some. The goal should be that this is a lifestyle change. Start walking 10k steps a day, cut off meals after 6pm, don’t snack. Then when you’re used to that, incorporate cardio twice a week. Then up the amount of days you go. Don’t go ham from the jump because you’ll just burnout. Take small steps.
Salaam sis, so glad this page is back!!
I’m 21 and I feel like I am slowly becoming influenced by my surroundings and social media to desire marriage and companionship. However, at the same time I do not think I am ready in terms of my career and life ambitions before I am tied down.
As hard as it is to ignore the void I have no men on social media, don’t speak to men at work, ignore men wherever I see them. Yet despite this I still expect to find the love of my life spontaneously and be swept off my feet Lol. I guess I am wondering how to always have peace of mind in Allah’s timing and take advantage of the free time I have now. The muslim community is so relationship and marriage centred it’s just hard to not want it for yourself despite the difficulties it comes with.
I never used to have this mindset and i’m
getting sick of myself for feeling this way.
First of all, 21 is so young. You have so many years ahead of you inshallah. And I can give you all the canned responses that you’ve already heard – focus on yourself, etc but I’m sure you already know that.
Yes it is okay to feel your emotions. It’s healthy to feel them and acknowledge them.
You’re allowed to feel anything you feel. How you choose to act on those feelings is another question but you’re allowed to have whatever feelings you have.
Honestly the most solid concrete advice I can give is to delete and stay away from social media. At some point you gotta be honest with yourself and take a step back from it if it’s affecting you. It’s important to remember as well everyone is just posting their highlight reel of life and it’s not reflective of real life.
Realistically, if family is not going to set you up with anyone, you’re most likely not going to meet people at home. Go out, go to more events, create more opportunities for things to blossom for you. I could suggest all those things to you but wallahi you are so young babe. You’re fresh out of your teens. Opportunities are not running away from you and trust me, the kind of marriage in your early twenties will be vastly different to a marriage in your late twenties when both parties are more stable and emotionally mature.
Hiya darling,
I’m a 22 yr old that has learnt a lot when it comes to friendships and feel like I have somehow accepted that friends do come and go. Recently, I’ve seen myself go in a little cage and became a little smaller when it comes to my personality. The way I interact with friends and new people, all because of a situation that I experienced a year ago. (Insight- had a big friendship for a few years and truly considered these girls my family until I felt liked got betrayed by a few of them)
I’m seeing myself become quite anxious and just feel like that I’m really struggling to make friendships with other people as well as talk to guys because I’ve internalised that I will be “done dirty”. I do attend therapy feel like that has helped me but I still struggle with building platonic emotional relations with girls and also (very highkey) struggle with building emotional connections with guys.
At this point I feel quite helpless and directionless in which direction to take when it comes to these things because I am a person who loves being social and definitely puts friendships on high pedestal. I don’t know if I’m being quite harsh on myself and other people by not giving them a chance.
It’s understandable. If you’ve been traumatised, you’ll need to work through that, although you can form new friendships while doing that. If it’s simple anxiety that is in your way, learn to work around it. There’s nothing wrong with being picky. Friendship is about more than liking people, it’s also based on common interests and normal give and take.
Finding people with common interests is a good way to locate friends. Find things you like and go do it, you end up making new friends along the way
I went on a date with a guy in London last year October. It was a lovely date. He’s from London and I’m from Stockholm. In November, he made plans to visit me in Stockholm and wants to spend his birthday with me in March. I don’t understand why he didn’t wanna visit me during the Xmas and New Years holiday. But he said he had an issue to sort out. Little did I know the issue was a court date and he would be finding out whether he will be sentenced or not in December. Anyways, he did get sentenced and was released in August 2023. We have each other on Snap, he has changed his username and covers his face with emojis whenever he post on his stories. I haven’t really been watching his stories like that, probably only once. But then again, I never use to watch his stories when we were talking and he didn’t care. Then he posted something yesterday it was a picture of him and his friend and the caption was free my homie. Hours later, I was blocked. Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release? He can be delusional sometimes expecting me to text him first when we have a disagreement even though he was the one who left me on read. But we weren’t even talking two weeks before he got sentenced. Or did he do that because he realised he still has me on his Snap and that wasn’t something I shouldn’t have seen? Because he has never mentioned his criminal past and insisted that he was never involved in stuff like that on our date. But then again, he’s always throwing gang signs and shouting “300” (i’m assuming that’s his lil gang) in his stories and I’ve seen it before. I’m not interested in him anymore because I know I dodged a bullet. But I’m confused because I’ve always heard men don’t block. I get unadding but blocking is a bit extreme on Snap. He blocked me after 3 weeks after his release. I think he was waiting for me to reach out. What do you think is the reason behind this?
“Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release?”
– Why do you care? He’s a criminal. One that lied to you about his lifestyle.
For people to agree to doing long distance, it has to because it’s worth it. How are you doing long distance with a lying criminal? Why do you think THIS is what you deserve.
“I’m not interested in him anymore because I know I dodged a bullet.”
– Who are you fooling? Because it’s not me.
I would have only believed you if you were embarrassed about this entire situation, instead you’re trying to make sense of it and come up with reasons why this is all your fault for example: “Did he do that because I didn’t reach out since his release?”
Please. Stop trying to figure this man out. Instead have a good sit down with yourself and be honest about why this is the type of men you’re going for. No none of this is your fault. This whole situation is actually a blessing from Allah. TO FREEDOM!