What Nobody Tells You About Muslim Marriage
Our first year nearly ended because of where to live. What saved us was an imam who understood setting boundaries.
It sounds absurd. It was absurd. But the where to live was never really about cooking.
Mariam's mother-in-law had a expectation about morning routines. When we married, the expectation was that I would follow the same routine. When I did things differently, the WhatsApp complaints started.
What saved us was an imam who understood marriage counselling. He made us list every unspoken expectation. Mariam's list was 12 items long. Mine was 28. We'd married each other but expected to live in our parents' marriages.
The Quran says spouses are garments for one another — they cover, protect, and complement. We weren't garments. We were roommates with a marriage certificate.
It took six months of honest, painful conversations. Of learning that compromise doesn't mean surrender. Of understanding that my Somali traditions and British traditions could coexist in the same kitchen.
We've been married 12 years now. We laugh about it now. We still disagree about whose mother's cooking is better. But we do the dishes together.
Nobody tells you that marriage isn't about finding the right person. It's about becoming the right person. Every single day. Over and over. With patience, with prayer, and occasionally with raised voices that eventually soften into laughter.