Preparing for marriage when the culture makes it difficult

One of the things I want to talk about is the culture in the Arab American community and how we mix it with religion when it comes to marriage, relationships, and dating.

I’m mainly speaking to young people who want to get married and are dealing with their parents’ expectations. Maybe some parents will read this too.

In the Quran, Allah describes marriage in terms of tranquility, love, and kindness.¹ When you’re looking for a relationship, these are the kinds of qualities you should be looking for anyway. But you also have to ask yourself whether you’re going to give those things to the other person.

I know people who want to get married and haven’t yet. Allah knows their circumstances. I don’t want anyone to feel discouraged or think being unmarried means they’re doing something wrong. But I do think there are expectations in our community that make marriage harder than it needs to be.

What are we asking young people to have?

What I’ve seen in the Arab American culture is that some families want you to have your house, sometimes a fully paid-off house. They want you to have a degree, a good job, and to already be successful and established. Then they’re ready to marry their daughter to you.

Sometimes it feels like they want two houses and two cars. That’s an exaggeration, obviously. Who needs two houses if they’re single? But that’s how much it can feel like they’re asking for.

As a man, I would want someone who wants to build with me. Someone who wants me for myself, not just for the possessions I already have. That’s my own opinion about it.

I understand that parents want what’s best for their daughters. But sometimes what they think is best is the amount of possessions the husband has. His character doesn’t seem to get the same attention.

You think a rich husband is going to provide everything you need. But what if he doesn’t have good character? What if the money goes away? Then you’re still married to the same person.

And for men, do you want a very pretty woman with no deen, no commitment to her religion?

And getting established takes time. I don’t think expecting a young person to already have a house paid off reflects what starting out actually looks like. You might be in school. You might be working part time. You might be learning how to earn enough to support a household.

I highly recommend watching this video, Wealth Inequality in America (Updated 2026) by politizane. It uses charts to show how unevenly wealth is distributed in America, and how much can be hidden when we talk about averages.²

Now think about what we’re asking a nineteen- or twenty-year-old to have before getting married. Having everything already isn’t where everybody starts. So look at the person. Are they responsible? Are they making an effort? Do they have a plan to build a life with someone?

I also think about the pressure to borrow with interest to get ahead. I’m not recommending that. The Quran prohibits riba.³ My concern is that we ask young people to have everything already, while also expecting them to build their lives in a way that follows their religion.

Having a plan to provide matters. I’m not saying it doesn’t. But are we looking at someone’s responsibility, effort, and character? Or are we only looking at what they already own?

Why this mattered so much to me

I wanted to get married when I was very young. I wanted a real relationship.

I was attracted to girls in middle school and high school. Was I ready for marriage then? Probably not. No way. But the feelings were there.

Going to public school, there were times when I got attached to someone because I liked her. For me, those attachments could distract me from my studies and what I was trying to do. They could leave me feeling lonely or insecure.

That’s part of why this was such a big issue for me. I strongly desired marriage, and for a long time I didn’t feel like I had a way to get there.

I eventually married an American woman who isn’t Arab. When we met, she didn’t know about Islam. I told her about it, and she became Muslim. Her family came from a Christian background and didn’t have the Arab American expectations I was talking about.

Around nineteen or twenty, when I was trying to get married, I was still in school. I had some part-time work, but it was spending money, not enough to support a household. I didn’t have a college degree or an established career. I felt like there was no way I would be accepted with what I had at the time.

My wife and I were both at an earlier stage in our religious understanding and commitment. We wanted to learn, and we continued to grow together.

I also want to be honest that I wish I had handled the process in a more Islamically careful way. I didn’t have the support I needed from my parents, and I wasn’t very involved in the masjid or the community. My uncle encouraged me to get the marriage done, and we did. Her father accepted.

My parents didn’t accept my wife for a long time. It was after we had a baby that they finally accepted her.

She’s a very good person, and I’m grateful for my marriage. I’m not telling this story to rub anything in anyone’s face. I’m telling it because I want people to understand that if you don’t help your son or daughter work toward marriage, that desire doesn’t just disappear. In my case, I went ahead.

I wish I had had more support and guidance. Maybe someone else’s experience is different. This is what happened for me.

Start preparing yourself

If you want to get married, start preparing for it.

Keep up your prayers. Make dua. Seek knowledge about your religion.⁴ Learn what marriage involves and what responsibilities you’re going to have. Learn how to communicate, how to deal with disagreements, and how to sustain yourself.

And go get some experience in life.

Go to school, learn a trade, work on a business, whatever direction you’re taking. But don’t just put your head in the books and have no experience. Go do something. Volunteer if that’s how you can get started. Get the knowledge, the ability, and the practice.

You’re not going to become Messi by reading about soccer without ever kicking a ball.

When I started my journey of educating myself, one of the first things I did was read a book about how to read books, read faster, and comprehend better. I knew knowledge was important, and books were a way to get it.

Think about how much of a college course involves reading, learning, and testing your understanding. You can start learning things you need before someone gives you a certificate.

In terms of relationships, that’s what I really want people to do. Educate yourself before you get into one. Learn about the ups and downs and the different stages. Don’t assume you’ll automatically know how to handle everything because you want to be married.

Write down what you want, then look at yourself

Something I did before I got married, and something I think would help a lot of people, is write down what you want in a spouse.

Take a few days or a few weeks. Think about what a good marriage would actually look like in daily life.

What do you want to do together? Do you want children? What would work look like? Cooking? Family relationships? How would you solve disagreements?

Write down the characteristics you want. Put them in a notebook or a journal. Add things as they come to you, and cross things off as you think about them more.

Try to focus on what you want. If you write, “I don’t want somebody who lies,” write underneath it, “I want someone who is honest and has integrity.”

Once you feel like you’ve thought it through, look at that list carefully.

Am I this kind of person? Would I match this kind of person?

Do I want someone who takes care of their health, yet I smoke? Do I want someone who knows how to take care of children, yet I’ve never learned anything about children myself?

You have to look at what you’re asking for and make sure you’re someone who matches and complements those things.

That doesn’t mean you both have to do exactly the same tasks. If the arrangement you both want is that the man works and the woman takes care of the home, then be someone who can do your part in that arrangement.

For example, if you’re a man and you want a wife who cooks, are you taking responsibility for providing the food and what she needs to cook? You can have complementary responsibilities. But you need to think about your responsibility too.

Learn how to listen

The book I highly recommend is Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray.

I’m not telling you to do something I didn’t do. I read it, and it helped me a lot.

Not everything in it applies to every person or every situation. But it helped me understand differences in communication that I hadn’t understood before.

One clear example is talking about problems.

The way I understood it, a man may bring a problem to another man after he’s already tried to solve it and wants help finding a solution. So when his wife talks about something that’s bothering her, he thinks she wants a solution too.

He offers one, thinking he’s helped. But she feels unheard because she wanted him to understand how she was feeling.

That was useful for me to learn. If my wife is talking about something that happened in her day, it doesn’t automatically mean she’s blaming me or saying I’m inadequate. It doesn’t mean every feeling she’s having is something I have to fix.

Sometimes she just wants to talk about it. I can sit there, listen, and hear her out without immediately offering solutions.

That helped things make sense for me. There are other lessons in the book too, and that’s why I recommend it to people preparing for marriage.

Also, a book isn’t something you read once and then let go of forever. You don’t always have to read the whole thing to get something useful from it.

Read the part you need at the current stage of your life. Later, when you need something else, you might remember it from the table of contents or a section you looked through. Go back to it.

The point is to use what you’re learning.

What can you give to the relationship?

A lot of people think about relationships in terms of what they can get.

What can I get? What is this person going to give me? How are they going to make me feel?

But what can you give to the other person?

What are you getting married for? Is it to protect yourself from zina, meaning sexual relations outside marriage? Is it to find peace and build a life together? Or is it for status, to make you look good, or to have someone make you feel like the most beloved person in the world?

And if that’s what you want from them, are you doing that for them?

When I think about the Quran’s description of tranquility in marriage, I also think about my own responsibility. Make it peaceful for the other person. Make it easier for them. Don’t always make their life harder.

For women, think about how you treat your husband. For men, be gentle and compassionate with your wife. She’s not one of your bros that you’re roughhousing with or making fun of to toughen up.

The Prophet ﷺ taught kindness toward women, using the example of a rib that breaks if someone tries to force it straight.⁵

For me, the lesson is to be careful with the person you’re married to. Learn how to understand her and treat her well.

Help people protect themselves

I worry about how easy it is for young people to find themselves in situations that lead toward zina. At school, on social media, online, there are opportunities for attraction and attachment everywhere. Even being in an Islamic school doesn’t mean you never have to deal with those feelings.

We still have to take responsibility for ourselves. The Quran tells believing men and women to lower their gaze and guard their chastity.⁶ The Prophet ﷺ also warned about lustful looking and speech, not only the final sexual act.⁷

But when parents put so much emphasis on possessions, it can seem like protecting their children from these situations isn’t getting the same attention.

They may want what’s best. My criticism is that what they consider best can become mostly about money. I want us to take character and the desire to live within our religion seriously too.

The Prophet ﷺ encouraged young people who were able to marry:

In the same hadith, he advised those unable to marry to fast.⁸

The Quran also calls for helping unmarried people marry, while telling those unable to marry to remain chaste.⁹

That’s why I want our families and communities to help. If someone is trying to prepare themselves and there’s a suitable opportunity, help them work through it.

Marriage isn’t the end of every problem. Now that I’m married, there are different things to solve and be patient with. But for me, it’s been a huge help in living the kind of life I wanted.

Know what you want, and leave room for what you didn’t expect

I think about the story of Musa, peace be upon him.

He helped two women water their flocks, withdrew into the shade, and made this dua:

Later, their father offered marriage on agreed terms of service, after one daughter praised Musa’s strength and trustworthiness.¹⁰

What stands out to me is his character and his willingness to help. That’s what I want us to notice in people too.

Musa accepted the offer. When I read that, it makes me think about how picky we can become. That’s my own reflection on the story. You can know what you want without demanding a perfect person. The list is supposed to help you think. It doesn’t mean every single preference has to be met before you can move forward.

There’s no such thing as a perfect person.

If a suitable opportunity comes, pray istikhara, asking Allah to guide the decision toward what is good for you.¹¹ Think carefully about the person and the kind of life you could build together.

It doesn’t have to look exactly like what you imagined.

If you’re still waiting

If you’ve worked on yourself, you’re trying to follow your religion, and you still haven’t found a spouse, that doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong.

I wanted marriage for a long time before it happened. Being unmarried was difficult for me because I desired it so strongly. Someone else might not feel that same urgency, and I don’t want to make them feel like there’s something wrong with them either.

Continue to make dua. Dua itself is worship.¹²

Ask Allah for guidance. Think honestly about whether there’s something else you can do to prepare. Is there something you need to learn? Someone you can speak to? Some experience you need to get?

If there is, fill your time with that. Keep working on yourself. But don’t turn this into thinking that if you’re still unmarried, you must not have done enough.

Sometimes you have to be patient.

I also think about Musa’s journey in Surat al-Kahf, where events he questioned were later explained. The boat was damaged, not sunk, and the explanation revealed a danger he hadn’t known about.¹³

That reminds me how limited my own view can be. How many things happen in my life when I don’t yet know what the outcome will be?

This is something I’m working on myself. Sometimes we go through uncertainty, we feel upset, and we want reassurance. In those moments, I want to return to Allah and ask for guidance.

The Quran tells us not to give up hope in His mercy.¹⁴ And the Prophet ﷺ described Allah’s mercy toward His servants as greater than a mother’s mercy toward her child.¹⁵

I don’t know when the right opportunity will come for you. I don’t want to promise that doing everything on a list means you’ll be married by a certain time.

What I want to encourage is preparation, patience, and making it easier when a good opportunity does come.

Learn what you need to learn. Work on your character. Think about what you can give to someone else. And if you’re in a position to help someone get married, help them.

We should be finding peace with our spouses. We shouldn’t have to make getting there so hard.

References

The Quran quotation and summaries use The Qur’an, translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford University Press, 2005. Displayed quotations are labeled with their sources; the surrounding summaries are paraphrases. Personal reflections are identified in the article.