In Search Of (ISO) Thread

My wife and I got married this year. I just turned 29 two months ago, and my wife is 26 years old. We are trying for a baby, and this is our second cycle.

I am posting this just to ask for more duas from everyone. May Allah bless us with the beautiful blessing of a child soon and bless us with healthy and pious children. Ameen. 🤲🏻

Please keep us in your duas. May Allah bless everyone with the happiness they are praying for. Ameen. ❤️

My wife started an Instagram channel

And i feel like it’s eating away at me and our marriage

I feel like I’m just a utility now. Her attention and focus and conversations are all about Instagram and money now.
She barely shows emotion and love towards me I have to ask and I just overall feel neglected

I’ve spoken to her multiple times

It gets briefly better and then I start to feel the same

I’m a stay at home dad by choice for another 6-7 months so just not getting the attention and love from my wife makes me feel like crap

She’s trying to make money on the side using her channel but she’s a doctor and already earns enough

I don’t see why she needs to waste time on an instagram account to make few lousy bucks week if that at the cost of the relationship

The second thing is what are your thoughts on a male cousin calling her and inviting us all over for dinner

He is family but he also has my number and on top of that he makes his wife do niqab and not talk to any males. So I find the double standard a bit disturbing that he has no problem bypassing me to ask my wife while in his household he wants to be the man of the house and everything should go through him first

Also he kept asking me the other day if everything is okay at my house like when did I ever tell him that things were not okay with me and my wife and why is it his business

This is the same cousin that wanted to marry my wife once upon a time but he is now married and has 4 kids so I could just be overthinking and maybe being slightly insecure but at the same time I feel off about this situation

It doesn't really bother me all, tbh. I am just a bit confused and want to understand where she coming from.

I remember i noticed when my sister gotten married. And talking about marriage she had this smug look on her face and was talking about her married friends and her face looked like she was looking down on me. Like this glint in her eyes, as like she is better.

I am happy that she is gotten married. But anyone can get married, is this her insecurity? Has anyone gotten that from their sibling? A vibe of superiority that they are married.

However once, she had gotten married, she seemed more private and my parents noticed she is silent, and is secretive about her marriage. My mom told me, she personally going through some financial issues, blah, blah.

But i don't know, do married people secretly think they are better than you?

Is this actually a thing for some people or am I overthinking it?

A few days ago I was out with a guy who is quite younger to me and we saw a couple on a motorcycle . He said something like, “I also want to roam around on a bike with my girlfriend like that.” I said it jokingly like “Bro, do that with your wife, not your girlfriend.” I meant it in a light way, like if you get into something serious, try to make it official.

He immediately said no. Those things are only meant to be done with a girlfriend.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this kind of thing.

Another friend I was talking to had just gotten his heart broken. He's much older in age. His girlfriend ended up marrying someone else. I told him maybe try to build something with the girl he eventually marries (his family is conservative, so arranged marriage is pretty likely). He said he wouldn’t love her like that.

Also, both of these guys are Muslims and one guy is a practice Muslim who even reads tahajjud.

These conversations keep making me wonder: why do some men already treat marriage / having a wife as a burden or a formality instead of something they can actually look forward to? Why is the girlfriend the one you enjoy life with, and the wife just… responsibility?

Can someone explain this mindset to me? Is this common or have I just run into a few weird takes? We as Muslims have no other option but to marriage to fulfil our emotional and physical needs yet it something that has lost its excitement and charm.

Is this because of prevailing zina in our society that the charm of marriage has been cleaned off from the heart of people? Is it some kind of azab?

Salam everyone,

I’ve been having issues with my (F24) husbands (M26) family. Apparently his family has a lot of complaints about me and I didn’t even know until recently.

I went over last night and the whole time his parents and sister were yelling at me and attacking me over all their thoughts about me. I wasn’t even able to finish a sentence without someone cutting me off and then saying “don’t speak over us we’re elders” even though THEY were the ones to cut me off first.

My husband “defended” me but not as much as I feel like he should have. When I came home I cried so much that I fainted.

I feel like the year we’ve been married I’ve cried because of him and his family more than I have in my whole life.

I always hear a man who causes his wife to cry through oppression or unjust behavior is sinful and the angels curse him. Of course I never want anything bad to happen to my husband but I just want him to realize what he is doing to me and our marriage and his image in my eyes whenever he singles me out.

I can’t even confide in my husband because everything I tell him he tells his family. I’ve tried communicating with him and everything. His sister even told me I am not welcome in her house and he never once told her that he wouldn’t go if I’m not welcome.

I feel like I’m just alone and I always pray that Allah just remove me from this world. I feel like I’ve made the biggest mistake in my life by getting married to him.

All I’ve ever wanted was love and loyalty and support from the one person who I can rightfully expect it from. But I never got any of that.

Any advice is welcome and please if anyone has any stories of their husbands or anyone doing wrong to them and getting what they deserve please share because right now I feel as if I’m meant to be some sort of punching bag and everyone gets away from it.

A lot of people in marriage ask themselves some version of this question:

“Why does it feel like my husband or wife just doesn’t care?”

And sometimes the answer is not that they literally don’t care.

Sometimes it’s that they are emotionally absent.

Imagine a husband comes home after finding out he didn’t get a promotion he had been hoping for.

He tells his wife:

“I didn’t get the promotion.”

She replies:

“Oh well.”

Then changes the subject.

Technically, she responded.

But emotionally, he may walk away feeling like:

“What matters to me doesn’t really matter to you.”

Now imagine a different response.

She notices the disappointment in his voice. She asks what happened. She listens. She comforts him. She reminds him that Allah chooses what is best and makes du’a for him.

She still cannot give him the promotion.

But he walks away feeling lighter.

Why?

Because he never expected her to solve the problem.

He just wanted to know that the problem mattered to her.

This is one of the foundations of a healthy marriage.

This is called high trust metric: when husband and wife are emotionally invested in one another’s wellbeing.

Your happiness matters to me.

Your stress matters to me.

Your disappointment matters to me.

Your fear matters to me.

It does not mean both spouses have to feel exactly the same emotion.

If a wife is anxious about a medical appointment, her husband may not feel as anxious as she does. But if he remembers the appointment, checks on her, reassures her, makes du’a for her, or asks how it went afterwards, he is communicating something powerful:

“You are not carrying this alone.”

The opposite is also true.

If she says, “I’m really worried about tomorrow,” and he barely looks up from his phone and says, “You’ll be fine,” the deeper message can become:

“Your emotional world is yours to deal with.”

And this is how marriages are often strengthened or weakened — not through one dramatic moment, but through hundreds of small interactions.

Every day, spouses are quietly asking each other:

“Does my emotional world matter to you?”

We actually see this kind of emotional concern in the life of the Prophet ﷺ.

When Ṣafiyyah رضي الله عنها was crying after being hurt by something Ḥafṣah رضي الله عنها had said, the Prophet ﷺ did not dismiss her feelings.

He asked:

«ما يُبْكِيكِ؟»

“What is making you cry?”

He listened first.

Then he comforted her and reminded her of her honour, and afterwards he corrected Ḥafṣah رضي الله عنها.

Her pain became his concern.

That is the point.

A healthy marriage is not just two people living under the same roof.

It is a marriage where both people can genuinely feel:

“My happiness matters to you. My pain matters to you. My fears matter to you. I am not emotionally alone in this marriage.”

I write more about marriage, communication, trust and emotional connection through Marriage With Mercy.

I hosted a dinner for my in-laws. During the dinner, my husband made a joke saying that I had hit him. This was apparently his style of humour, but I only came to see it after marriage. In particular, he would joke this way with his sister, who has a history of physical aggression, which I found very odd. Personally, I don’t think accusations or jokes about physical violence are something to joke about. I responded by saying, “Stop lying.” He was laughing in the same way he did when joking with his sister, so it was very clear he was joking.

Very quickly, my mother-in-law interrupted angrily. She told me, “How dare you speak to your husband like that?” She said I needed to develop manners and learn to respect my husband. She then told him that he needed to discipline me and not allow me to speak to him in that way. The conversation then shifted into comments about my religiosity. She began telling me what clothing I should wear and what she believed was appropriate for me, despite her own children not dressing that way.

From my perspective, the focus should have been on my husband’s joke about physical violence. If anything, he should have been corrected and reminded to joke truthfully, as the Prophet saw warned against lying even in jokes. It was very uncomfortable to be lied like that too infront of so many family members. Also after I spent all day preparing and hosting them

I feel there is a wider pattern I am noticing, my mother-in-law seemed very quick to hold me accountable for how I spoke, while rarely holding her own children accountable for what they said or did. I noticed my husband comes home angry toward me a lot after visiting them. I’m worried that her judgement may cause rifts between us or am I overthinking. I’m also worried about my husband starting this in the first place. He is late 20’s

An excellent talk on the sacred ideal of marriage and what it means for a marriage to live up to the sunnah.

I know usually it’s the parents who make it hard for their kids to get married, but has anyone dealt with the same situation but with their toxic siblings?

My sister has some mental issues and cannot for the life of her know how to be happy for anyone. She’s 30 and will likely never get married. She has ruined and my siblings reputations in the community to get married since she’s the oldest one (and our mom passed away when we were younger)

If she finds out someone is asking out us and getting married she tells them we aren’t interested or will say we have too much on our plate. Or she will openly talk nonsense and make up lies (she has BPD) and try to turn our own friends on us lol. Ik I sound crazy but this is true.

The most recent example of something she did was tell me I wasn’t invited to my close friend’s wedding or henna (when I was, but the Pali culture sends the invite to the mom or oldest sibling. Then she goes to the wedding and told my friends I never wanted to go and that I had “better things to do”. Alhamdulilah my friends know she’s crazy so they just nodded but like it’s just crazy to me how someone can do that to their own sibling subhanallah

I’m at a loss. I listen to ruqyah every now and then and do my daily athkar but I feel like there’s a true blockage to any real n3ma in my life no matter how hard I try, even aside from marriage. Alhamdulilah for everything regardless.

Salam everyone, I curious question from me.
How long did it take for you to tell your husband/wife that you love them? And who said it first?

I am (F27) and my parents are in the talks of my marriage to a boy and my parents had been trying to set me up for a nikah for ages but I always refused saying I wasn’t ready for marriage! But recently a lot of my classmates and friends have gotten married or are in serious relationships and I am the only single one, recently 2 of my best friends also got into a relationship(the boy asked me to set him up with the girl!) now I am feeling even more left out and I wish to have a companion of my own! I have spoken to a few guys already but I am not feeling a connection or understanding with them, I am not sure if it’s because I am too rigid or if they are legitimate concerns! I like this boy and my parents are talking to his parents but I am not sure if it’s just a crush as I have only seen his profile and have not even spoken to him yet! What if I am only seeking marriage for companionship coz I am lonely and don’t understand the responsibilities that come up with such a relationship?

My fiancée and I are both young adults and currently in a long-distance relationship. Our families are involved and we've been planning to eventually get married once we're older and financially stable.

The difficult part is the timeline. We haven't really spent much meaningful time together in person as adults. We're currently expecting to have our religious marriage in a couple of years, but we likely wouldn't actually begin living together until several years after that because of university, finances, and other circumstances.

So realistically, we're looking at potentially 4+ more years before we can actually live together as husband and wife. That's really difficult for me to wrap my head around.

Even after we're technically married (nikkah), we'd potentially still be living in completely different countries and continuing a long-distance relationship. I'd be expected to be there for her emotionally as her husband, but we'd still mostly be communicating through our phones. I'd still want to be there for her emotionally as her husband obviously, but we'd mostly be communicating through our phones which can get exhausting.

I'm someone who really values physical affection and intimacy. It's a major part of how I experience love, and we've talked about it before. We have some differences in how we view physical intimacy and how much importance we place on it, and that's starting to make me question our compatibility. I completely respect her boundaries and I don't think she owes me any kind of physical affection. At the same time, I don't think I should ignore my own needs either. I'm worried that our expectations around intimacy may simply be different.

I can travel to see her, but we're both going to be busy with university and our lives, so I don't know how realistic frequent visits would be. There are also cultural/family expectations that make it unclear how much normal couple time we'd actually be able to have even when we visit each other. And honestly, the constant phone calls have started becoming exhausting.

At the beginning, talking every day felt exciting because everything was new. But after a while, talking through a screen doesn't feel like enough. I want to actually experience life with my partner. I want to go places together, spend ordinary days together, have physical affection, and build memories in person.

What makes me feel particularly hopeless is that there isn't really a clear endpoint.

It's not "just wait a few months and then we'll be together." It's potentially years and years of waiting. I still love her. I genuinely think she's an amazing person, which makes this even more confusing.

But I've noticed that some of the excitement I had at the beginning is fading. We've also had quite a few arguments, and I don't think our conflict-management styles are particularly healthy right now. We can resolve things and become close again, but then another issue eventually comes up. There are things about how we communicate that I'm trying to improve, but sometimes I worry that we're already developing unhealthy patterns.

I'm also scared about what will happen when I go through university. I'll meet new people, make friends, and potentially have women around me who I see every day. I don't want to develop feelings for someone else, and I definitely don't want to hurt my fiancée. I'm scared that over several years of being apart, I could eventually develop feelings for someone else simply because another person is physically present in my everyday life. That possibility scares me. And because our families are involved, ending the relationship wouldn't just affect the two of us. There would be family expectations and relationships involved too.

I feel like I'm being asked to make a lifelong commitment while I'm still very young, knowing that I may not actually get to experience normal married life with my wife for several more years. I don't know if I'm being impatient or unrealistic. I still want to make this work, but sometimes I feel genuinely sad and hopeless about the situation.

Am I focusing too much on the timeline, or are these legitimate compatibility concerns that I should take seriously before getting married?

Like title says my cousin (mom’s sister’s son) passed away this past weekend due to a heart attack. He suffered from a severe mental disorder but no one foresaw his death coming. My wedding is in two weeks and obviously by then the 40-day mourning period won’t be over. Some context: almost all of my extended family lives abroad so they weren’t coming to the wedding anyways since it’s nearly impossible for them to get US visas.

My mom is devastated. She loved him deeply and often babysat him when he was young so she feels very attached to him. I called her yesterday to check in on her and she unprompted told me I should continue having my wedding and celebrate but that she will not attend.

I don’t know if it’s selfish of me to be feeling this now but I’m so incredibly hurt. I have a great relationship with my mom, so I could never imagine not having her at my wedding. I’ve put so much effort into planning the wedding and was really excited to be celebrating with my family and friends.

I didn’t say anything to her during the call, I just told her okay since I knew she was still really sad, but I don’t know if I should try talking to her again. Or maybe I should get my siblings or my dad to talk to her?

Assalamu alaikum. I’m looking for honest advice from practicing Sunni Muslims, especially brothers who can give a perspective from the man’s side.
I’m in a serious relationship with a woman, and both of our families know about us and know we intend to get married. We’re waiting on some things before the nikāḥ, including her residency situation.
She would prefer to delay the nikāḥ, while I personally would rather get married sooner. Because of her immigration situation, we’re considering doing the civil/legal marriage first, then having the nikāḥ and wedding about 9–10 months later.
Our parents don’t know that we’re considering the civil marriage/green-card route. They know about our relationship and that we’re planning to get married, but not this specific plan.
From an Islamic and practical perspective, is this actually a good idea? Would you, as a Muslim man, be comfortable legally marrying a woman and then waiting almost a year for the nikāḥ? Are there any Islamic concerns or risks I should seriously think about before doing this?
I’m not really asking about USCIS. I want to know what practicing Muslims would personally think about this situation and whether you would advise doing it or waiting.

My husband and I have been married for 2 years and it’s not going as expected. I moved cities for him where I have no family. In our first year, I spent most of my time at home alone. He opened his business so he told me it would be a tough year. I understood and just waited for him to come home only for him to knock out as soon as he arrived (intimacy only twice a month).

We got through that first year alhamdulillah. Fast forward the 2nd year and we still don’t spend quality time together. The most we will do is watch a movie while eating dinner. I try to ask him if he wants to do things like go to the museum or do an activity. But he always says no. Then will get annoyed if I go with my friends. All I ever want is to feel loved and valued like I did right before marriage in the getting to know phase. He used to plan activities and now he just says idk what you want to do. Or everything costs money and I can’t afford it.

That’s another thing is finances. He acts like he has no money when he makes a good amount. But he says he’s overwhelmed by everything he has to pay for (rent, car, bills things he needs to pay for Islamically). I do help with groceries often and don’t even ask him for money. I don’t ask for things even required from him like clothes, personal care supplies, beauty supplies, etc. Also, it’s been months since I lost my job and not once has he ever asked me if I need anything all he asks on a weekly basis is if I’m applying for jobs. At this point we are only intimate maybe once every 2 months.

We just had a talk about this an hour ago. He barely replied to what I was saying and when he did made it about money. I brought up how we don’t spend enough quality time together, how the trajectory of the relationship makes me upset and he said I’ll do better & just knocked out. Currently next to me snoring. It just irritates me so much and makes me think does he not think I will leave? Does he take me serious?

During the day we are friendly with each other and joke around but it doesn’t feel romantic. On top of everything he does mention wanting a baby. I can’t even think of that right now.I feel like we are falling apart. I’m tired of waiting and nothing is changing.

This is going to be a long story so bear with me. Im looking on some perspective on this where I can see what my sisters think about this.
So I am 29M and got married last November to 24M. It was an arranged setup where we got engaged in July 2024 so there was an approximate 15 month engagement period.
So for context, I am from a family where I am the youngest and have a married brother 35M. My wife is the eldest in her family having a younger brother and youngest sister.

The engagement period.
Before the engagement, we met each other just a week or two prior and started talking to each other. Nothing very special but we did talk about priorities and what to expect and I specifically asked her if she was into the marriage or not, because consent matters a lot to me. Her parents wanted to marry her with me from the get go where my parents and I went to her place for the first time and they were the ones pushing for a quick engagement (we do live 5minutes drive away from each other). I took a few days, did istikhara and everything was fine where I kept a little distance from talking and she was very talkative over text (we couldnt meet each other much as my job takes me to far off places as deployment). At that time, she was studying in a well off university (in terms of expenses). She was a little shaky, as you would expect women to be nervous regarding such a big step in their life. However, a month into it her birthday comes and since Im far away I couldnt manage a birthday surprise as per her expectations and my parents aren’t so good with gifts. From her birthday, she started becoming distant and barely talked to me, expressing her disappointment with mine and my families gifts. At the time, I was suffering from a severe infection and was admitted in a hospital at my deployment location.
Her mother had been a very frequent communicator with me where she would text me, call me and tell me about her and her family. Her mother told me how she was disappointed with the gift so I sent her two gifts in the next two weeks through a friend which were quite expensive to make up for it. She then started to be a little better but then asked me for “space”, i.e. not to talk to her for a few days which eventually became a week. Come september, I went on leave to my home and we were fine, we met each other, went on drives and everything seemed fine for a few months as you would expect an engaged couple to be.
So in January 2025, I am deployed to a closer location and the time comes to decide dates for the wedding. We discuss with her father who is a little confused at first but we settle for November 2025. She starts telling me jokingly that we should reconsider, maybe delay for a year or two and what not but for no reason, just that she is confused. Things go to and fro and everything is routine for another few months.
Moving to July/August 2025, wedding dates come nearer and we are starting preparations where I am deployed to another location which is maybe 6 hours away. She again starts jokingly saying that she wants to delay but does not give I reason. I ask her what the issue is but she doesnt tell me, but she is very normal and really attached to me judging by her frequent texts and videocalls which do bother me at that time but we meet up once Im on leave, we go on drive or I visit her home where her family is very forthcoming and really treats me a bit too much.

Pre Wedding Phase
A month** before **the wedding, she starts to become distant and completely stops contact with me. I try to approach her and her parents but they say everythings fine and she is just anxious, and I believe them since every girl would be in this stage. I reassure her, and try to tell her that everything would be fine and its too late to cancel the venue and tickets for her and mine family coming from abroad for the wedding and she reluctantly agrees. As per her parents, she increases her dose of anti-depressants but she remains slightly distant from me throughout. The pre wedding events begin and we both get busy with our side of the families.

Wedding
So when the Mehndi / Nikkah happens, she is very shaky and nervous. I comfort her the best I can and her family surround her, not letting anyone know of her condition. She is very much concerned about her friends coming and doesnt even invite them, or even tell them beforehand that she is getting married!
While signing the nikkah papers, I see that her signature is shaky and her family tells me later on that her brother held her hand to sign it.
She goes to her home, nervous and crying and I comfort her the best I can.
That night, her mother has a vertigo attack and is admitted in hospital and remains there for three weeks.
The day of the Wedding/ Barat, I pick her up from the Salon and she is fine, we go to the photoshoot venue and yet again things are fine aside from the nervousness. Once we go to the wedding venue, her mother barely arrives for half an hour and has to go back to her hospital. But I do notice that she is concerned about her friends being there. We go to the hotel room we had booked (she wanted to spend a few nights at the hotel instead of my house) and her whole family, literally her cousins and aunts come to accompany her and remove the makeup and the dress. This does concern me a bit but considering her mothers situation, it seems fine. No intimacy that night since she is on her period.
The next morning, we wake up and I go to the washroom. Coming out, I see her crying after checking her phone and comfort her and ask her whats wrong. She goes on to tell me that she doesnt want to go with the Walima and Im really taken aback with that. I comfort her, tell her its ok nothing is going to happen and that it would not be fine not having the walima since everything is planned.
I call her father and aunt and take her to her home, visibly shaken myself about whats going on. She reluctantly agrees after a few hours so I take her to the salon with her cousin, then the shoot and then the venue where things go fine without an issue. That night, she tells me that she doesnt want to spend the night with me at the hotel and wants to go home so considering the situation, I say ok and let her be. My family does not have an idea about whats going on as I dont tell them considering what they would think about it.

Post Wedding
She continues to spend her time at her home, with us going out for drive or meet her mother at the hospital for a few hours. And she remains distant.
4 days after the marriage, we have to go on our honeymoon and she asks me if she can take her cousin and sister along for “moral support”. Yet again, I agree to make her comfortable considering the situation.
We go for 3 days together, with her cousin and sister in one room and us in another yet she does spend most of the time with them.
On the second night, I ask her to tell me candidly whats wrong because things are not fine. She tells me that she has “attachment issues” and that she had a previous relationship which didnt turn out well so she needs time. Im visibly taken aback and concerned. So, upon return I go to her father and ask him to meet me. Then I meet both her parents who say that she is just making excuses.
I try to comfort her any way I can and be there for her yet all this time she remains secretive and hides her phone from me (continues to this day).
Then, one day her parents force her to spend the night with me at my home. We spend the night and the next day she tells me to drop her at the hospital. I drop her off and she texts me that she does not want this. Her parents are forcing her to spend time with me and that way everything will backfire. So yet again, I say ok, take your time and relax, Ill be there for you. Things go on the same way where we meet daily for an hour so but no spending the night.
Fast forward to end of december while my wife is away, i open her mothers laptop as she asked me to install a software. Whatsapp is open and i see her texts to her mother complaining “only your choice can be this cheap and dirty” and then a comment on a photo of us together “i wish it was xyz (name of another guy)”. Im visibly taken aback and I confront her and her family where she tells me that this is the same guy she told me about and blah blah. Her parents keep saying that its an excuse and she is not involved or whatever. Still, I dont tell my parents.
Things settle down a bit, I move away and keep telling her to stay with me but she hardly comes for 7 months (only two time, and one time with her cousin and sister). We have our fights where she either wants to visit abroad with her friends, or want something too expensive etc. Even when I come on Eid, I have to fight her to spend time with me. And during this time, intimacy is bare minimum as she is totally uninterested and makes excuses for everytime we are together.
I confront her about her attachment with her past relationship and she gaslights me for being too controlling and manipulative so I eventually stop about it. The fight spirals to almost a seperation and I tell my parents and thats the first time they know about it. But I stop telling them later on so they do not have resentment with her once she does come. I do regularly talk to her parents about concerns but they try to assure me, telling me that they have tried everything, they start praising me for bearing with her and everything and what not.
I send her on an umrah with her friend in February 2026 and thins do seem to get better, then I take her on another umrah with myself in July 2026 but we keep having fights during that as well.
Fast forward to our return, I am now deployed to my home city and live at my place. But still, after almost a year she barely comes to spend time with me and in a month, we only spend a few nights together. She makes time for her cousins and her friends, prioritizing their plans over ours and our fights have become more frequent.

For the past two weeks, I have sat her down and expressed my concerns about her backing off of her commitment/promise to spend time together over excuses and spending more time with her friends and cousins than me, her husband. I feel to have lost connection with my family and friends because I always wanted to spend more time with my wife. I feel like that she only contacts me when she needs something and is still involved with someone( yet i Dont have proof apart from her behaviour). I have been contemplating divorce but I cannot get over the fact that I have to answer to Allah over it and the stigma attached with it.
I recently confronted her father, meeting him alone and expressing my concerns to what he replied that I have two choices, either to trust in Allah to change her heart or end it, its my choice. Yet I feel her parents keep hiding something from me, even though they do tell me a lot of things which the girls parents so not occasionally mention.
I feel isolated, emotionally drained and feel like I am being punished for unknown reasons. I see other couples and I feel sad seeing them together, spending time together without a lot of expenditure and in routine activities where she wants to only do things which take a lot of expenditure.
In her defense, my wife said that she has anxiety and cannot leave her room. She does take medicines since a few years and does not spend a night over at her friends or cousins, only her room. She has improved herself as compared to last year but I feel that the real love is missing. I literally have to beg her to spend time with me.
She works for only a short time which is online teaching and is not completely dependent on me, takes pocket money from me (I still give it to her and handle the expenses once she is with me) and her father as well.

Salaam brothers and sisters,

I’m going through a very rough time as my husband and I are separated due issues we’ve had regarding my adjustment into the family and ultimately his mother’s control.

His family won’t let me contact him. My family have tried countless times as have I.

Yesterday, I started reciting Surah Baqarah with my Arabic teacher as I have been taking Tajweed lessons and trying to improve myself despite my situation and grieve the loss of my brother.

I bumped into my husband yesterday and I asked him to allow me to come home. For us to give our marriage another try (esp. when it hasn’t been that long). He has been advised to not talk to me, and his family don’t want to talk. He told me he loves me and I said the same. He kept telling me that I’d be better off without him, that my friends will support me through this.

He won’t divorce me either and all my belongings are still with him. I don’t want a divorce, and give my conversation with him, neither does he. But we’re stuck in having to follow what his family want.

I know Allah (swt) is the best of planners, and that I wouldn’t be going through this if I couldn’t handle it.

Am I wrong to have these thoughts thinking that because I recited Surah Al-Baqarah, that Allah (swt) allowed him and I to meet?

Any help would be much appreciated as I really want to move forward with my marriage despite the challenges that we are both facing.

My father-in-law is a difficult person. He has a very short temper, and while sometimes he's fine and in a good mood, sometimes he's in a bad mood, and things will irritate him quite easily. He gets into arguments with people a lot where he upsets them. He only speaks to 1 of his siblings and not the other 3 as he’s fallen out with them and maybe has 2 or 3 friends, that’s it. With the dad, from everything that the siblings and my husband have said, is that he's always been like this, that there's literally no point in trying to speak to him because he never takes it well. He gets aggressive and defensive. He never shows any empathy. In his opinion he is always the one who's been wronged, and he holds grudges, isn't forgiving.

And it’s not always about things that other people have said to him, just situations. For example, we went to a restaurant once, and the waiter handed out empty plates before our food came, and my father-in-law got really angry that the plates were not warm and berated the staff in quite a rude way. Situations like that happen fairly often, especially when we're going out and about.

My husband and I don't live with him, and he lives just with his wife. But they've had a bad marriage, from what I understand, for nearly the whole marriage. They used to have really bad arguments a lot of the time, and he cheated on her, had a baby outside of marriage, and had lied to her about it. There were also periods when he would leave home for, like, months on end and not see his wife or kids.. The situation now is sometimes they get into arguments, and the dad always speaks to the mom in a very berating way. He'll tell her to shut up. He doesn't really show any respect for her or opinion and speaks down to her. And sometimes when this happens, she'll fight back, and he'll just explode, and sometimes she'll cry, and apparently it's just a cycle. She works, and even though she's pretty old, and one of the reasons why she says she carries on working is because she doesn't want to be stuck at home with him all day. He's now retired.

In respect of the siblings, one of the siblings is no contact with the dad and doesn't see him or attend family events where the dad is around. The other ones do see him, but I guess at least one of them definitely limits how much time is spent in their parents' house and doesn't go over there really often. The other one, I know her and her husband don't particularly like the dad, but they are really close to the mom, so they just tolerate him. Me and my husband, we live in a different city. We used to go every six weeks and stay for the whole weekend at the parents' house. My husband, he is very quiet around his dad, because that's how he learned as a child just to cope, to not say anything. And I feel like he's always walking on eggshells whenever we're in the house with his dad. So there can be some sort of level of unease and not really feeling like you can fully relax when his dad's present. Even though sometimes he can be fine, I think it's just the unpredictability.

Recently, there were a couple of incidents where the dad was at our house, and one time he had an argument with my husband and his own wife in my house, which resulted in my husband being very unhappy and my mother-in-law crying. My father in law doesn't really seem to have any empathy. He always paints himself as the wronged party and the victim in arguments and I the way that he responds to these situations really immature, considering he's an older man in his late sixties and kind of acts like a bit of a child. Then most recently there was an incident in my house where he exploded at me. He said to me that I should be doing all of the cooking in the house and my husband shouldn't be doing any of it, and that I should be making only food. My husband and I were both shocked at this. My husband later said to him after we'd finished dinner that he shouldn't have said that, and it was rude and not very nice. He immediately got his back up and was really defensive and it turned into an unpleasant situation.

My husband and I have now decided that we think it's better going forward if we limit how much time we spend with him, and when we go to their house, we won't stay overnight, but we'll just stay for a lunch, for example, for a couple of hours and leave, and we'll try to spend time with his mom away from his dad. Is this reasonable? We also don't want him to stay in our house overnight anytime soon. My husband thinks that his mom will be upset if we spend less time over at their house, and I agree. However, I also feel like to protect our own mental health and improve our relationship with the dad, it's actually better if we limit the time that we spend in that house and with them. We're worried, obviously, as well that in our culture, respect to elders and spending time with parents is important. So we don't want to go no contact. We want to find the right limits.

A woman once had a husband who was overly suspicious. He created false affairs out of literally nothing. It was so bad that at one point he whipped himself into a literal frenzy, and suddenly interrogated a man his wife had gone to high school with, with whom she had never had a relationship other than being in the same general, loose friendship group. He asked the man if he had had an affair with his wife during their marriage and cursed him out. Despite that the man lived far away, and despite that his wife never had the funds to go home, had her young children perpetually with her, and happened to never go home alone. The man he lashed at decided it would be fun to avenge himself by playing along. So he said “yes…yes, I had an affair with your wife, and she spoke so badly about you, and I felt so sorry for you and the kids, and blah blah blah.” And so, when she arrived home from work, her husband looked at her with murderous eyes. When he then accused her, and told her what the man had said, she became outraged! He showed her the conversation and she snatched the phone and challenged the man to provide the date this supposedly happened. So, the man obligingly supplied a false date, to which she replied, oh really?! And where did she stay? And where were the kids? And he lied some more and said “she stayed with her mom but met me privately, and the kids did not travel with her.” “And how did she come?” she asked, still pretending to be her husband. And he said, “she flew in for the weekend, and she wanted to leave you and be with me, blah, blah, blah.” At this point, not only was the man stroking his own ego, but he was also convinced he was doing the wife a huge favor!!

Fortunately, the wife had the wherewithal to catch him in his game. She asked for proof—any proof: pictures, a flight number, airline tickets—literally anything. But he could produce nothing. She called him out for being the liar she was, then turned to her husband and said, “you know I was here every day of all the last seven years since we married, you know I never traveled or flew on a plane, and you surely do know I never once have left the kids to their own devices, nor to you!” She felt so lucky in that moment, to have spent the past few years in total poverty due to her husband’s failures, just because it made proving her innocence possible. To think how bad it would have been if she had been traveling home all those years and then be so unjustly accused. Then she went to her own well developed Facebook log where she had been posting family stuff on a daily basis for years on end, found the date, and showed her husband the entire two week period sandwiching the date: pictures of her doing things with the kids in their town, in their home—far away from this trouble-maker, day in and day out. And even then, her husband never fully believed her after that! She ended up leaving to escape the feeling of being treated so horribly dishonorably. This is a TRUE story, believe it or not! Spouses should not be so bent on suspicion that they let a complete stranger destroy a marriage, a family. Get a grip, ppl.

I (19) got married 10 months ago. My Husband did a lot of haram to me. Like lying to me about His situation before Nikah, not providing for me for the first 8 months, he was physically abusive recently once and has been insulting, threatening, yelling, mocking and lying to me from the beginning until now.

I didnt leave him alone for all these months, even tho we had to live in my mother-in-law's apartment and i was almost confined to one room without kitchen or bathroom. I lent him multiple thousands of Euros. I researched and planned so much, trying to help.

His Family gave him our own apartment since June, but the underlying issues still never improved. My trust is broken. I also yell more in response than i used to. I miss the calm, optimistic version of myself. My Heart still wants nothing more than for him to finally do Tawbah.

My parents arent Muslim but they're begging me to get a divorce and even my Wali Said i should for my safety.

Since that, i have asked for Khula so many times but he refuses because he claims to love me. The Shaykh that was my Wali also stopped responding a month ago.

I don't know where else to go 💔 do any sisters have experience with getting Faskh?

Salaam.

As the title states. I've been talking to a potential for a few weeks now. At first everything seemed normal but recently they've taken a different direction. Has anyone on here dealt with unconventional marriage proposals? Something far left. Completely abnormal.

Thanks

Edit: I've not posted before. Sorry for missing out some information. So I've been talking to a sister. She's a few years older. I'm 32 and she's 36. She's essentially asked me about polygamy and asked if I would consider her friend for marriage as well. Hence why I said it's completely abnormal because it's usually men who bring this up but in this case it's her.