From Self Love to Romantic Love
On Getting Married in 4 Months after Meeting Him
Early in July, one of my favorite Medium writers, Charlie Scaturro, asked:
Can You Love Someone Else When You Don’t Love Yourself?
And I responded, “Yes.”
Medium provided an outlet for me during my darkest days. Days when I was unable to get out of bed and days when I would cry myself to sleep wishing for my life to end instead. After my last official post, which was pretty suicidal to say the least, I chose to take a break from writing because I got busy loving someone other than myself.
Over the years, I tried gluing my brokenness through undeserving and uncommitted relationships with Muslim men. Last summer (when I precisely started writing on Medium), I began therapy. Therapy forced me to prod my life with fine-tipped forceps and dissect every bit of it. Through this introspection, I discovered childhood experiences that had caused my insecurities and as a result, made me fall for men that my roommate termed as, The (Emotionally) Unavailables.
As I finally let go of a toxic relationship with a Mr Unavailable at the end of last summer, I decided that I was no longer going to look for love because there is truth in being happy with one’s single self first. There is truth in giving love to one’s own self even when we don’t find loving ourselves fully — deeply and strongly — because hopefully a person of good character and high moral standards will at least recognize the self-respect we grace ourselves with.
I decided I was not going to look for love but wait for it to walk into my life.
Thus, I spent the entire last year figuring out how to love my single self.
As a hugger, I shared with my therapist how significantly important physical touch meant to my healing. However, as a Muslim woman who had vowed to please God, I did not have access to it in its romantic form unless it came packaged as true love who I would eventually decide to say, “I do,” to.
She taught me multiple muscle relaxation techniques including recommending Epsom salt baths and giving myself self-massages because, why not? At night, when I craved physical comfort from a significant other, I used heavy blankets and quilts to create the tranquilizing weight on top of my body to calm myself down to sleep.
I joined a support group at a local church to receive collective healing from shared experiences with other women who had been through similar trauma.
I started doing things that I always wanted to do with a significant other, but by myself or with friends, such as sleeping under the night sky.
And all those nights when I cried out of unbearable loneliness, I began writing letters to my Future Husband as if I already knew him. As if he was already in my life. That he already had the qualities I not only wished for but needed as a broken yet healing soul. That it was only a matter of time when God would allow our paths to intersect.
I was right.
Because within less than a year of trying to love myself, Q walked into my life.
Q is a frequent camper. He had narrated anecdotes of him spending hours trying to do time-lapse photography of the celestial movements in the night sky. On our second date, he made me witness for myself the magical and mesmerizing starlit sky. I would be lying if I don’t confess that it was the exact moment when I knew that he was the one even though I took my sweet time to say yes to him thereafter.
The Universe (or God) isn’t a fool. It gives to us when it knows we are the most ready to receive. But we have to work in order to “free the line,” as my roommate would beg me to. According to her, “If the line is busy (meaning: you have emotional attachments to undeserving emotions, things and/or people), nobody new can get on it.”
By trying to love myself, I had acquired enough self-respect and dignity that when I met Q, I was not apologetic. I was sure of myself, my ambitions, and even my weaknesses.
Instead, I made him work hard as opposed to chasing him the way I had been used to chasing undeserving men in the past. I put him through multiple “interviews” with my female friends and let him do the majority of the work in terms of pursuing me. When we walked into a therapist’s office asking him for premarital counseling, he was shocked to realize that I wanted to use counseling to gauge our compatibility unlike other couples who make up their minds about each other before seeing him.
Alhamdulillah, all thanks and praise to God, I found Q to be exactly who I had hoped and prayed for. He had the character of the person I had been writing my letters to and most importantly, he not only understood my brokenness but appreciated it.
I wrote back to Charlie,
I guess this is where finding the right person means so much. They fall in love with the whole of us including the broken us. They don’t despise our scars but kiss them because true love is unconditional.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
Hence, I cannot deny His Hand in this matter. However, through all the work that I invested in my wellbeing — utilizing therapy, support, writing and self care — I was able to recognize Real Love when he came. I knew myself so well and what I absolutely required from a romantic relationship that when Q brought forth the qualities I sought, I finally knew he was the one.
I had eventually learned to love myself first and be in a position to love only Mr Available.
I was ready to love and be loved by the right person.
And so, I married Q within 4 months of meeting him.
Honestly, there was no reason not to.
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