Thirteen with Bin

We mostly inherit the idea of marriage from our close family, society, like it is a milestone that everyone should arrive at in certain point of their life.

For someone who enjoys being alone and realized it at pretty young age, I once threw a question to my mother, when I was in my 20s : “Emang harus ya nikah?” (Is it really necessary to get married?)

It wasn’t a kind of bitter question against marriage, I was just simply questioning the idea whether it was necessary to get married. My mom was responding in a neutral way telling me there was a lot of advantages to be married.

I couldn’t ask further questions and longer conversation since it was morning where we had to get ready to go to work.

I actually never against marriage because being a mother was clearly written as an item in my little dream book. To achieve that, being in a legal relationship called marriage is a must.

I used a lot of brainstorming with myself before marriage. Five compulsory preferences and few optional ones. Having conversations with plenty of people, observing real life cases, and taking notes what I wanted and I didn’t want based on what I saw.

I concluded the importance of one thing before getting married :

I need to like the person first, and more than I love him.

For me, like is stronger and more solid foundation than love. While love mostly comes from feeling, like comes more from thinking.

Like means you approve of the basics of what you see from the other party. The character, the values, and the person as a whole, and the alignment of what he has with mine.

We need to like the person we married first, without adding or subtracting anything to the equation, and liking them as they are. When you’re asked, “Without any strings attached, would you be friends with this person?” the answer is an absolute yes.

I am lucky enough to know and build a friendship with the person I married since we were young. No title, no income, no job, just a clueless confused but full of conviction boy who was trying to figure out his life.

Having been in a marriage for thirteen years, I quite agreed with my mother’s answer. From my perspective, marriage offers many advantages across many aspects of life.

One thing I am most grateful for is that it gives me time, space, and energy to practice my beliefs in a safe environment. I am allowed to learn, practice, and apply those beliefs through the roles I have in marriage.

Such a positive tone might be misleading assuming things were, are and have always been easy.

Anything related to humans has never been. Last year’s reflection in one of my social media posts said :

Nothing good in life comes easy. So does a good marriage, I guess.

Marriage in Islam is considered as the longest form of ibadah and Ibadah is always a hard work.

Just like doing five prayers a day demands discipline.
Paying monthly Zakat requires honesty, sincerity, and commitment.
Fasting needs the self control and emotional regulations. Hajj asks to prepare our financial, physical, and mental strength before doing it.
They are exactly what marriage takes not only to survive, but also insya Allah to thrive.

A long term relationship is a continous hard work, facing conflict and challenge while choosing to show up and willing to repair quickly and continually.

Easier written than done obviously.

I am beyond grateful for the chance to be in in a group work in a small classroom to figure out the answers to a simple worksheet in an English class then to work on many life assignments in this world, and for the hereafter, together.

I pray wholeheartedly for continous blessing, more barakah and peace this partnership brings.

Amin. Amin. Amin.

PS : this is just a two cents from many obversation and real life experience. In my opinion, men and women have different need in marriage. Men need wife (or woman) to live. Women needs life. To live is a verb. It can change depends on time. Life is a noun. It’s constant. Not change depends on time or season. It just again my two cents observing why older women rarely re-marry after the first one ended (for any reasons) and could still thriving, yet man, most of them, could enter the next one as quickly as it’s allowed to be, to keep surviving.

PS 2 : Few days after publishing this post, this one came.