Butterflies and rainbows are fake

Marriage is an entirely different concept in Islam than it's current idea in society. In the West, marriage is just a whole lot of papers that don't really mean anything more than an exchange of money. In the East, a lot of it still has to do with forming bonds between two families, and very little has to do with the two people involved. Of course that's a very black-and-white version, but that's basically what a lot of it boils down to. Personally, if I wasn't Muslim, I probably wouldn't bother with marriage either - love and commitment can be established in so many other ways than just signing in a few places.

But in Islam, marriage is much, much more. Islam is something that works best when it is practised as a whole, instead of bits and pieces here and there. It contains guidelines for something so personal as how to get over sadness as well as something so global as how to rule a nation. An integral part of the system is the family unit, which made much more sense to me when I was studying developmental psychology. When a child grows up with a good home environment, he/she has a much lesser chance of committing crime or developing psychological disorders. The family unit starts with a marriage. Marriage is the basis of building a society in Islam. The other issue with our current society is that we are very detached from other people and each of us have a huge personal space. In a marriage, people learn to share that space, so they are constantly faced with challenges that they need to learn to overcome. But, marriage is also about supporting each other. When two people work together to achieve a shared goal, they can stop each other from veering off in the wrong direction and be motivational to each other.

But when Islam is mixed in with culture, both Western and Eastern, that is when problems occur. When Easter cultures are brought in, the 'pride factor' from parents enter the equation. It's no longer purely about two people being compatible with each other in terms of personality, intellect and physical attraction - it also becomes about family status', wealth and even something so mundane as skin colour. The Western culture brings its own Hollywood-like expectations which teaches young people that relationships are all about love and rainbows, 10% problems and 90% excitement. I am guilty of this as well, so I know how easy it is to fall into such traps. But seriously, at some point, people need to open their eyes and observe real life relationships and realise that after a while, the butterflies kinda die in your stomach.

Everything is a test and a blessing, people, EVERYTHING.

End of rant.