عَنْ سَهْلِ بْنِ سَعْدٍ السَّاعِدِيِّ قَالَ: قَالَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: ” الْمُؤْمِنُ مَأْلَفَةٌ، وَلَا خَيْرَ فِيمَنْ لَا يَأْلَفُ وَلَا يُؤْلَفُ
A Mu’min is endearing and loveable; and there is no good in the one who does not love and is not loved.
[Musnad Ahmad:22840]
Love is a core emotional requirement of human beings. Allah Ta’ala has created us with an intrinsic need to love and, more importantly, be loved. Psychologists have even concluded that the need to be loved is a primary emotional human need i.e. it is as important as food and water!
Now, when we speak of love, the immediate picture painted in our minds is of the love seen in romantic novels with heart-melting love stories. Love which makes one want to swim the deepest oceans, climb the highest mountains, and endure unbearable hardships. Love which, as the cliched saying goes, is blind. A love where one becomes oblivious to the flaws in the beloved.
The “In-Love Experience”
This love, according to psychologists, is known as the “in-love experience.” It causes us to become emotionally obsessed. We go to sleep thinking of one another. When we rise, our beloved is the first thought on our minds. We feel that even Layla and Majnoon had not known love like ours! We crave each other’s company. Spending time together is the apex of satisfaction. When we hold hands, it seems as if our blood flows together. Any form of physical intimacy stimulates elevated levels of ecstasy. At its peak, the “in-love experience” is euphoric. It causes us to lose all inhibitions, and it blurs out intellect.
Furthermore, the person who is in love has the illusion that his beloved is perfect. Others may observe and point out flaws in the beloved, but the lover does not see it. And even if he/she does, the blemish is considered negligible or easily repairable in his/her eyes.
Of course, we are not naive. We know intellectually that we will eventually see our differences. But we are certain that we will discuss those differences openly. One of us will always be willing to make concessions, and we will reach an agreement. It is hard to believe anything else when you are in love.
This is the power of love. It moves mountains. That is why a friend of Allah Ta’ala once said,
“Love takes you places, be careful what you fall in love with.”
We have been led to believe that if we are really in love, it will last forever. We will always have the wonderful feelings that we have during the initial stage. Nothing could ever come between us. Nothing will overcome our love for each other. We are enamoured and caught up in the beauty and charm of the other’s personality. Our love is the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced. We even observe that some married couples seem to have lost that feeling but we argue that it will never happen to us. “Maybe they did not have the real thing,” we reason. All the above (and more for some) is a gist of what the in-love experience looks like. Most of us witness this in-love experience at the beginning of our marriages. Falling in love is a high, but…
What Goes Up Must Come Down
The in-love experience gives us a rush like no other. This is because the in-love experience temporarily meets our primary human need of being loved. But it is inevitably a quick fix and, as we shall soon learn, has a limited and predictable life span.
Unfortunately, this experience lasting forever is fiction. Psychologists have done long-range studies on the in-love phenomenon. After studying scores of couples, they have concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years. Meaning that the life span of the in-love experience is merely twenty-four months!
Eventually we all descend from the clouds and plant our feet on earth again. We gradually, then all at once, snap out of our besotted states. At this point logic returns and we start seeing clearly again, after the blindness of love. Post-love clarity if you would.
There is nothing wrong with this obsessive, infatuated stage of love. The experience is, in fact, a natural and necessary mile, for both male and female, in the journey of marriage. Allah Ta’ala has created us with the need for love. The Hadith above clearly states that love and Imaan are inseparable.
However, it is imperative that we understand the reality of love. And the reality is certainly not the in-love experience. In fact, some studies show that this phase is not even love at all! Some have termed it as limerence and others as mere obsession.
Unfortunately, westernism has pounded us with fairytales of what love ought to be. We are convinced that ideal and true love is the in-love experience. We have lost the plot somewhere between the movie lines of Hollywood and romance of Bollywood. We have reached such an extent of delusion that we are willing to put our heads on the block in claiming that there is a happily ever after, an eternal in-love experience. We hanker after it, dream of it, crave it, speak about it and more. But the reality is that happily ever after, as we know it, is a dream, an elusive, idealistic dream. And one that has wreaked havoc in our marriages.
Where to from here?
Many people in relationships fail at this hurdle; What do we do with our relationship once we have passed the in-love stage? Majority of people feel that they’ve ‘fallen out of love’ at this point, and begin regretting their marriage, feeling it was all a deception. This very mindset has caused the copious unsuccessful marriages we witness today.
After we come down from the high of the in-love obsession, our emotional need for love resurfaces because it is fundamental to our nature. It is at the centre of our emotional desires. We needed love before the in-love experience, and we will need it as long as we live.
This is where we require assistance; How do we nurture responsible, logical love in our marriages? Love that is intentional and within our volition. Love that permeates every fibre of our being and satiates our emotional requirement of being loved. Actual, true love.
Inshallah, this will be discussed in future articles. For now, let us keep this in mind…
Marital bliss. A happy marriage. These are not oxymorons. We just need to reconsider our definition of these terms. Naturally, our ideas and approach will follow suite.
May Allah Ta’ala bless our marriages, save them from strife and dispute, and most importantly save us all from divorce. May Allah Ta’ala grant us fulfilment in our marriages. May He enable us to happily make the necessary effort which our marriages require to be successful. Aameen.