Answer
Short Answer: To answer your question, sister: “it is not correct”. This is the simple direct answer to your question. It seems from the way you put your question that you are young in age and have little knowledge about the dos and do-nots of the divine guidelines for the man-woman relationship. If this is a fact, then I would feel even more respect towards your eagerness to know what is right and what is wrong. If you were not eager to be a good person, you would not have bothered to ask and would have kept going on, justifying to yourself by telling it: “I was not informed”.
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Salam Dear Sister,
Thank you for your courageous question. It seems to me that you are asking yourself, and not only directing it to our site.
In fact, you gave me very little information about your background, age, country of residence and so forth. Having this information would not have changed my say about your question, but would have helped me more in providing you with guidelines to help you overcome your problem.
To answer your question, sister: “it is not correct”. This is the simple direct answer to your question. It seems from the way you put your question that you are young in age and have little knowledge about the dos and do-nots of the divine guidelines for the man-woman relationship.
If this is a fact, then I would feel even more respect towards your eagerness to know what is right and what is wrong. If you were not eager to be a good person, you would not have bothered to ask and would have kept going on, justifying to yourself by telling it: “I was not informed”.
Many of us do lose the battle by letting go of the search and following our own whim.
Please try to reflect on the Quranic verse that says what means:
{And for the one who feared his stand before his Lord and restrained himself from its whim, surely Paradise will be his dwelling (home).} (An-Nazi`at 79: 40–41)
Think where you stand from this verse. Are you following your whim or are you trying to follow what you would find to be the correct thing? From your question, I sense that you are choosing the second option.
Between the lines I read that you believe you love someone and that your relation has encountered some physical levels. If this is the case, then I cannot claim that dropping the whole thing is an easy job. But it is possible, if needed.
In case you need to follow the divine guidelines, then you have to choose to drop, at least, the physical aspect of your relation. In case you need to achieve perfection in that, then you need to ask yourself if this person is worth what you feel as to be your “love”.
What is Love?
Here you really need to define what love is. Allah, Great in His Mighty, has created us to be this mysterious and complex blend of body, mind and soul. Sometimes when people are young in age, they describe the physical attraction between the two sexes as love.
But when God Almighty stabilized the relation between spouses, He described it to be of a broader and a more encompassing nature to both parties. He said what means:
{And among His signs that He created to you, from yourselves, spouses to dwell to one another and made between you tenderness and mercy. In this, there are signs for those who contemplate.} (Ar-Rum 30: 21)
Notice that the verse explains that God has created this spouse or life-partner “to you” from your very self. The rational here is that we, as humans, need a partner who does not mate with us only physically. If so, the relation will never be fulfilling on the long run.
We are Physical, Spiritual and Logical beings
That is because we are not only physical beings. But we are physical, spiritual and logical beings. The partner you share your whole life with, not only your romantic life, needs to be fulfilling to the different aspects of your nature.
Throughout the youth phase, usually the physical aspect of our nature expresses itself more. It overwhelms humans and gets them to see everything through its perspective. We might not like the intellects of a person for example, but because we are physically attracted to this person, we think we “love” the person.
This is why, at this age, it is usually advisable to share the choice of our partner with someone who is more experienced, like parents. They would visualize the whole situation and be able to help more in judging whether the person is worthy to be a life-partner or if it is just a “crush”, not love.
True Love or Just a Crush?
I needed to mention the above, my dear sister, to help you think and analyze and be able to realize where you stand. If you take what I mentioned seriously, then you will reach one of two results. Either you do not “really” love this person and that was a crush, or it is true love and you do not want to give him up.
In case it is the first option, then giving him up and whatever took place between you will be easy. If it is the second, then you mainly need to get rid of the “form of the relation”.
You need to realize that any aspects of physical interaction are completely against the Islamic rulings. God wants you to have a complete relation, where you are fulfilled from all your natural aspects, including the social.
In order to maintain such self-fulfilling relation and in order to maintain the social ties of the whole society, God has decreed this to be fulfilled in the format of marriage and family institutions.
Thus, in both of the above options, you will need to realize that you have crossed limits. Not only by physical interaction, but by many attitudes and acts that have lead to that.
Repent to God
Here, you will need to repent and ask God for His forgiveness, because you have crossed the limits that He has decreed for you. It might be difficult for you to continue in avoiding getting trapped in such acts again. But it is time here to question your faith and ability to be patient.
God is the Most Forgiving. You need to realize that. He is also Loving and loves His servants most when they come back to Him, asking acceptance. We are all humans and we do make mistakes. We are not gods or angels. This is why we need to know that His doors are open whenever we need to go back.
What we really need here is to be persistent and serious about our desire to be forgiven. Ask Him day and night to forgive you. Make wuduu (ablution) and offer two rakahs and ask for His forgiveness.
Ask Him to help you out and to make it easy for you. But if you really want to make the move, do not be obsessed by your weak moments and do not live in their shade. Move on. Be sincere with God and show Him that you are not going back by planning ahead.
In case you still think that this person is a real love in your life, then you have to plan practically to give your relation a different form. You need to seriously work on getting married. Inform your families that you want to get married and move towards that.
Tips to Remain Steadfast
If you are still young and cannot make it, then until this is achieved, make sure never to be alone. Drop phone calls if you are crossing limits there. Try to give your relation the format of friendship and share common interests within groups of your friends. Move the one-to-one level of relation you are sharing to a group level.
In both cases, get yourself busy with serious activities. Share in social services and charitable institution for example. Share the less-lucky their pains, which will help you forget your personal pain.
Read more about your religion and try to study it more. It will help you understand why God has legalized the society to accept marriage and to disregard any other form of man-woman relation.
It will help you realize that loving our life-partner is an acid to help us fulfill our real mission in this life. That is to serve God according to His way and that He has created love and our loved ones to make life more enjoyable to us. This way, life and fulfilling our role would become much easier.
This will consume parts of your time and mental energies. Again, it will help you think more clearly when you are distant if this is the person you want to share life with.
Try to fast a lot, for it was the advice of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to those who cannot marry till they can. Fasting helps with self-discipline and elevates our souls over the demands of our bodies.
Keep your feeling within your hearts and cherish it. Always know that the patient person is beloved by Allah and that the pain you would feel in hiding your feelings or avoiding physical expression will definitely be rewarded.
Let go of what God does not love and you will gain His love.
Sister, I hope my answer is really of help. May God help you and forgive you, and may He forgive us all. Please keep in touch.
(From Ask About Islam archives)
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