I want to know if someone is getting older and is unmarried and finding it hard to find someone: is their age is the actual problem?
In Islam, I've heard character and religion are important and everything else is more superficial. At the same time, it seems to drive many people's decision for turning down a suitor or prospect. Is age a superficial quality, or is it something that is actually very important when considering a spouse?
Answer
In this counseling answer:
What we do know is that while these factors are important (that the woman is invested in her family and that she is fertile), they don’t have to be the most important things.
Sometimes age and experience can in fact improve someone’s character due to life experiences that younger people simply don’t have.
Read below our tips to find your spouse.
Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatulahi wa baraktuh sister,
It is not uncommon for age to play a role in whether someone chooses to get married, or whether they are perused in marriage. However, it doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be the most important factor.
There can be a stigma around marrying at an older age in that the person may be deemed to be undesirable since they were not yet able to find a suitor, or that they are too interested in their career and not starting a family, or that they have less time available on their biological clock to have children.
Some of these factors may or may not be true, and one would never know unless you spoke to the woman. Although age is more of a fact that has been established and, therefore, would be undesirable to a man who was looking for a large family.
Unfortunately, because of these assumptions and stigma, it has been known for older people to find spouses, and often this isn’t any fault of their own, but from societal assumptions about such people.
However, regardless of these matters that make marriage in later life something of a controversy, that doesn’t stop people from marrying at this age, or for men desiring to marry women at older ages.
What we do know is that while these factors are important (that the woman is invested in her family and that she is fertile), they don’t have to be the most important things.
Unfortunately, many people do see age as the most important factor. However, there are others that are more important, such as character, as you mention. A woman may be married for a young age, but yet her character is so terrible, her consciousness of Allah is completely absent.
Her fertility may enable her to have many babies, but without good character and taqwa, she may raise the children to be terrible, disrespectful members of the community who have no respect for their Deen. Also, treating her husband poorly can cause great misery in the house.
On the other hand, a woman in her 30s may not be able to bear so many children but may have an exemplary character leading her to raise fewer children, but those who will be upstanding pillars of the community. She will be a devout wife who encourages her husband to do good.
On the other hand, younger women may also be upright in their character too so could have both on their side. Sometimes age and experience can in fact improve someone’s character due to life experiences that younger people simply don’t have.
What is important is that we do our best not to fall into stereotyping people of different ages.
Tips to Find Your Spouse
Here I collected for you some useful tips from other counselors in regards to finding your suitable husband, inshallah:
How to Find a Wife (applicable for sisters who are looking for a husband)
Where Will I Find My Future Husband?
May Allah guide us all as an ummah and grant us all righteous spouses who will be the coolness of our eyes in this life and the next.
Salam,
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