The task of finding a spouse is difficult enough already. The most basic hope is that you will connect with someone who also desires to get married. You will meet up and see if there is a connection. If there is, great, you work on it and hopefully at some point in the near future you will be making a call to your local imam to get this marriage party started!

But....

Guys why do some of you (not all of you I know! Put the pitchforks down!) insist on ruining a blossoming bond by doing one or more of these 7 things…

1.   Talking About Sex

You say you want a halal marriage, you want companionship, you want to settle down and create a life with someone who can be your best friend and with whom you can start a family. Great! That’s that why she is communicating with you. But then you go and ruin it all by making it sexual.

Things like: asking for full body pictures, asking what lingerie size she wears, asking what sexual position she would like to try, claiming you are going to give her a big passionate kiss when you meet. And when she protests you stop talking to her or call her old-fashioned or even suggest she is making a big deal out of nothing.

No, no and NO! Treat her with respect and honour her desire for a halal marriage. Act in the way you’d want a guy to behave towards your own sister or neice.

2.   Ghosting her

If you’ve decided that she's not right for you then just be a man and tell her. Yes you might upset her, yes she  might feel hurt (see points 3 & 4 below) but it will be short-lived compared to when you just disappear on her and stop messaging her. I know you want to be the good guy but by not contacting her anymore, it paints you as a bigger villain than the guy who just had the decency to be honest and upfront. Grab the bull by the horns and do it man!

3.   Making A Decision Based Purely On Looks

 I recently introduced a guy to a friend. The first thing he did was to ask her to send him a picture. The second thing he did was to tell her that he didn't like her looks and had decided therefore not to pursue it further. He then did this to 4 or 5 other ladies. And the worst part it, this kind of behaviour is rife amongst our brothers! I've had beautiful sisters sobbing down the phone wondering whether they need a nose job in order to meet The One because some guy has told her outright "you're just not my type, no offence".

Here’s a newsflash brother, you're not everyone's type either. No offence. 

We would understand if you were in the Jason Momoa league but to actually tell a lady up front that you don’t find her attractive is just plain rude. I hate to burst your bubble guys but those ladies whose looks you aspire to find in a wife are pretty much made up, airbrushed, filtered and contoured to within an inch of their lives. Men and women all look and smell  like crap in the morning and one day if she is heaving out children in a maternity ward don’t expect the false lashes to be on. Yes we totally understand the need for physical attraction (we have it too) but we also know you overuse the "men are physical beings" line to justify your shallowness. Sometimes attraction grows and isn’t always obvious.  It's not always the Bollywood swept-away-at-first-sight moment for either party. We want you to understand that  and to remember that your hairline is going to recede one day.

Just saying.

4.   Placing Ridiculous Demands On Her

According to your requirements she should be:

Young (between 18 - 23 is optimal) - tall (but not taller than you) - slim (but not bony) - fair skinned - light-eyed - university educated (but not smarter than you) - long-haired - curvy (but not fat) - doe-eyed - professional (but not earning more than you) - homely - sociable (but not too loud or extroverted) - domesticated - fertile (because apparently it's all on her not you) - family-orientated (and ready to live with your family) - praying 5 times a day - feminine - intellectually-stimulating - modest -well-travelled.

In that case she wishes you to be :

Tall - well-built - gym-bodied - in possession of a full head of hair - large manly handed - earning £50k+ - straight-toothed - an Aston Martin owner - a home owner - a swimming pool owner - a handyman - a mechanic - PhD educated - dressed in designer gear - a hafeez of the Quran - bearded - a haji - firm-bunned - able to produce hyperactive sperm

Hurts doesn’t it?

5.   Being Indecisive

You’ve been chatting to her for a while, if you like her ask to meet her. Don’t wait for her to suggest it or wait for the planets to align to be absolutely certain that she will say yes. And if you misread the signals and she says no, you are still going to be remembered as the guy who stepped up and did the right thing. Ask to meet her and do it properly. Don’t suggest "hanging sometime" when she is free one weekend at some point maybe possibly in the future during the moon of Aquarius. Put your ego aside and ask her out for coffee, choose a public venue and a day and a time. She will respect you for it and appreciate your efforts and even if things don’t work out she will always remember you as a gentleman.

6. Bragging About Your Lifestyle

Whether it be your online profile or your first date chat please quit the bragging. Especially when you are using your current lifestyle as a bargaining tool. I have heard brothers dictate that the lady he marries should be fit and athletic like him because he is into sports. Or that he takes really good care of his appearance and likes the finer things in life and he expects his wife to as well. Or maybe that he has worked hard to enjoy a certain lifestyle and he wants a lady who will appreciate that. Snooooore!! All these wonderful things you have or do? Great but they won't last forever. Honestly brothers all that me, me, me is just white noise. What will last forever is a marriage founded on respect, trust and shared values not one that fits into your current penchant for water sports. 

7. Mansplaining

Yes please do tell me how to do my job that I've trained for and have been doing successfully for many years now.  Oh and do please fill me in on my language and cultural background which you seem to have extensive knowledge of having never been to my country (I say that as a Mauritian who gave up explaining I don't speak Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi). We respect your knowledge and experience as a fellow human being and of course if there is something we would like to know about and we feel you can help then of course we will ask. The same way we hope you will draw upon our knowledge too when needed. But what totally turns us off is when you jump in to correct us and tell us how we should have done something differently or, more importantly, how you would have done it so much better and how we are totally wrong and incompetent and have zero clue about life.

OK so now there is probably a mob of single guys at my front door with pitchforks and torches ready to burn me at the stake. Any brothers reading this be honest with yourselves, have you been guilty of any of the above? Hopefully not, or maybe of one or two things. It's totally fine.

The sisters just want you to be aware how much it can ruin a potentially  beautiful connection. Yes sisters have their faults too (do feel free to write about it, I'd appreciate knowing how to guide my single sisters) but let's all just put down our battle gear and come together to get to know each other as humans with shared goals and values. 

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