Marriage

I am about 18 years old and a female. My father is very fond of the idea of marriage and it bothers me a lot that he keeps talking about it. I am not against young marriage, but I believe the time will come when I am ready. I do not have a very good relationship with my father as he has anger management issues and is not very supportive of my OCD. He does have a big heart at times, but he can also become abusive towards my mother and I. Also, he sometimes becomes a little fundamentalist with religion. However, he does not have good behavior, which makes me very angry that he acts this way, and yet talks of religion. My concern is that my dad’s control will be over my head even throughout college and up until marriage. Also, I do not want biological children in the future and I believe in adoption. My fear is that I will not find a Muslim man who is willing to only adopt children, and that I will be forced to have kids of my own, which is something that I do not want.

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Assalamu ‘alaykum, 

It sounds like you have a lot of fears and concerns but you haven’t figured out how to work through them.

If you pick one issue at a time, it might help you focus. Perhaps the key issue might be your relationship with your father and how that makes you feel about marriage. If that feels like it might be one of the bigger issues, focusing on just that first could help you sort some things out.

Some questions you might ask yourself are:

* How does my relationship with my father impact our conversations (in other words, is the trouble you are having with this conversation happening a lot about lots of things or is it only with the conversation about marriage)?

* You said you feel your dad is controlling, how does that make you feel about men? about husbands? about being a wife to someone in the future?

There are many other things that you could explore, but it would be best to explore them with a counselor who can work with you and respond to you in the moment so you can clarify what is going on in the relationship and how you could build a different one with your father insha’Allah.

wa ‘alaykum salam

fatima

Sincerely,
Your sister in Islam
“Fatima Z”