A Love-Less Marriage.

The night Allah redirected my heart back to Rafiq was just a baby step in my awakening journey. But before I dive into my awakening, I need to take you back into my marriage. Because the truth is, I was already empty long before Rafiq entered the picture.

When my husband and I first got married, we were happy.

We were in love.

Slowly over time, that love faded, and so did the happiness.

The best way to describe it that it became a loveless marriage. I questioned often "where did the love go away?". It wasn't something that changed overnight, it's something that changed overtime. First it was small things like differences in schedules, then in mentality, then in the way our dynamic shifted. Piece by piece, everything lessened.

For pretty much my entire marriage, I thought I was the crazy one. I had so many theories actually. At first I thought I had commitment issues. Maybe I got bored too easily. Maybe I was just too demanding, needing excitement, romance, expression. I told myself this is how marriage is. I mean.. that's how all married couples are.. right? Aleast my husband was a decent man. Maybe I just needed to stop overthinking and be grateful.

I even started wondering if it was Satan's whispers. One night I actually convinced myself that it was. It was Satan whispering, trying to trick me into believing that I wasn't happy in my marriage, that I wasn't in love anymore.

Nothing else made sense to me.

"Why would Allah want two people who were genuinely in love.. to get divorced?"

This couldn't possibly be the story Allah is writing. So it has to be Satan.

Then there were some in-laws issues as well, which only deepened the cracks. My husband's emotional dependence on his family made things harder. But the truth, the biggest truth, was this..

I had fallen out of love.

And I tried so hard to ignore it. To suck it up, to push it deep down inside of me.

I buried my emotions, convinced myself to be grateful, and told myself to stay patient for a good man who didn't deserve my withdrawal. I tried, so hard.

That's why Rafiq cut was so deep. I was already empty, and he slipped right into that empty space. The issue didn't start with Rafiq- no, it started long before. Rafiq was just one character in a story that had been unraveling for years. Maybe he will turn out to be the main one.

Or maybe not.

Only time will tell.

But when Rafiq and I became closer, he filled the spaces my husband never could. With him, I wasn't just a priority, I was the priority. He made me feel like I mattered more than anything else.

Or anyone else.

His attention was constant, almost overwhelming, and too hard to ignore. He cared about everything, what I ate, what I thought, how I felt. He remembered the tiniest detials, paid attention to every word that left my mouth, even the way I laughed. There could be a 100 people in the room, but his eyes and presence still belonged to me.

He made me fall completely and utterly in love with him. But by the time I realized I am falling, he had already pulled away..

And that's when Allah showed me the truth; the ove that had drained out of my marriage didn't disappear. It had travelled, and Allah placed it in Rafiq. That's what Allah showed me the night I prayed Tahajjud.