Envy of other’s marriages is your greatest enemy - NikahExplorer

Yes finally you’re married after silently enduring all your friends being hitched up (yes some of them have children too now!) and now you’re married! Yay! You finally do not have to be super jealous of all those exciting honeymooning vacations your friends are taking to exotic locations, those parties they are going to, those late night movies hand in hand with their spouse, the picture of what you saw on Facebook just a few days back.

Because Yay you’re married too now.

The envy can end. The jealousy can shove away finally.

But can it? And will it?

Probably not. Jealousy and envy is a feeling that is most strictly been discouraged in Islam. Allah has asked us to have great and beautiful feelings for our friends and our family and never to think of them in a negative way that includes being jealous of them. Being jealous of your friend’s or siblings marriages is no different. Yes you’re finally getting married but if you’ve always been in the rut of being envious of your friends’ lives,  that thing about you will not change even after you are married. So after you are hitched, you will begin to feel envious of the vacation your married friend is taking AGAIN within like, 3 months! And you will be jealous of that baby your friend just had while you’ve been trying for ages.

The fault also lies with our excessive use of social media that, more often than not, focuses on the good and wonderful things that happen in people’s lives and not on the difficulties or grief they face. Sure, they might post about the death of their loved ones on Facebook. But they will not post about how their mother-in-law gave them snide remarks while she washed the dishes, or he will not post how its getting hard for him to balance between the time he gives his mother and his wife.

So don’t. Just stop. Stop believing that your friend’s life is perfect. Because it is not. She might have had a baby but she also might have been ridiculed for having a girl because our society loved boys so much. It happens. Every family has challenges. Sometimes greater than yours. But they do exist. Don’t just look at the surface. The next time you see a husband and wife together, smile and say Alhamdulillah.  And say a little prayer. For them. And for you.