I’m a 31-year-old unmarried woman. I’ve never been in any relationship, and I always wanted an arranged marriage according to my family’s choice. That felt right to me and I believed it was the right thing Islamically to avoid haram relationships.
But here’s the problem: literally everyone around me is doing love marriages or is in a relationship. My friend circle, my siblings, my relatives all of them. I’ve been searching for a spouse for the past 6 years, but finding a suitable single guy has become incredibly hard. Almost everyone I come across is already in a relationship.
Now my family and relatives are telling me that I’m creating a burden on them. They say if I had just been in a relationship like everyone else, it would be much easier for me to get married by now. My father is elderly and very worried about my future.
It hurts because I stayed away from haram relationships intentionally. But now society and even my own family are making me feel like that was a mistake. Being in a relationship feels like the norm, almost a compliment these days. People look at you like something’s wrong with you if you don’t have a “history.”
Was I wrong for not having a haram relationship before marriage? I don’t want to end up alone. I really don’t know what to do anymore.