Answer
In this counseling answer:
“If your suitor is truthful and trustworthy, then trust him when he says that your physical flaws do not matter to him. Trust him when he says that he loves you as a person and because you are religious. If your decision ends up being wrong, then you know you did your best, and leave the rest to Allah (swt). Tests will test us in life, and that is why Allah (swt) created us. As such, tests are good for us.”
Wa ’Alaikum Salaam my dear sister in Islam,
I can understand your hesitation because a woman’s physical beauty is one of the primary tools she uses to please her husband. What I think you are forgetting is that it is only a tool. I will compare it to a different tool to help you see it in its true light, one that is easier to recognize as only a tool: a hammer. A hammer is required to build a house. However, it is NOT the house. In fact, after the house is built, you usually can’t find it. A woman’s physical beauty plays the exact same role in relation to the building of the house called marriage.
Furthermore, the house called marriage is not about physical beauty. Marriage has a lot of different rooms in it such as commitment, love, mercy, provision protection, obedience, intimacy, all in its many different forms, only one of which involves physical beauty. People get more excited about each other because of love than they do over physical beauty. So, the real question is: what is marriage really, if it is not the tool(s) we use to make it? I cannot analyze all those rooms in the house, but I will address intimacy, which is related to your question. While the hammer that built the house is lost in a closet, and no one is the worse off for it, intimacy has to thrive for a marriage to feel like a marriage. But what is intimacy? Before I answer that, I need to identify the nature of our existence so you can understand my answer.
Contrast is the way we learn everything. For example, we come to know what food is because we feel hunger. If we did not feel hungry, we would not know the significance of food. We know what sleep is because we feel exhaustion. If we do not feel tired, we would not come to know the meaning of sleep. And so on. So, how does this universal truth play out in marriage?
We know that the opposite of marriage is one, or being single. But, Allah (swt) is The Only One, so we, humans, must exist in relationship. Some people deal with this reality by having a relationship with Allah only, which is an option. But most of us—because Allah (swt) created us in pairs from each other—feel such a magnetic pull towards our pair that we cannot live without them. I am not suggesting that in marriage a person is not also in a relationship with Allah. We are. In fact, three relationships happen in a marriage: one with Allah (swt), one with each other, and one which has the pair on one side of the relationship and Allah (swt) on the other.
Marriage has another opposite: public. In public, we share with others only which they need to know (to deal with the issue at hand). We do not let it all hang out. However, we need a place where we can let it all hang out because otherwise, we do not feel alive. However, when we let it all hang out we make mistakes, i.e., have flaws (like scars on our thighs). Since all of us make mistakes (as we are human), we need a place in which we can be our flawed selves without fear of negative repercussions like hatred, expulsion, violence, etc. If we did not make mistakes, we would not need a safe place; we could let it all hang out in public.
Another reason we need a safe place is to thrive, i.e., live and move forward in life. The way we learn to not spill milk is by spilling it first. That is how we learn the physics of things. We learn everything like that way—by means of experimentation. No one ever learned to drive by just reading the Driver’s Manual; we have to do things for ourselves, i.e., venture into the unknown first to become familiar with the thing. This means, by definition, making mistakes—that is how your thighs got burned. It was a tough way to learn the physics of it, but you learned. If we have no place in which to make mistakes safely, it stunts our ability to grow. To grow, we need not be condemned for not being perfect.
So, the real question is not should you tell, but who should you tell your flaws to who do you trust with your intimacy—who is safe? If you are afraid of even being intimate, that is a different problem.
One of the challenges (and maybe the hardest one) about doing relationship is that we don’t know who the other person really is until we get intimate, i.e., marry. In other words, the best we can do is get enough information (ahead of time) to make an informed guess (about whether we should marry). Then, after you go down the path of finding out if our guess was right, you may find you guessed wrong. That is Allah (swt) testing you, and we were created to be tested. So, put on your seatbelt. Marriage means venturing into the unknown. But assume NOT that exposing your flaws is bad; it is the reason for the sanctuary of marriage.
In addition, beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder. Do you know what that expression means? For example, a movie star whom I saw on TV was so gorgeous that my jaw dropped to the floor (because her physical beauty looked perfect). However, when she opened her mouth, she said the stupidest things. My jaw dropped to the ground again, for the opposite reason; her stupidity made her beauty disappear like smoke (like the smoke-screen it is).
Beauty is not everything – only Shaitan would have us believe it is. He believes that physical beauty makes a person better! Remember, that is what Shaitan said to Allah (swt); he refused (and still refuses) to submit to Allah because he said that his physical beauty (being created from the fire as he was from among the jinns) was better than Adam (humans), who was created from clay.
Then We said to the angels, “Prostrate to Adam”; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He was not of those who prostrated. [ Allah ] said, “What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?” [Satan] said, “I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay.” ( Quran 7: 11-12)
That proved that Satan was better than humans. Shaitan might have been right about that jinns are more beautiful physically than humans, but surely he is very wrong in that it does NOT follow that they are also better. Being better is not measured by physical beauty. This story is actually the story of our life on earth. Shaitan has been given permission to assault us with lies like that one. Allah (swt) tells us the story of shaitan’s faulty reasoning to teach us that physical beauty is not the real beauty!
So, sister, if your suitor is truthful and trustworthy, then trust him when he says that your physical flaws do not matter to him. Trust him when he says that he loves you as a person and because you are religious. If your decision ends up being wrong, then you know you did your best, and leave the rest to Allah (swt). Tests will test us in life, and that is why Allah (swt) created us. As such, tests are good for us. They make us turn to Allah (swt). They enlighten us.
Do not make the mistake Shaitan has made In Sha’ Allah; don’t let your physical beauty, or lack of it (in your mind), distract you from the facts.
Remember, all of us have flaws. So don’t be deceived about that truth by the veils which cover people’s faults. Thank Allah (swt) that your flaw is physical and not a spiritual (although you may need to do more work on your understanding of the role of physical beauty plays in life).
To help you not feel shy so you can approach your suitor, think about what you would do if you married him and, after he found out what your thighs look like, divorced you. Also, you have had many proposals, so why do you fear not getting married? Find the man who wants you with knowledge of your burn marks, and cares about you all the more because you suffered, and he wants to make you feel safe now – with him. That’s a reason to marry someone!
May Allah (swt) make it easy for you, In Sha’ Allah. Ameen.
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