Episode 14: The Transformative Power of Being Turned Down

Speaker 1: 0:00
Assalamu alaikum, I’m Hiba. And I’m Zaid, you’re listening to Diary of a Matchmaker.

Speaker 2: 0:05
A podcast that will take you into our world as matchmakers.

Speaker 1: 0:09
We’ll share our experiences and offer advice for the single Muslim.

Speaker 2: 0:12
So let’s dive in. Bismillah, assalamu alaikum everyone, welcome to another episode. We had a really fun three-day weekend. It was Victoria Day yesterday and we attended the mac convention. Uh, I got to see oh, we got to see sean king um live and a bunch of other really cool activists and scholars mashaallah very inspirational yeah muhammad fadil as well.

Speaker 1: 0:40
I got to talk to him yeah cool experience, but uh, yeah, it was a cool event. And before that, actually the day before that, I talked to my friend. I haven’t talked to her in a while. She’s my best friend, you know, mashallah. She’s highly educated, pursuing her PhD. She’s very beautiful, mashallah.

Speaker 2: 1:01
Yeah. And gets lots of proposals.

Speaker 1: 1:04
Gets lots of proposals, gets lots of proposals, even though she mentioned that lately she hasn’t been getting any proposals, like for the past year. And by chance she was walking in the campus and she met this lady who she knows and the lady asked her oh, why you haven’t, why haven’t you mentioned that you got married? We didn’t know and she was taken by surprise because she’s like what? No, I didn’t get married. Where did you hear this? And she kept investigating until she found out that this guy who proposed to her twice and she rejected him twice, he started this rumor about her that she got married and turns out he was trying to like trying to stop her nasib, stop her getting married good fortune, I guess good fortune exactly, and I don’t know.

Speaker 1: 1:57
I was taken by surprise hearing this. I felt absolute disgust and at the same time I felt bad for this person, like how low of a self-esteem you must have to do something, this evil yeah, um, guys, I mean, the main thing I can say about that is guys take rejection pretty seriously. They take it to heart they don’t have very fragile ego yeah, I, I guess we do.

Speaker 2: 2:29
But I mean, we all know of those cases in Pakistan where girls would get acid thrown on their face because they would reject a guy, and of course obviously that’s an extreme case. But the point is that you know, I think guys take it more to heart than girls do.

Speaker 1: 2:43
Then I think guys should strengthen their faith and their iman and qadr. I mean, it’s all part of Allah’s plan. And like sometimes, when we are in the midst of things, we don’t see it, like why did this happen?

Speaker 2: 2:58
But then we get bitter, we get frustrated, Exactly Like why did Allah punish me? Why is Allah doing this to me?

Speaker 1: 3:04
Yeah, I wanted this so bad. Why didn’t it happen?

Speaker 1: 3:07
But, then, sometimes very soon after, and sometimes years later, you find out why actually this was a good thing for you. And Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says this in the Quran, in surah Baqarah وَعَسَىٰ أَن تُكْرَهُوا شَيْئًا وَهُو. It may be that you hate something and it’s actually good for you, or it might be that you love something, you want something to happen, and it’s bad for you. And Allah knows and you don’t know. And isn’t it enough to just renew our faith in Allah and in his plan, and just knowing that he is the best of planners to help navigate the rejection phase? Do you think it’s enough or there’s more to that?

Speaker 2: 3:56
There’s definitely more to it. We’ve adopted this very romanticized view of marriage where we not only think we can be passive about it, but we think we’ll find somebody in college or high school and that, or we’ll find somebody at the local cafe and it’ll just be like a movie and it’ll just all work out and it’ll be all rosy and perfect. But in reality, is the one percent of people that do find somebody in high school or college? Um, they, they go through their own struggles, but the that doesn’t cover the majority of people right that we have to enter our journey of finding a spouse with the understanding that we will get rejected the first time, second time or third time, and there has to be a level of resilience from the get go.

Speaker 1: 4:50
So come prepared.

Speaker 2: 4:51
Come prepared Exactly. It’s not much different. I use this analogy all the time in workshops, but it’s not much different from applying to grad school. We were just talking about you in your journey, trying to seek employment after you finish school.

Speaker 1: 5:07
Yeah, I must have applied to maybe 100 places and the rare occasions where I did get a response to do an interview, like I didn’t hear back from them and I did feel frustrated, but then, subhanAllah, if this hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t end up pursuing a different path, going to learn Sharia and Jordan.

Speaker 1: 5:33
Then meet you, come to your future would have been much different, Exactly, exactly so subhanAllah, jordan didn’t meet you come to, your future would have been much different, exactly exactly. So what hit you, what happened to you, wasn’t gonna miss you, and what missed you, what you didn’t get, wasn’t meant for you, wasn’t written for you anyway.

Speaker 2: 5:53
So I honestly think it just goes back to strengthening our faith, our iman yeah, yeah, the analogy I use um for people in the workshop is that when you’re applying to medical school grad, you know different graduate programs. Chances are you’re going to get rejected to the first program you apply to, right? I don’t know many people that got accepted into the first medical school that they applied to. But when you reflect five, ten years down the road and you think why didn’t I get accepted into that school, you realize hey, maybe the location of that school wasn’t the right fit, maybe the cost wasn’t the right fit, maybe the time just wasn’t right. There’s everything just kind of becomes clear all of a sudden. In English we say hindsight is 20-20. So, going back to what you were saying of the importance of qadr, that understanding that Allah knows what’s best for us and that Allah has a plan for us and that we just have to or in Arabic we say لَعَلُّ خَيْر لَعَلُّ خَيْر.

Speaker 1: 6:59
Yeah, we got to trust Allah’s plan.

Speaker 2: 7:01
But even though rejections have their own good aspect, good side to it, yeah, I went through many rejections in my search and with each rejection I got a better understanding of who I was not compatible with. I was getting rejected for various reasons. Sometimes they were very superficial reasons, and of course I did get bitter. At times I got upset, and that’s natural, but I didn’t let that stop my search. I knew eventually I had to get married, and so I developed a sense of resilience over time and it really helped narrow down my deal breakers, my core values and with each search, my oh, with each rejection, my search just got refined better and better and better yeah, so subhanallah, rejections have an opportunity to make you more resilient, to uh, strengthen your faith and to refine your search.

Speaker 2: 8:06
So look at the bright side, I guess yeah, we’ve had clients crying on discovery calls, girls specifically talking about their rejections, talking about their horrible experiences, and it is, of course, very sad, but I think what the overriding lesson that we’ve taken from these calls is that they just didn’t come mentally prepared for all the rejections.

Speaker 1: 8:34
Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:35
One of the first clients that signed up with us. I believe it was during the summertime. I remember this clearly. He was just this eager, excited, just young guy, full of energy came up to us and just talked to us for about a half hour about our service and we were so excited to take him on. But we didn’t realize that it would be a journey trying to get this guy married For various reasons. You you know girls would reject him. You know, I think he did reject one or two girls at some point, but it took some time and eventually, I think after maybe six or seven rejections, alhamdulillah we found the right girl for him and um, but the the interesting thing was that he never stopped. He did, to be completely honest. He did take a break for, I think, a few months, but he never gave up.

Speaker 2: 9:27
Yeah, he was always optimistic, he was always optimistic, he always followed up with us, put in the work. And so, going back to my original point, that do not, if you are searching and if you are dealing with rejections, don’t give up. Don’t put the search on hold. We’ve had clients put the search on hold indefinitely, just after one or two rejections.

Speaker 2: 9:52
I remember one guy clearly just, and we haven’t heard from him since. He’s like I just want to stop my search. Another guy actually just a few weeks ago. He’s like I’m going to pause my search Because it didn’t work out with a few girls. So you know, time is not forgiving. Keep putting in the work and, on the flip side, if you are somebody that is rejecting people nonstop, you need to take a moment and reflect and ask yourself a few questions. Are you unintentionally searching for perfection? Are you grilling any potential spouse as a murder suspect?

Speaker 2: 10:30
is your ego driving your choices right, or are these prospects genuinely conflicting with your core values? Because rejections are something that you will be asked about when you’re resurrected. So you know, especially in north america and we discuss this a lot that we are a minority. You know, in canada, we, as muslims, we comprise of just under five percent. In america, I believe it’s around 2.5 percent, so5%. So we do not have an abundance of options. We have to take this seriously, because time will not stop for us.

Speaker 1: 11:07
Actually, there is a story in the Sunnah. I don’t know if a lot of people know it, but Umar ibn al-Khattab. He got rejected so he was trying to get her daughter, haffsa, married. Um, he started with abu bakr and abu bakr told him give me some time, I’ll let you know. He came back and he told him no, I’m not interested. Omar tried with othman. Same thing no, I’m not interested. Imagine, right, yeah. And then, subhanallah, a few days later, the prophet alayhi salam.

Speaker 2: 11:44
He proposed to hafsa yeah, and actually he was sad so yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:49
So then, uh, he went back to abu bakr and othman and they asked him oh, maybe you felt something in your heart like maybe you felt sad and bad about it. And he said, actually I did. And they said the only reason we rejected her is because we knew that the Prophet peace be upon him had mentioned it a few days before that he was going to propose to her. So look at what she got at the end, what Hafsa got she got to be the wife of the Prophet, to become the mother of the believers, and Uthman got to be the father-in-law of the Prophet.

Speaker 2: 12:27
What an amazing blessing.

Speaker 1: 12:29
This is right. It is and these are not like superhumans, superheroes. These are real people.

Speaker 2: 12:37
They’re human beings that dealt with rejection just like us, but they handled it differently than we did. And so rejections are not a foreign concept. It happened during the Prophet’s time. It’s happening during our time and it’s part of the search.

Speaker 1: 12:51
Yeah, life is going to be full of rejections, whether it’s when you’re trying to get married, trying to apply for a school, get a job. Maybe there is this house you so trying to get married, trying to apply for a school, get a job. Maybe there is this house you so want to get and you have your eye on it, but somebody else gets it. So it’s just part of life, part of the journey. And remember rejections will help you Refining your search, will help you build resilience and they will help you get closer to Allah. Use it as an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 13:20
Allah has a plan for everybody. Sometimes we actually we never know what the plan is, but it’s just a matter of putting our faith in Allah and tying our camel, putting in the work till next time, inshallah inshallah, assalamualaikum.