Episode 4: Why is the Default NO?

Speaker 1: 0:00
Assalamu alaikum, I’m Hiba.

Speaker 2: 0:02
And I’m Zaid.

Speaker 1: 0:03
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.

Speaker 1: 0:14
Bismillah, assalamu alaikum everyone, welcome to another episode of Diary of a Matchmaker. My name is Hiba and on the other mic is my husband and co-host, zaid.

Speaker 2: 0:26
Assalamu alaikum.

Speaker 1: 0:27
Wa alaikum assalam Zaid, I have a question. It’s been bugging me for the past few months. Why is the default no?

Speaker 2: 0:35
What do you mean?

Speaker 1: 0:37
Why is it? When we introduce matches to each other, their immediate response is no, unless there is a compelling reason, like a strong reason, to actually consider it. It’s like they’re pre-programmed to say no.

Speaker 2: 0:50
Yeah, it’s something I’ve been noticing these past couple of months and when I reflect back upon my search, getting married, and those days when we were talking and getting to know each other, I don’t recall ever being so close-minded, ever being so picky and looking for reasons to say no, but this just seems to be the default now, and I mean, I have my theories. I think it’s a mix of the times that we’re living in. You know, people adopting the Netflix mindset, thinking that they have a buffet of options and that there’s always going to be somebody else that’s better. What is your reason? I mean, what do you think explains all this?

Speaker 1: 1:37
I don’t know, it’s maybe they’re just disconnected from reality. There’s the illusion that there’s this perfect person waiting for me and I’m gonna find them, maybe a fear of missing out on something better. But you know, the one reason I don’t like, I don’t argue with if they say I didn’t feel attracted to the person. Like. You can’t argue with that right, either you’re attracted or not. But when they come up with like I want to say silly reasons, like oh, she lives an hour and a half away from me even though she’s willing to relocate, that was a reason that we came across recently, right?

Speaker 2: 2:15
So let’s just use that example specifically, where, like, these two were very compatible. She was willing to compromise on a few difficult factors, and, but she lived in another province, and but she was willing to relocate to the province that the match lived in, and and the only reason he said no was because it would be difficult to get to know her living in another province, which we feel is somewhat justifiable.

Speaker 1: 2:48
In this day and age. Honestly, I don’t think it’s justifiable. That’s true, that’s true Like when you can talk to the person, video and Skyping and everything.

Speaker 2: 2:58
Everything Like there has to be some level of compromise, like you were living in Jordan studying and I was living here and there was a million and a half reasons for us to say no that different ethnic backgrounds, different upbringing.

Speaker 1: 3:13
For God’s sake, my parents don’t speak English.

Speaker 2: 3:15
Your parents don’t speak Arabic, right, even English is not my first language, I can’t even communicate with my in-laws, but we found a way to make it work because we saw compatibility and we knew that there was something special here. So what? What has happened? Is this like a new phenomenon, or what’s? What’s going on here? I just don’t understand.

Speaker 1: 3:37
Yeah, it’s really frustrating because a lot, of, a lot of times we have high hopes for these two matches. A lot of times we have high hopes for these two matches, like we see a lot of compatibility.

Speaker 2: 3:46
They see a lot of compatibility, but it’s like they find a way or they find something to say no. Yeah, we were just watching an interview just a few days ago with Baba Ali, the founder of HOD. Hafdeen is the newly branded name, Hafdeen, and it’s fascinating because he was being interviewed by some podcasters and they were mentioning how they’re on these WhatsApp groups, like matrimonial WhatsApp groups, and there was this one guy I kid you, not one guy that had been introduced to 150 girls and yet he’s still single.

Speaker 1: 4:28
He said no to all of them. You know what might be the reason. You know what might be the reason. What the more he keeps being introduced and he keeps rejecting it means that he’s still in demand and that his stock is very high right. The moment he says yes, then he’s going to miss out on many more rejections, rejecting many more people.

Speaker 2: 4:51
Yeah, it’s like I don’t know how the economy works, supplying demand right. The higher the demand, the more valuable the product is.

Speaker 1: 5:00
Yeah, but it takes us back to the core problem Are we looking for marriage? Are we really interested in marriage?

Speaker 2: 5:09
Or are we just entertaining? Yeah, something I always say People nowadays are entertaining the idea of marriage and not committing to the process of getting married. So go ahead.

Speaker 1: 5:19
And you would think that people with specific circumstances, who are older maybe, who are divorced, with children, they would be willing to compromise a little bit more. Not that I’m saying that because of these circumstances you settle down for something that’s not good for you, but you would think, like, with age, with children, all of that, you’d be more open minded, right?

Speaker 2: 5:50
Especially if somebody is saying yes to you when you have children or when you cross a certain age, but it’s not making any difference, it’s not. And when I say committing to the process of getting married, so believe it or not, even when people pay a registration fee and come on board as a client with us, it still feels like they’re not serious Because, like, for example, we just emailed a client a few days ago saying hey, you didn’t get back to us about the previous match. We emailed you about a few months ago. We’re checking in to see if you’re still searching. No response. And she’s paid a registration fee, she’s on board with us as a client and just no response.

Speaker 2: 6:20
And it’s like I said, people are just not willing to put in the work and and so when I say committing to the process of getting married, understand that it’s not much different from the work people are putting in for their professional degrees. It requires resilience because rejections are part of the process. I’m sure everybody can relate to in some way back when they were trying to apply for medical school or dental school and how they got rejected. It requires patience, it requires commitment, it requires so many things and we just adopt this passive mentality because we’re hearing stories of people got married in high school or college. They found their high school sweetheart, or, you know, movies are are, you know, distorting our view of marriage, thinking that it’s so easy and we can just take a passive approach?

Speaker 2: 7:16
But the reality is that we, as muslims in the west, comprise of what maybe one or two percent of the population. If that so, the pool of itself is already small, and when we’re putting restrictions upon restrictions upon restrictions whether it’s geographic location, ethnicity, language age, you know, lifestyle, things like that we are reducing our pools so much to the point where it’s just becoming almost impossible. And then we’re questioning why are we still single? Yeah, yeah, it’s true that we impossible.

Speaker 1: 7:51
And then we’re questioning why are we still single? Yeah, yeah, it’s true that we’re 1% or 2%, but actually it doesn’t mean that there are 1% or 2% for you to choose from, because amongst that 1% or 2%, half of them probably are men, Half of them are women.

Speaker 2: 8:05
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:06
From that opposite gender you’re looking to marry. There’s a percentage who are already married. There’s a percentage who are already married. There are a percentage who are elderly. There is another percentage who are still kids, right? So it’s really really a small percentage.

Speaker 2: 8:21
That’s true. I didn’t think about it that way.

Speaker 1: 8:22
I honestly think it’s all about a mindset, just adopting a mindset of saying no. Like I said before, it’s like we’re pre-programmed to saying no and this means that we’re not taking time to consider it, we’re not being serious about it, we’re not putting the effort to know the person, like when we introduce matches to each other. The next step would be if they’re both want to get to know each other, is the double date, where they actually meet either in person or virtual. They talk for three hours. They get to know each other over our curated games we don’t charge for that exactly until after we’re successful yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:05
So there is no commitment just to say yes and meet the person. It’s not like you’re saying, yes, I want to marry them, but they don’t want to even take that step to meet the person. It’s not like you’re saying, yes, I want to marry them, but they don’t want to even take that step to meet the person and explore. Maybe when you meet them you’re going to discover that whatever reason you had in mind is actually not valid.

Speaker 2: 9:23
Right. Right, because, like you just mentioned, you have the opportunity at the double date to resolve all your questions and doubts. And, um, and it’s so different when uh compared to what we notice in the seerah, what we notice in our prophetical, prophetic example of how the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, uh approached marriage. He made the path so easy and he always found a way to make it work, whether it was in regards to the mahram, whether it was the mahr. There’s examples upon examples of how some sahabas, who were so poor, would be allowed to use Quran or just surahs in general, as a mahr to get married. And here we are, alhamdulillah, living in the West. We’re pretty well accomplished, you know, most of us have, you know, well-paying degrees. We’re professionals, and yet we’re finding a way to make it difficult for us.

Speaker 1: 10:28
Do you think it’s a fear of commitment that’s holding people back?

Speaker 2: 10:35
I would say I don’t think it’s a fear of commitment. I think it is the illusion of options that we think we have a lot of options. I mean, we heard it from the brother who said no to the girl that was living in the other province that he was saying I’m sure that there are other women in my geographical location that would work for me, but the reality is you know that in your specific circumstances and of course I’m not going to go into much detail, but in this brother’s specific circumstances, there isn’t, there really isn’t.

Speaker 1: 11:15
And we realize it later, much later, when it’s like. It’s even harder when, after years, when you’re older and all of that and the same applies to women as well Like, how many times, even though, like, the databases of any matchmaker is filled with girls more than guys, but it’s girls who keep saying no For what legitimate reason?

Speaker 2: 11:40
Yeah. What was the most recent reason a girl said no? Yeah, she said no because, you know, the brother was expecting to start a family within a year.

Speaker 1: 11:55
Yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:55
And she said, no, I can’t guarantee children yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:00
I can’t guarantee Well nobody can guarantee children, Even like 19-year-olds can’t guarantee they can actually conceive. But I don’t know.

Speaker 2: 12:09
And the interesting thing is that we’ve had to redesign our service model to put pressure on people to take these things seriously. And what we realize is that when we give people too many ways out or too many options this is why we’re very strict about just introducing one match at a time number one and number two what we used to do is, after introducing the matches at a double date, we would grant them two weeks, another two-week time frame to further assess compatibility and get families involved, and within those two weeks, if they felt that they weren’t a good match, we would simply let them come back to us. We would return them their double date fee and start searching for them. That’s how easy we would make it for them. And what we were realizing is that we were just giving people too many ways out and not putting enough pressure for them to make these things work, because three-hour double date plus introducing the potential match, granting them time to ask us questions, is clearly not enough for them.

Speaker 1: 13:18
Apparently, you know, it feels like they’re looking for a needle in a haystack. But then when they finally find that one needle, which is somebody who’s really compatible with them, they throw it out and say, oh no, I don’t like this needle, I’m going to keep looking for another needle. People don’t know how difficult it is to find somebody who’s really compatible with you and then to throw it out just over some shallow reasons or not being willing to put in the effort. That really gets us and it’s one of the reasons we we hate being matchmakers. I’m gonna say the h word we love our work, we love what we do and, alhamdulillah, it’s very rewarding. But it has its negative aspects and this is one of them.

Speaker 2: 14:12
I wouldn’t say we hate it, but there are times of frustration and there are times where we just feel like banging our heads into the wall. But that’s the nature of any sort of service-based business. You know, whether you’re a coach, whether you’re a mentor or anything, you have to deal with the highs and lows, because you’re dealing with people, right. You’re dealing with difficult personalities sometimes and moods and preferences.

Speaker 1: 14:30
Yeah, but especially when you really want to see your clients getting married. We care about them so much that we get frustrated when they don’t put in any effort.

Speaker 2: 14:41
Right, I’m sure fitness coaches feel the same way. Right, you deal with a client and you really want to see them lose weight, but they’re going to McDonald’s every day and they’re not putting in the work. So I’m sure other people share the same frustration. But Alhamdulillah, I’m sure. Just like a fitness coach would feel joy, you know seeing his client lose all that weight, we feel the same joy when we find out our clients get married, alhamdulillah. So we understand it’s part of the package and we really hope you guys benefited from this.

Speaker 1: 15:15
And go ahead. Let us know why. Do you think the default is no? Is our theory correct or do you have another opinion?

Speaker 2: 15:23
Honestly, I think it’s because people are also chasing perfection.

Speaker 1: 15:26
That too, that’s for another episode, but let us know your opinion and, inshallah, we’ll see you next one.

Speaker 2: 15:32
All right. As-salamu alaykum.