Options for the rest of my life
I don't think I will get married again. I think I will stick to my original plan. I would love to, but is it really worth it. No. Celibacy is the way that it is going to be. I will just save so that my kids can have something when they get old enough and then I will just give them my memoirs. I'm Done with marriage and love and kids and life. I will just work and become an activist for education and the liberation of self.
I see now why sometimes you look at the marriage structure and it seems so cold. All she has to do is watch your stuff and have sex with you. Other than that it is all your responsibility. Well if you don't really have anything invested then you won't have anything left to lose. Maybe I'll move to some deserted island in the pacific, or maybe I will roam the earth and panhandle for my degree and just take classes here and there while being homeless. I'll be in shape if the police don't grab me and throw me in jail because I happen to be an errant black man walking around. I'll have to study law just to defend myself. I'll keep blogging and writing and reading and studying and teaching. I'll do some anthropology, maybe go to some combat zones and see what the real deal is with the suffering of the people.
Poverty is frightening and I have always been afraid of it so maybe I will embrace it and learn to live with it. Anyway life is going to go on. I can't check out before time, I can't press the pause button, I have to go on. It is just the way that it is. I think I will study to become hafiz. I will study though and I will make that my life.
Peace
It is a shame that all women are going to be tarred and feathered due to the maliciousness of some. Not sure what the percentage is of women who take the men to the cleaners. I am not one of them. I had a son, his father never paid one red cent of support, was 'allowed' unrestricted visits - if he so chose. There was never a legal decision in this matter - it was between him and me. But then I am learning that I am a very weird person - focused more on what was best for the child then what was 'best' for me. In shaa allh you will be blessed and things will work out for you and your children.
ReplyDeleteYeah it is sad. I know a lot of people here don't know what is going on on her side and they see my side and they say he is so stupid, but believe me if people saw both sides of the situation they would at least have to think twice before forming an opinion. I don't speak about the wrong that I have been done for the most part. A savvy person can take a couple of guesses I suppose, but I will neither confirm nor deny anything on her part.
ReplyDeleteNow though I am jaded and I don't want to get married again. I was doing fine when I was single, but I was sinning and I sought to stop. Maybe this is a lesson to make me do it of my own accord and not through the devices of marriage. Then again there are scholars who got married while walking home from their wives funeral for fear of Allah. So maybe I have other lessons to learn in this.
I know that I will not be anything but completely honest with people from now on. At least that is something that is respectable and honorable. I think that if I am open and honest about my desires for polygamy then I will have done no one any harm if they decide to marry me. Unless of course they are lying to me. You learn small things as you go through life. It is better to do than talk. Work and plan than daydream. Be honest with yourself before explaining yourself to someone else.
I don't know life will go on. I will just take this time to chronicle the blessings that Allah has bestowed upon me and reflect on the verses that state you may like a thing and it is bad for you and you may hate a thing and it is good for you. I love Sakinah with all of my heart, but Allah has shown me consistently over and over that I should put this down and maybe it is time to stop fighting that and accept what is destiny and be thankful that I am not in a worse situation.
Insha Allah we will all become stronger and wiser and more faithful.
You make it sound like the job of a mother is EASY! You state everything else is your responsibility but you know that wasn't the case in your current marriage. If it was your responsibility then I guess you are the one to blame for your bills, wandering eye, and failure to maintain your household. Stop putting all your business on the web and handle your business! All the free time you have you could be working from home and making money for your legal fees instead of begging for it on the site! Man up and stop with the innocent act!!!
ReplyDeleteIslamically Everything IS my responsibility. Islamically the woman is required to have sex and watch my stuff and of course carry the baby/ies for 9 months at a time. After that technically it is all my responsibility. When we get right down to the nitty gritty of it and it is a blessing that it works that way. Muslim women can quit at anytime. She doesn't have to cook, clean, do little girls hair, change diapers, wake up in the middle of the night to tend sick children NOTHING. Read your text. It is in the manual. She doesn't have to do squat. This is how she gets all of her blessings and how heaven lies at the foot of the mother. She gets the first major blessing from the 9 month trial, this trial puts the child in a debt status infinitely towards the mother. Regardless of her character. The second major blessing is IF she so chooses of her own free will to do anything that makes the running of the house easier she gets blessings for every contributory act. If you don't believe me go ask a scholar and they will tell you and it should be that way because if it wasn't Men would have GROUNDS to abuse their position. Right now it is a bunch of baseless huff and puff when men say she should do this and she should do that.
ReplyDeleteNo it was the case in my marriage, but in my marriage as in most marriages around the country in Muslim and Non-Muslim households parents work as a team to make the marriage work. They join in union and share the load. That is what they call teamwork. When the marriage breaks down the key element of team goes out the window leaving me in the position that I am in. Which as I said before YES it is all my fault. I should have kept the family yoked to my budget so that we wouldn't be in this predicament. However when you have a team and you make plans as a team and one partner bails out then you are stuck holding the bag and that essentially is where it is.
I had no wandering eyes. I had an opinion and a position, but as far as wondering eyes, No I had none. Not in terms of me hawking every Muslimah breathing I didn't. I didn't come and try to hook up with any woman that came to my blog. I didn't seek out women to marry. I didn't do any of that stuff and the stuff that I did do could have been silenced with the truth, but I am not going to just throw that all on her. If I was truthful with myself at the beginning then I would have just looked for a P relationship to start with. If I was better in tune with women's feelings then I would have said less. If I hadn't thought that I could say anything then things would have been different. Oh well so much for that now. That won't be happening again.
My business is handled. I have a second job thank you. I'm working on it. Of course working at home you have to do what you can. So far I've made $150 whoo hoo. If I didn't have this thing on my foot I could make more, but it is what it is.
My business frankly is over. So I really don't know why you are upset. You talk to your girlfriends and I blog. It's a coping mechanism. Thinking out loud and then writing it down. I'll deal with my legal fees the same way I will deal with all of my other wayward bills. Let them ride until I can get in a position to do something about them.
No I'm not innocent, you happy, but I did keep my word up until April 20th when the shit hit the fan. I was willing to work for this up until that date. There are two sides to the story Sister, get the other one and then come to me with some facts. My email address is in the side bar. You don't have to leave it here. You know who I am, we are all family no need for secrets here.
How are the kids by the way?
You know, its interesting, you wrote a post about there is too much of men blaming women, and women blaming men, and then your very next post was about how all men are disadvantaged in divorce and women just live high on the hog. It may be true that most women get custody, but a well known study in Massacusetts showed that when men contested custody, they received joint or full custody an overwhelming majority of the time. It could be that men assume women will win so they don't contest, but it could also be true that while men want a relationship with their kids, they often don't want the additional responsibility, or, as in the advice you were given, they'd rather just walk away, painful as it is, and just think about making a new family down the road. I'm sure there are women who do very well by getting child support, but even you aknowledged in your pro-polygamy arguments that divorced women with kids in tow are usually in a tough spot financially, and are not, in general, seen as prize marriage partners. I understand that you are angry, and I understand that your situation is different in that you did want to assume full custody, but printing anti-women screeds that even you know aren't very truthful isn't terriby helpful.
ReplyDeleteI don't even know how to respond. First I will apologize and resist the urge to debate for the sake of debating. I realize right now I have to be depressed because I have been in this room for two weeks. Only going out to eat apples. So chances are I am depressed thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteI do understand your premise though and I will concede to say that something is terribly wrong. For myself in my hurt I think I will just stay single and be the best Dad that I can wherever I may be.
I will miss my kids, I always have. I don't think though that the screed was anti women, as much as it is anti-system. Islamically we have a blue print to follow and theoretically it would be fair. The mother keeps the children the first 7 years or until remarriage and then the father keeps the children until 14 or the child is married. It seems fair to me seeing as how this was the normal age of adulthood during that time. I think I will post another post solely on marriage contracts. Which ironically is where this whole thing started.
For those who are hopeful of getting married out there I wish you all the best.
Peace
I'm not Muslim so I can't comment on the "manual" but I have been divorced, as have all three of my sisters and my daughter. None of us - and I mean NONE of us - took our ex's to the cleaners. Only one of the five got child support on a regular basis and that was because the courts kept tracking him down. One - my ex - practically sold his children for the cost of back child support. One tried to do so but his ex (my youngest sister) wasn't married so the court wouldn't let him just relinquish his parental rights. He has since gone out of his way to destroy the lives of his children, and has done a pretty good job of it. One, my ex-SIL, only paid child support while it was taken out of his paycheck. Now that he's no longer at that job (and we don't know where he's working), he's not made any attempt at payment. He's not seen his son in nearly two years and hasn't even tried. He also never calls him. Who is losing out here? Certainly not the men in these situations. They've just merrily gone about their way with little regard to the struggles the women have had to go through to feed and clothe their children.
ReplyDeleteI also don't know of any woman who believes that her role in a marriage is to just have sex with the man and to watch his stuff. How crass. If that's all that is required of her, then why is it the man does jack around the house and the woman does it all, plus take care of the kids? Your manual is totally out of whack if that's what you believe. You may need a new manual to study.
I'm sure there are men who do get the short end in a divorce but I think they are definitely in the minority.
I am sorry about your situation of you and your sisters. I am a responsible man. I love my kids and I want to be in their lives, all of them.
ReplyDeleteWhat I was saying about the manual is this. If Religiously you are ordered by GOD to do all of the things that you do because you decide to do it then any Man that you are with when he marries you has in fact married a slave with the ordainment of God as an authority for his bottomless pit of orders and demands of things to do all under the auspices of the office imposed by God.
Islam quiets that immediately and defines the freedom that a woman enjoys by her Creator, so that if a Man was of such character she has grounds to exit stage left and tell him where he can get off. Am I making sense? So then it would naturally be in his best interest unless he wanted to accrue an obscene amount of maintenance expenses to make life as amicable at the home as possible for the wife to entice her to want to contribute, because her Lord says that she is under no obligation to do anything at all.
The manual also goes into who is responsible for what and it dictates that the father is responsible for the care and maintenance of the child and the mother if she is pregnant.
The Manual the Quran and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad Upon him be peace) describe in great detail how the family life should be constructed and what are who's responsibilities in case of divorce.
I never wanted to get divorced. This time of marriage was planned at the beginning to be the last, but it has not worked out that way.
Well, if it is any consolation at all, in terms of the Islamic custody, its not altogether different from our current system. Custody isn't a Ronco Rotisserie - set it and forget it. You can always go back and say that circumstances have changed, so the arrangements for custody and support should change. And the older a child is, the more what they want themselves is taken into account. Also, ideally, when things calm down, you and your ex can come to a more amicable solution, which is always what is best for the kids in the long run. So what I am saying is that right now is very tough, and it is a terrible trial, but it wont last forever, and things can end up changing in your favor. I hope that helps a little.
ReplyDeleteYou have two failed marriages but you still keep mentioning your desire for polygamy. Dont you think you need to get your house in order first, provide your children with a stable home. You mentioned your ex wife could not accept you for who you are, maybe she thought being a co wife would only create a dysfunctional environment. You are broke as well, you need to be honest with yourself.
ReplyDeleteAs I find out more and more about my situation. I find that polygamy and my desire for it has less and less to do with it. You also need to keep in mind that I have said here and many times before that I am a responsible person and therefore if do not have the finances then polygamy or marriage in general will be beyond my reach. I have also stated that to get married in the first place I would need to be able to pay for everything so I realize where I am in the order of the world.
ReplyDeleteI had provided a stable home and I was dedicated to my home and my home only then my wife violated that trust by "coping" in her chosen manner which sent our marriage onto its present course. I denied who I was for my ex wife and I know specifically what went wrong in both of my relationships on the part of both spouses involved.
I am at a point now that I am just going to be honest, with myself, with people around me and the world at large. If that means I have to be single for the rest of my days then so be it. Alhamdulillah but I am not going to be a liar and I know for me as long as I don't lie then I can live with myself.
I'm just frustrated. Allah will provide a way for me when it comes time for me to get married again, and if that includes polygamy then it does and if it doesn't then Alhamdulillah I am fine either way. I have denied it before I can do it again, but I am going to put everything on the table so whomever I am with can make an intelligent choice. It is about being true to self. Know thyself and you can avoid a lot of heartache.
If I had custody of my kids though I know that I wouldn't get married again at all. I would just raise them, but with them out of my life I just have to focus on making money and perfecting myself.
ReplyDeleteI'm not in any rush to get married again. Sakinah has me all wound up and it will take some time to unwind, but I just know where I am now and when I do choose to get married again then I will be prepared to get involved in whatever kind of marriage that I want to.