hi , u have to go and ask if he loves u speedly because u r out of time . . . .( u will be married ) and then u will know what to do . 4 sure don't tell ur family ...( iam arabian girl too )

thank u 4 ur advice. the truth is i haven't decided what to do yet. i'm still in america and my cousin is in yemen right now. the reason i said yes to the engagement is because he & his mom & sisters said that they would put a sihr on my parents he told me right to my face but i overheard his mom & sisters talking. i luv my parents more than anything i don't want anything to happen to them because of me. since i've known them for 2 years i don't think that they were lying to scare me. the sahir lives two houses away from them! i do have someone who i trust with all my heart & i tell her everything she is my cousin and she knows my fiancee, his mom & sisters because they are also her cousins. she knows everything but the problem is she is also in yemen.

the other thing that really annoys me about my fiancee and them is that who ever i talk to they think that they are turning me against them which is denfinitly not true. i never judged anyone with what people tell me about them before i even meet them, first i get to know them then i judge them. anyway my fiancee's mom & dad already hate my mom for no reason.

they are already tring to turn me against my mom's side of the family but i don't listen to them because i luv my mom's side of the family. i know that if i get married to my cousin me & his mom & sisters won't get along for a second no matter how hard they're gonna try to pretend to be nice they love to be in control & have everything their way & i can't stand anyone tring to control me or the way i think or who i should be friends with or not. i have only known them for 2 years & i can't stand them let alone live with them for the rest of my life!

they try to be nice to me & love me i know my uncle is nice but his wife has way to much power on the way he thinks & acts towards his family. in those 2 years i have never seen him smile except once when me & him were alone away from his wife & daughters(they are their mamma's spies) when i told him something stupid to try to get him to laugh.i knew then that it was his wife that probably most likely did something to him.

at first i tried my best to love my cousin but the more i stayed with him the more i hated him & his mom. his siters i don't really have to worry about because i know how to handle them but his mom i can't stand at all. she always got her daughters around me 24/7 when they're at our house just so i don't talk to my mom's sis. who lives downstairs our house.in those 2yrs i was just happy that they didn't live with us in our house. their already.

Enough about them i'm already getting a headache. the boy who i've fallen madly in love with is my neighbor. i've known them since i was a baby. he has the nicest mom & sisters & brothers. their whole family is nice. when i first thought that i loved him i thought its just something & i'll get over it. but when ever he's around even if the room is filled with people i can't keep my eyes off of him. since we're both american born &raised we understand each other better. when i see him i feel that everything is perfect & nothing can go wrong but when he's gone i feel like something is missing like everything is wrong. sometimes when i go to sleep or alone in my room i find myself crying when i think of how much i luv him and he doesn't know or weither he luvs me or not? or what would i do if i found out that he does luv me and it's to late? or if i found out & it wasn't to late? what if i did find out & he loves me how am i gonna deal with the problems that show up from my cousin & his mom? or when i think of how much i miss him when he's gone. especially now a days he goes to work while i'm at school & comes home while i'm asleep. i haven't seen him since Jan. 11th 2006. it seems like its been 4ever. everyday i pray to Allah to answer my prayers. i'm not worried what my parents will say if i tell them i don't want my cousin because they told me before i got engaged that i can marry who ever i choose & if i ever change my mind & don't want my cousin that i should tell them but i don't want to tell them because i don't know if the boy i luv luvs me or not. i know i've written a lot but i have no one to talk to i don't have any sisters & the friends that i used to be close with be4 i went to the mideast have moved to different states. i hope any one can hlp me with my problem keep in mind that i'm muslima & the boy i luv is also muslim so its not so easy for me to go up to him & tell him "i luv u".or 4 him to do the same i also don't want him to think anything bad about me. i did the check list but the problem is i don't know what he thinks of me. i just wish that there was a way to know what he thinks of me and if he luvs me or not. i was planning to tell his sister of what i feel & ask her what she thinks but then she got married & moved to a different state. if u have any thoughts plz plz tell me. i'm going crazy tring to figure out his feelings with no luck. the only thing i know is that he got shocked when he found out i got engaged. but that doesn't help. thanx 4 ur time & thanx 2 soso & agony aunt 4 ur opinions. inshallah if anything new happens with me i'll keep u updated.

Hi again Arabian princess..
I was surprised to see my comment on the screen just now. I was trying the internet from my mobile yesterday, that's when i came to read your story. When i wrote my comment and posted it, an error occured and it told me, that i couldn't send it, and i wanted to try again from a computer today..
What i wanted to say or ask is, if it is possible to have your email address, coz i think my comment might be a little too long for the comment box, im not sure..

If you want to contact me, my email address is em_ismael@hotmail.com. I hope to hear from you, and i hope you are well insha'allah.
Sincerely Loulou

Hi Arabian princess, its Loulou, Arabic and Muslim girl from Denmark, salam 3leikum how are you?

Im gonna try if my comment can be in the comment box,,
First of all, I hope you are doing fine insha’allah.. I read a comment that was given to you from someone, where he or she told you that you should think very seriously about what the consequences will be, if you take such a “drastic step” and end the engagement with your cousin.
My immediate thought was: Why is ending an engagement considered to be a drastic step? I don’t think so..
Okay yes, in few situations it can be a drastic step, if I think about some horrible incidents that have happened where I live. I’ve heard about 5 or 6 girls, either from Pakistan or Turkey, who were forced into marriage by the family, the girls escaped the marriages, were later found, and killed by family members.. Absolutely horrifying, and it disgust me that people calling themselves Muslims and believers of Qur’an el-Karim can commit such awful crimes..
But what I want to say with this, is, that only in such situations, if you have a monstrous and crazy family like this, then it would be a drastic step to end or escape an engagement or marriage..

But from your description, it sounds to me that your parents are nice, reasonable people and good Muslims, who will not force you to marry anyone, you do not wish to marry, because you said you are sure they will accept it, if you told them you don’t want to marry your cousin..
Sorry im talking about myself now, but I recently ended my engagement with my fiancé over 9 months, after I discovered I didn’t know him as well as I thought, and he turned out to have a “double-face”. Both my cousins also recently ended their engagement, and my friend also, and by this im not saying that I, my family and friends are just big failures in choosing the right husband or wife for us, but im saying that is a normal and a totally natural thing to end an engagement, if you don’t see a future in it.

Okay perhaps now you are thinking that maybe in my family and surroundings it is not considered a huge deal when you end an engagement, and maybe it doesn’t happen a lot in your family or where you come from, but that doesn’t mean it is not normal or right.. No, it IS right, it is a natural thing to do in Islam, and I believe it is also a necessary thing to do, if you feel your fiancé is not right for you..
I mean, it is not like other non-muslim couples, who are boyfriend and girlfriend for months and years, where they get to know each other, and Then the guy proposes, you’re engaged and you start to plan the wedding and so on, and so on..
When you as Muslim get engaged to someone, you are supposed to take your time to get to know each other, get to see if you share the same values, ideas, interests etc, and it is the period of time when you have to find out if you can fall in love with that other person and live with him for the rest of your life.

But you write that you are not in love with your cousin, you even write that you hate him.. So why continue with this? You said something about “shir” that he, his mum and sisters would put sihr on your parents, and that this was the reason why you said yes to the engagement.. Im not sure what this sihr is actually, but maybe this has something to do with why you so far accepting to stay engaged? But anyways, I never heard of this word in Islam before, so I don’t think it is of huge importance, but whatever it is, it should definitely NOT be the reason why you should stay in this relationship.
Why start to build up a relationship, when there is nothing good from the beginning to build on? There is no love, no feelings, and you don’t have a good connection and relationship with his family, and I almost 100 per cent sure it is not something that will be better with time, absolutely not.
I know a girl, who got married to someone, she loved him more than anything, because he was the first and only love she has had.. I thought she was happy, but after few weeks, weeks! I hear from her that she is so unhappy, they always fight and have a lot of problems, and then she tells me they had these problems from the beginning, before they were married, but she ignored it, coz she thought it would become better when they married and had children, and she thought he could change somehow..
But now it has been 4 months, and she constantly she is having fights with him, he doesn’t respect her a bit and he is so mean to her that Wallah many times I felt to go and beat the hell out of him. She is so unhappy ya3ni so I can’t even describe it.
But she is saying she wants to stay with him, because now she accepted the marriage and she feels she can’t just break out of it, she I stuck, and also, he is the only man she has ever been with, so she can’t see herself to love anyone else than him, and she wants to stay.. Wallah it breaks my heart, because I can’t do anything about it, I tried, I really tried, and this is one of the reasons that im giving my advice to you. I don’t know you, but you sound like a good girl, and I don’t want any girl to go through this.

Again, you said you’re not afraid of your parents reaction, if you say you want to end your engagement, but you said that you don’t want to tell your parents, because you are in love with someone else, but you don’t know if he loves you back..
But why do you have to even mention this other to your parents? You don’t need any other reason to end the engagement than the reason that it is simply because you don’t love your cousin and probably you are never going to love him..
You HAVE to have some kind of positive feeling towards him, and this or these feelings, and NOT the feeling and thoughts about this, sihr, should make you want to marry him, Love should make you want to marry. I could never imagine marrying someone I didn’t have romantic feelings for, I don’t think I could ever touch him or be intimate with him, and I would feel like I was violated if I let someone I hate to touch me.
From what you told earlier about your parents, I am sure that they will listen to you, they love you and want the best for you, and I truly believe that if you continue with this relationship with your cousin when you don’t love him and later it turns out you will be unhappy in your marriage with him, it will break your parents’ heart, because of course they just want to see you happy, and if they knew that you only said yes to your cousin because of this sihr-thing and coz you didn’t want anything bad to happen to your parents, im almost certain they will say that all that matters is how their daughter feels and that the most important is that you marry someone you love..

About the boy you love, now you didn’t say much about him, but he sure sounds like a much better and more suitable person than your cousin, also because he lives near you so you have better chance of seeing what he is really like. But still I want to tell you to be careful about your feelings, be realistic and don’t be blind for things about him that might not be right for you..

Im not saying he is a bad person, I am sure that he is a very good person, but still it could turn out that he is not the right person for you. When I was in love, I didn’t want to listen to Anyone at all, if they told me to slow down and not just throw myself into the relationship coz there could be a big possibility that I could be blind about things that didn’t make him suitable for me.

Maybe and insha’allah it could turn out to be something, and if he is your NarSib, then you will marry.
Who knows, maybe he has feelings for you too, but he couldn’t tell you when he saw you got engaged, and maybe he thinks you are happy and satisfied in your relationship with your fiancé, so he’s afraid to tell you how he feels.. Only Allah and the boy know.

The title of your email is Mess up my reputation, but I can’t see how you are going to do that..
If you mean, you are afraid of what people will say if you end the engagement, I just wanna tell you, you should not care one tiny bit of what people are going to say, trust me, there are some people who just loooves to talk, but much of what they are saying is just crap.. And you didn’t to anything wrong, so what are they going to say? And if you are going to end the engagement, still you didn’t do anything wrong, like I said it is a totally natural thing, and especially in your case where there is not even love involve.
Don’t care about what other people in your surroundings are saying, only care about what your close family and the ones who love you are saying, and im sure they will support you in your decision, if you want to end the engagement.

And if you meant that you were afraid to mess up your reputation with the boy you love. You wrote that you can’t go up and tell him you love him, coz this might make him think bad things of you. First of all, even if you Did go up and told him that you love him, I don’t think that after knowing you and your family for a long time, since you are neighbors, that suddenly he will think anything bad about you.. It’s natural to get feelings for someone you have known for many years.
If he was someone that you’d only known for a couple of days or weeks, and you suddenly came up to him and claimed your love, then yes, then he would probably think, “Wow okay what’s going on with her”!
But I don’t think that you have to go up to him and say that you love him.. But if you end the engagement insha’allah, then the boy must get to know it somehow, maybe if his mother gets to know about it, then she will tell him, and then let him come to you..
You already know that you care for him a lot, and if he feels something for you too and he knows that you are not engaged anymore and that you are doing fine after the break-up since it didn’t manage you to develop any romantic connection or feelings of love between you and your cousin and that you are ready to move on, then insha’allah he will have the courage to tell you or come and propose.. Maybe you can begin to help his mother out around the house or something, so the boy gets to see you more often, and then he can see that you are doing fine, and that you are happy and positive about the future, and then he can see that you don’t have a broken heart coz of the break-up, but that you are ready to find someone you really love..
And please remember what I said about your feelings, and be careful and don’t rush things or have too big expectations, coz maybe he doesn’t feel the same for you. So please don’t end your engagement and then wait day after day that the other boy will come and propose to you, but end it simply because you don’t love and can’t stand your cousin and you absolutely don’t see a future for you two – that is what you should tell your parents can hope that – tell them that you really tried to feel something for your cousin, but now you are sure there will never be a connection and that you would rather wait until you find someone you really love..
And then afterwards, insha’allah this boy will come to you – and if he loves you back, then he will come.
You didn’t do anything wrong Arabian princess, you don’t have to worry that you are going to mess up your reputation, coz you are not, you sound like a really good person, and I don’t want you to mess up your heart – that is what you should care about.

Sorry, I was a bit speedy with the last part of my comment, coz I really wanted to end my comment and send it to you as soon as possible.. I don’t know if it is of any help, but I just felt that I had to tell you.
I hope the best for you, yalla take care, insha'allah kheir with everything
Sincerely Loulou