It all started in 2007, I was very...very young. Without going into detail I may or may not have still been in high school, to give you some insight. It just so happened that one night I met my husband.
I didn't sleep that night.
Three days later he professed his love. What a disaster. I would have run, had I not been so fascinated and carefree. Three months later I realized, it may have been genuine, if possible. I confessed I loved him too. Five months later he traveled 6533 miles to meet me. Three seconds after we met we fell in love. We eventually got married. We got pregnant. I had the baby, luckily, not him. It's been 5 months since then, and we're pretty happy with us.
That's where it stands, five years with a lot of love, sacrifice, and struggle. Lot's of struggle on my husbands part.
So, for the record- I'm very happy. Yes, I'm the wife of a Saudi man. I'm not unhappy, not culture shocked (anymore), I'm not oppressed, not abused, I'm not not okay. I made some mistakes, I was naive, but alhamdulilah I am incredibly blessed. (I don't like to say lucky, I don't believe in luck as much as I believe in fate.) I am SO loved by this man that I'm pretty willing to say that I listen to no one when it comes to relationship advice. I didn't when everyone warned me not to mess with someone I didn't know, an arab, someone with such different values and such a different mindset. I didn't when he was working his arse off a whole year and everyone said he would never come back to me. I knew the truth.
I knew he loved me.
And that's just it people! That's what it's about. Yes, I'm married to a Saudi. I'm also married to a talented, smart, open minded, exciting, unconditionally loving, sweet, sweet man. Mashallah, he is more than what I could've expected.
I do get mad at him, however. I get mad when he floods the bathroom making wudu. I get mad when he drenches good food in hot sauce so you can taste nothing else. I get mad when he lectures me when I'm trying to sleep. I get mad when he ignores me for his iphone, soccer, and his beard (man literally spends hours on the beard).
My husband is a huge part of me, but he doesn't define me.
He changed me, but he doesn't make the changes. I guess what makes being his wife possible is that I had to know I was who I was. I didn't become muslim for him, I didn't change my name because I'm muslim, I am proud to be myself.
If I could give counsel to any girl wanting or in a relationship with someone from another world I would say: Be you. Don't lose it. If you do you will regret it and eventually resent every difference between you and that person, those differences in you that remain will always remain. You can't change them. You can't change to fit what you think would make the relationship more suitable. The objective was never to marry him and become a Saudi woman- thats why we work so well. He married a Canadian.
So my love for bohemian fashion, my need for 90's music (astaghfurallah), my 'western food crave', my natural obsession, my love of sour cream and all things texmex, my collection of Venetian masks he thinks are so creepy, and everything that makes me 'western'- let it bother him. Let him appreciate it all the same.
If someone loves you, they value your differences. They enjoy them.
Anyway, thats my relationship.
I love my husband.
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