My cousin (Girl) who I am rather close to got a Rishta recently.
Background/Guy: He’s into IT. Well settle and decent looking. Works in Europe. Only son. Comes from a good family. He’s 25.
Background/Girl: MBA grad. Works and does really well for herself. Rich, beautiful and well to do family. She’s 24.
Guy calls and they both meet. Have small talk for about ½ hr.
Meets 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] time and again some generic chatter. Guy likes girl and girl can’t decide. Leaves it to parents.
Parents meet Guy/Family. They like the guy however concerned he could be shorter in height then her (He was wearing shoes and she wears flats and there wasn’t much difference). Guys family wants to come next day and finalize everything.
Aunt/uncle have a conversation with my parents and are trying to figure out if they should go-ahead with Rishta (Girl still doesn’t know. Things are moving fast and it’s still sinking into her). Height issue may sound very insignificant if everything is all good, but then let’s just say family thinks it’s somewhat important.
Calls me and because I am close to my cousin, I suggest they meet once more before family comes over, just to make sure guy is not shorter then her (We joke on how she should make him remove his shoes).
Meet 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] time. And she thinks he’s exactly her height or slightly shorter (Both are 5.7). Have a conversation where he wants to finalize everything before he goes back to Europe in a week and won’t come back for a year.
Guy’s family calls. During normal conversation brings up the topic of how guy doesn’t have 3 fingers (Birth defect. Fingers exist but are half the normal size.). Girl or anyone else didn’t notice it during face-to-face.
Girl gets really angry on why he didn’t tell her before and if he’s hiding other things. (He was limping when they first meet (Soccer match) and my cousin and I joked if something was wrong there too. Rude, yes but had to bring some humor into all this and for all you know it could be true..:-)..I think girl has kind of started liking the guy at this point, so she got a bit angry on why he didn’t tell her.
Cancelled meeting parents and Guy/Girl will meet again and decide on their own. I told her to finalize it this time and not let it drag this far. She’s never been through a rishta process and so I think she’s stressed out more than anything.
Regardless of what her decision is, I wanted to see what all you would do? Sounding as superficial as I can, I would have not gone through this just from a height prospective, forgot the hand. Being too picky?. Yes, maybe had it been just the height but now with the hand, most family is against it. (The guy isn’t super great but from a decent family. And things are happening so fast, that you can’t really judge how his personality is but he does seem to be sweet and down to earth). Not that she won’t get any more Rishta’s but is this not worth looking into or should we close this chapter and move forward?
Some of my family members did go the whole route of “It’s not the guys fault”, “it’s the soul that counts”, “It could have been your son”..etc, and yes I understand all that and but it’s just that when it comes to family/daughters, you just want the perfect guy…
Well i don't think you guys are being unreasonable! Marriage is not something you should rush into without considering all the factors and that includes the physical attraction as well.
What you guys are being unreasonable about is the fact they didnt tell about the guy's defect earlier on, well i think most families would take their time get comfortable with each other before discussing such stuff. They told you guys before anything was finalised so i don't think they are at wrong here. Now ofcourse its your choice to accept this defect of his or reject him based on it. Does this defect affect his hand movement? You have the right to find out more about it. Take your time and decide.
Seriously, I think its extremely superficial to reject someone on the basis of ht especially when its barely noticeable. Sure if it was a noticeable difference I could agree. Girls who are tall will have a hard time finding guys taller then them. Unfortunately we don't have very many tall Pakistani guys. My sister is 5'9 and so is BIL might even be 1/2 and inch or so shorter but Alhamdulillah they are happy together.
If the girls is okay with it don't make it harder for her to say yes.
She can reject the rishta based on not being attracted, yes. But i wonder how no one noticed his fingers in all these meetings? I can understand being upset if he was trying to hide it, but that doesn't seem to be the case?
Well, I don't think that the girl has an issue with the guy having anatomical deformities but rather why he chose to hide it from her, and hence is angry. Which makes sense b/c hiding things is never good. However, I also don't think the guy hid it on purpose, to some people it is not on their mind that someone would be so superficial as to even care about this stuff. For example, if I were to find out, I could really care less if a guy had 3 or 5 fingers if I really liked him and thought he is a kind, smart person. But to each his own...
Anyhow, I think families should just let the two of them do the talking.
It's strange that the girl didnt notice the fingers earlier. This is quite a confusing situation... am sure the girl likes him now but she can also get more rishtas in the near future. I do feel bad for the guy though, if he gets rejected just cuz of his birth defect that really isnt his fault. I am so unsure what I would have done... Istighara?
The girl was previously unsure about the guy so she could have used any little excuse to reject the guy. However, now since she has started liking the guy, such minor things shouldn't affect her decision. The height issue was obvious to her since the beginning. If height was a major issue, she/ her family should have said no in the beginnning rather than leading the guy and his family on for so long and now using this finger issue for saying no.
The girl should first decide whether these finger and height issues are troubling her and if yes, she should NOT waste more of the guy's time before meeting him for few more times and then rejecting him. If these issues are bothering her, she should politely decline now rather than meeting the guy few more times before finally declining. There is no problem in declining if she is not feeling attracted to the guy. Yes its superficial. But physical attraction is important and is even permissible in Islam. I guess, height is an attraction issue here as compared to fingers which are not noticeable.
Thanks for all the constructive feedback. So to clear it even more,
I think the girl was okaish with the height...(yes, she would have liked a taller guy but then I think she was willing to give that up for him being a nice guy)
The hand part: It’s very obvious. All this while he was hiding it and now that it’s in the open, it’s very noticeable ( I am not sure how my cousin didn’t notice it but then she wasn’t paying attention to his hand whilst talking to him. He probably had it in his pocket…and the first time, they met he was sitting all the while…I didn’t really ask her the details. But “true that” she didn’t notice it and yes it’s quite visible.)
I think the girl was angry because they meet 3-4 times. He was very open with her asking all sorts of questions. The Rishta was pretty much done. If it hadn’t been us taking more time, we won’t have known till the last minute. She now thinks he’s hiding other things from her (And I am sure he probably isn’t), but that’s how it works. If you hide something initially, you kind of lose trust later on. Even if he wasn’t comfortable telling her or didn’t think it would matter to her, he should have been upfront about it (When was he going to tell her, on her engagement day in front of all the family to see). My cousin is a very honest person and so is her family. Everything from her side was crystal clear for the start.
Yes, it’s up to them to decide and she would be making a decision shortly.
PS: No matter how arrogant/Superficial I may sound, I would have not gone ahead with the rishta based on the hand details. But then I don’t want to cloud her judgment and so none of us have given our final opinion for now. If she does ask me, I’ll let tell her what I think of it.
I do feel bad for the guy but because it’s not a love marriage and rishta through acquaintances, I feel she has the right to say no without being judged for her humane nature.
The girl was previously unsure about the guy so she could have used any little excuse to reject the guy. However, now since she has started liking the guy, such minor things shouldn't affect her decision. The height issue was obvious to her since the beginning. If height was a major issue, she/ her family should have said no in the beginnning rather than leading the guy and his family on for so long and now using this finger issue for saying no.
The girl should first decide whether these finger and height issues are troubling her and if yes, she should NOT waste more of the guy's time before meeting him for few more times and then rejecting him. If these issues are bothering her, she should politely decline now rather than meeting the guy few more times before finally declining. There is no problem in declining if she is not feeling attracted to the guy. Yes its superficial. But physical attraction is important and is even permissible in Islam. I guess, height is an attraction issue here as compared to fingers which are not noticeable.
Thanks Ashy. Yes height was a issue in the beginning, because none of them wanted him to be shorter then her. Everything happened so fast. And I think the biggest mistake from our side was letting the girl/guy met on their own first. It would have been okay, had my cousin been decisive enough to make a decision.
And like I said, fingers our quite noticable (I think 3 or more fingers are missing. To be very blunt, they look like a hand of how some of the street beggers are at home (Purely from what I have heard, having not seen it myself). However, he hasn't let that defect cause any hurdle in his work etc. I don't know how he does it, but he's on the computer all day long and doing very well for himself, which makes it even more complicated-( )
I don't see what the big deal is. If the girl likes the guy and their families like each other then go ahead with it. If in doubt, do an istikhara. From the details you gave, no he wasn't hiding anything. He/They waited for an opportune time to divulge the deformity. Anyone would have done the same.
However, he hasn't let that defect cause any hurdle in his work etc. I don't know how he does it, but he's on the computer all day long and doing very well for himself, which makes it even more complicated-( )
I really hope she uses this piece of information to make her decision rather than the defect itself...
