I'm waiting for my wife

But I'm not ready to find her just yet

I was in Canada a couple of months ago and one of my favourite people was keen for me to meet one of his boys. He thought we’d get along on the basis of our mutual love for spending too much money on flights, our journeys with Islam, and our differing perspectives on all things Brown Bodies. I was sold so I got on a train to meet Mahad Aamir in Middle of Nowhere, Ontario for a lakeside hike.

We chatted away (he’ll say I was chatting shit) for hours and didn’t actually get to the interview part of our agenda — I’d say that’s the sign of a good day. It’s not very often I get to chat to Muslim men about relationships and it was one of the most respectful conversations/debates I’ve had in a long time. We approached each other with curiosity and admiration and I learnt a tonne from that interaction alone.

We stayed in touch and finally managed to make this interview happen. So here we are. Meet Mahad, a recovering travel influencer turned founder of content marketing agency JollyFish Studio.

Right now, how do you like to describe yourself? 

It’s my come up chapter: I’m a boy becoming a man. It's this rite of passage I feel every man has to go through. What I do now goes beyond what I want to do, it’s what I need to do.

It’s about self improvement. I’m building a better relationship with myself and with:

• My faith. I read the Quran everyday, pray my five times, and listen and read literature on Islam. 

• My body. I’m going to the gym, eating healthily and walking everyday. 

• My mind. I’m doing the positive self talk thing and journaling. I’m building more discipline in my life, in general. 

I'm isolating myself from society, from social media (for the most part!) and trying to dedicate all my time to moving closer to becoming the man that I want to become to take on the responsibilities I need to take on, Inshallah.

Is that why you stopped travelling? 

One of the reasons I quit my 9-5 to go travelling was because I believed I owed it to my parents. They left everything in Pakistan to move here so my two sisters and I could live a better life. I always thought if I ended up doing a run of the mill job like an accountant — which was the aspiration, once upon a time —  their sacrifice would have been in vain because I wouldn’t really be happy, would I? I owed it to them to be really happy.

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There are things that parents want for their kids and then there are things that parents want for themselves. But they’ll always prioritise their kids. The financial struggles they were facing, how much they were missing me, and their worries about my career never pushed them to ask me to come home. But as time went on, I realised I needed to come back. I always say my parents left everything behind to come to Canada for me, so how ironic is it that in pursuit of trying to serve them I left them?

Serving our parents is a big part of our Islamic responsibility. There's so much reward in taking care of our parents. There’s a Hadith (a collection of sayings from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him) that says, “Heaven lies beneath the feet of your mother.” I realised that this was the noble thing to do right now. To build a sustainable environment for my family…and for a potential partner that I might find down the road one day, Inshallah.

What does love mean to you?

I used to always call myself a hopeless romantic. I loved the idea of love and falling in love and love at first sight. Travelling is also very romantic. There were lots of moments — like watching a glorious sunset — when I wondered what it would be like to experience them with a partner.

My definition of love has now changed. I don’t think love is found; it’s built. The relationships that I saw around me when I travelled to Pakistan were strong family units and strong relationships built on compatibility. Even if they weren’t madly in love, they were filled with love. I had been against arranged marriages but seeing their ones fundamentally changed my views.

If you find compatibility, love will inevitably come. Yet, without compatibility as a foundation, relationships just fall apart when love steps out the door. I think that's how Islam views it as well. We’re told to find a partner to bond with who understands and subscribes to our belief system. To become a better Muslim and to make it to Paradise, I need Islam to be my future partner’s number one priority too. We need that alignment to motivate each other and help each other with our goals.

How are you going about finding a partner?

When I was younger I never understood how people could only date somebody if they had the intention to marry them. How would you know if you wanted to marry them if you hadn’t dated them? Now, I’m firmly in that first group. Intentions are key. People half ass things and are terrified of fully investing into something. Why? Because you didn’t set out with the intention of making it work so now the commitment to the work is scary.

I want to be very transparent with my expectations and my intentions from the very beginning so that I’m aligned with a partner. That way, people don't get hurt. In our culture of dating, hookups and situationships, leading the charge are Infatuation and Lust. Intentions are left unclear and people get ghosted, heartbroken and, just generally, hurt.

Talk to me about your relationship with sex. 

When I was 12, someone told me that the only way kids are born is when parents have sex. I was mind blown. My parents had had sex? That's disgusting. Why would they do that? Like, no. So I was very sheltered. Most of my high school was Asian. We were all very sheltered. We didn’t have house parties, there wasn’t any sex and we just didn’t have exposure to any part of that world.

I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t going to have sex before marriage. To better understand why sex before marriage is considered haram, I thoroughly researched why it was forbidden. I wanted to understand the logic behind the ruling. When my faith wasn’t as strong as it is now, I rooted my faith in logic so I could abide by the rulings. At a certain point I realised it made complete sense why it's forbidden.

I want to keep my relationships as halal as possible. If this is the person I am going to spend eternity with, what’s a few more months of waiting? When sex becomes permissible to me, it will be right. I trust that intimacy with someone you love is just so much more magical than a one night stand.

Has that belief ever changed?

I’ll be honest, when I started travelling I lost hope of finding anyone. So I had my F boi era which basically entailed me dying my hair blonde, not doing anything with anyone and getting rejected a lot.

The F boi era

I thought I could do the short term thing but I realised very quickly that that life wasn’t for me. I absolutely sucked at it and I was the walking definition of having no game! My sister says I’m golden retriever energy boi, not a cool mysterious F boi. I did try dating apps and stuff but deep down I knew I wasn’t going to find my wife like that. I was the same at University. I’d go to Brixton, this club near Wilfrid Laurier University, get ‘drunk’ on Red Bull and water, meet a girl, get chatting to her, immediately know she wasn’t going to be my wife and I wasn’t going to sleep with her so I’d self sabotage. 

I did meet a Russian girl in Georgia. We were in the courtyard of Fabrica, a hostel in Tbilisi, surrounded by young people hanging out. It was her last night. She was sitting very close to me, her grey eyes staring right into mine, and I knew she wanted to kiss me but was this fleeting moment of fun worth the sin? I knew I wouldn’t see her again. Plus, she’d been drinking wine and I didn’t want the alcohol on me. There was this contradiction between what I wanted in the moment and what I know I want for my life. I wanted to kiss her but I knew it wasn’t the right thing for me. I began to diffuse the situation. 

Opportunities may present themselves but I have to remember ‘Deen vs Duniya’ which basically means my faith vs this world. I’m grateful to Allah for giving me no game — I love that for myself, to be honest — because it’s kept me on my path.

Have you ever thought you had found ‘The One’?

The closest person I’ve found to someone I could see myself marrying was a Christian woman I met in Armenia. We both liked each other but we were clear we would only marry someone from our own faith. We decided a relationship was a no go and being friends was the right path. I learnt a lot from her. She made me realise I had a very flimsy Jenga tower of beliefs at that point in my life. This gorgeous, super sociable and funny woman — who could get any guy she wanted — liked me for me and my belief system, and not for the F boi façade that wasn’t me.

I admired her and she inspired me to stand by my beliefs. She’d vowed that the only person she’d date or share any kind of intimacy with would be her husband. She gave me hope, at a time when I didn’t have any, that the girl I'm looking for is definitely out there.

OK so I have a fair few readers these days and maybe one of them is compatible with you (plus, I’d love a Brown Bodies wedding). So, what are you looking for in a partner!?

I actually made a video about this! Now I don’t do travel content, I’ve been keeping a daily journal on YouTube where I'm trying to document the struggles and epiphanies of this phase of my life. My list of wants in a partner was a recent topic.

I always say my heart is open to being married but I'm just not proactively looking for my wife right now. Emotionally, I’m very ready to marry. Circumstance wise though, I’m not. I’m not financially confident enough to approach a woman’s father and ask for his daughter's hand in marriage when I know I can’t provide the way I want to. For men, this is a big thing. Money plays a big role in our confidence. I need financial security to be confident enough in a relationship.

Oh and finally, it's funny, all these ‘red pill’ movements talk about requiring a trad wife, a ‘stay in the kitchen’ wife, a young wife. But the first person to accept Islam, Khadīja bint Khuwaylid, the wife of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), was a successful entrepreneur, was older than the Prophet, and proposed to the Prophet herself. Our ideas of what male-female dynamics should be are not accurate. As Muslims, we need to spend more time learning from the likes of the Prophet and his companions like Khadijah, Fatima and Aisha, to give us perspective on successful relationships with faith at their core.

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You can find Mahad on Instagram (although he’s currently on a break) and YouTube. I actually loved going through his old travel videos on TikTok too.

All images Copyright © Mahad Aamir