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We asked our audience to share their love stories, tales of chance meetings, intentional steps, and everything in between. What came back was a mosaic of experiences, each unique yet equally exciting. Some spoke of stolen glances that turned into lifetimes together, others of introductions carefully arranged by family, and many of friendships that slowly unfolded into love.

This is our fourth story.

Please note that these stories are not for giving advice and are about documenting the lives of Muslim women who got married. 🧡

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How did you and your husband first meet? 

We “met” on Twitter. He used to reply to my tech questions; he was a fellow geek. At the time, I was single and had a lot of unwanted male attention on Twitter. I liked that he was never overly friendly, just polite and helpful. He never DMed me. Never complimented me. Always kept it halal and appropriate. I didn’t know what he looked like – he just had a cartoon avatar of a bearded man. But I started developing this inexplicable respect for the halalness of his interactions.

This went on for a year before he emailed me out of the blue to propose – having never seen my face, incidentally. He attached a spreadsheet of marriage-related questions, with one column for my answers and one column for his, and a blank space for my own questions. I was SMITTEN. A spreadsheet proposal?! From a cartoon avatar?! And I literally fell in love with his answers. I fell in love with him via a spreadsheet.

We were heading towards a pre-nikah face-to-face meeting, as per the Sunnah, when we had an argument about something, and I told him to never contact me again. I blocked him on Twitter and tried to put him out of my mind. But while I was still bombarded with interest from other men, I didn’t feel the same level of respect for them that I did for my secret Twitter crush.

After a year of trying to forget him – as well as dealing with massive upheaval and tragedy in my life at the time – I found myself crying into my prayer mat on the 29th night of Ramadan, begging Allah ﷻ for happiness and love after a rough couple of years.

I got up from my prayer mat, wiped away the snot, and went to my laptop to see an email from my Twitter crush, saying he hadn’t been able to forget about our spreadsheet and still wanted to marry me.

Reader, I married him.

Can you expand on your first meeting? Where was it? 

We met face-to-face once before the nikah, at a coffee shop in a food court. I found it excruciatingly awkward. I barely looked him in the eyes once. 

What was your first impression?

He was smiling. A lot. Also, he looked exactly like his avatar, somehow.

Was your husband your first serious and only relationship? 

We had both been married before. 

How old were both of you when you met?

34 and 36, I think.

How long after the meeting did you get married?

1 year of Twitter interactions, 1 year of secretly crushing on him with zero interactions, then after we got back in contact again, it was about two weeks from his email – one face-to-face meeting followed by nikah a week later. So either two years or one week, depending on which kind of meeting we’re talking about here.

When looking for a partner, what was the one thing you were looking for?

Kindness.

How did you know you would get married to your current husband? 

The spreadsheet!

Do you feel like your perception of love changed before you got married versus after you got married?

Yes. I didn’t believe in lasting love before I got married. I thought it was all hormones and brain chemicals initially, followed by two people gradually starting to resent each other once the “in love” chemicals faded. But alhamdulillah, I’m still besotted with him.

What are three red flags (concerns) Muslim women should look out for?

Anger, lies and cruelty.

What are three green flags (good qualities) Muslim women should look out for?

Kindness, honesty and deen – and by deen I mean someone who follows the Qur’an and Sunnah in private as well as public, who fears Allah in their treatment of other people (including their wife).

What advice would you give a single Muslim woman looking to get married?

Be clear on what you want from a marriage, not just from a partner. What does your ideal marriage look like on a day-to-day basis? How would your ideal marriage function in a crisis?

And think beyond the honeymoon. Think about how Allah has promised to test us. Is this the man you want to be married to when Allah tests you with illness, poverty and tragedy?

Are you still married to this partner?

Alhamdulillah yes.

Before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to add, or do you think is important for us to know?

Before you even start looking for a partner, fix up. Go to therapy. Deal with your baggage. Unpack your past trauma. Face up to your flaws. Work on yourself. Not just because you can’t expect your husband to be your therapist, but because healing yourself is essential for figuring out what you really want and deserve in terms of your future marriage. It might save you from falling for the wrong person and from hurting the right person.