Courtship and Marriage: The Somali Experience in America (Part 10)

This is the last installment in a 10-part series of true stories about Somali men and women and their blunt assessments of their marriage and courtship experiences.  The names and locations of the individuals have been changed to ensure their privacy.

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Online Courtship

I know a lot about online dating because I have married two Somali ladies through that medium. Yes, I know that is weird. The first marriage lasted three months and the other two years, two months, and 17 days.

I was so much into online dating that I lost touch with reality. An astute American comedian once said that he was into online dating. “Before, I used to get dumped a lot,” he lamented, “but now, I simply get deleted.” I share that sentiment: I have been deleted a lot.

It was the summer of 2010 when I got hooked up with a Somali online singles website. Unlike with other dating websites, Somali men and women rarely display pictures. This, of course, is frustrating. At that time, I met Zainab. I was 31 and she was 27. For the first few months, we exchanged emails and pictures. Then, I flew to her state and personally met her. She was a lot bigger and shorter than her pictures revealed. Despite her misrepresentations, I was not disappointed. Initially, she was shy and kept giggling out of nervousness. However, after an hour, she relaxed.  What a great personality she had. She was a fun person to be with, always smiling and cracking jokes. She introduced me to her relatives and made an elaborate lunch for me.

It was in my first meeting with Zainab that I learned two important things: her real name and her clan. The latter did not matter much to me, but the first did. I was furious that she had also lied to me about her real name.  I forgave her, though, and instead focused on the positive—her infectious personality, traditional values, work ethic, and sense of humor.

After several months of a long-distance relationship, we finally got married. In the beginning, my married life was good. However, after 90 days, our honeymoon was over. I guess we both were presenting false fronts to each other. I realized we were sensitive, stubborn, and uncompromising. Neither of us admitted our mistakes. We viewed ourselves as always being right. Have you noticed I am using “we” instead of putting all the blame on her? I was equally to blame for the debacle of our marriage. Unfortunately, my wife believed neither in couple’s therapy nor intervention from her family or the local mosque. We had no choice but to divorce. By that time, I was already shopping for another mate. That is one of the problems of internet dating: Even if you find your “soul mate,” you still go shopping for another.  Sadly, there is this perception that there is always someone else out there better than your mate. 

Several months later, I started dipping my toe back into the dating pool.  I met Deeqa online and got married, again, shortly after.

My relationship with Deeqa was very good. We were married for two happy years. Our biggest problem was our work schedules.  Aside from working full time, my wife was attending university. Although I wanted her to succeed in her pursuit of education, her hectic schedule was taking a toll on our marriage.

Okay, I will be more honest with you: She had lost interest in sex. She was fine before enrolling in school, I was deprived of love and became frustrated. Sometimes, several weeks would pass without anything happening between us. We talked about the issue regarding intimacy but to no avail.  When I consulted with one of my friends about what to do, he advised me to start fasting. I was upset with him because fasting is a solution religiously prescribed for single men in order to reduce sexual urges. However, I was married and couldn’t see fasting as a solution.  I was a healthy man and I had a tough time understanding why we weren’t having a normal married life. Every time I got close to my wife, alarm bells were triggered. I was told all kinds of excuses, from being exhausted to doing school projects. Adultery was out of the question and so was sainthood. To make a long story short, we got divorced. Oddly, four months after our split, my wife married another Somali man whom she had met online.

I am no longer active in online dating. I like to meet people the old-fashioned way: in person or by referral. Do you know any woman in her thirties who is interested in meeting an honest, hardworking, motivated, family-oriented Somali man?

Oops!

Did I give you my profile? I am sorry.

Black Like Him: Annals of Self-Hate

I am a 36-year-old woman who holds an unconventional perspective toward race, the black race. It is ironic that, as a black woman, I have such a negative perception of my own race. On the surface, I appear well educated, well traveled, and well read. However, I have deeply entrenched views about color. I am a light-skinned woman who grew up in a coastal town in Somalia where being dark was perceived as a liability and being light-skinned was regarded as an asset. Women in my town flaunted the color of their husbands. The lighter husbands were always getting a nod of approval, and the darker ones received nothing but contempt. Then, I came to the U.S. and married a white man.

My decision to marry a white man did not surprise me, and I spent little time thinking about the consequences of such a marriage. Initially, I was flattered that a white man had fallen in love with me and wanted to marry me. Secretly, I always fantasized about having children from a mixed marriage, imagining they would possess exotic and dazzling beauty. I would be lying if I said that my future children’s looks were not a significant factor in my decision to marry a white man. They were. Interestingly, my people rarely marry outside their race. However, my husband was one of those whites who find black women very exotic and intriguing.

At any rate, we married and had two beautiful daughters in the next four years. However, the marriage was anything but stable. My husband tried to mold me into what he thought a “good” wife ought to be, namely, obedient, meek, and servile. He was patriarchal, overbearing, and controlling. In his eyes, I was nothing more than a newly arrived African immigrant woman who ‘needed’ guidance and close supervision. Although he was only a year older than me, he still insisted on acting as my mentor and even as a father figure. In a nutshell, we had irreconcilable differences, and so we parted ways. 

Oddly, while I was married, some Somalis who had heard about me—but had never met me—referred to me as “that lady [who is] married to the white guy.”  I was not offended by that comment; in fact, it pleased me. Two years after the divorce, I married a Somali man who was so dark the description “brown” became meaningless. Even today, I have no idea how or why I ended up marrying a dark man. His strong personality and affability made his appearance irrelevant to me. In a way, I went from one extreme of marrying a white blonde guy of Scandinavian heritage to marrying a dark East African man. I guess I was making a point to myself that race did not matter to me. My ex-husband, interestingly, had a darker opinion. He believed I married a black fellow to infuriate him and get back at him.  

My marriage to the Somali man produced three children who, not surprisingly, look just like their father. Suddenly, I started avoiding family events. When I took my children to the park, strangers would ask if I were babysitting the three youngest children. “They are different than the other two,” was the usual comment they would make. My extended family indirectly favored the older two by showering extra attention on them. Upset at this unfair behavior and to avoid any unwanted comparison of our children, I stopped accompanying my husband to certain family events. I also stopped going out with my husband. He was furious, and accused me of having low self-esteem. “Are you ashamed of me?” he would bark. In a way, he was right.  Yes, I loved him, but sometimes people are cruel in their judgments. I did not want to hurt my family by exposing any of them to cruel stares and hurtful comments.

My husband walked out of our marriage and took three of his children with him. He said he he’d had enough of me ill-treating him and my deliberate favoritism toward the oldest children upset him. Oddly, I did not file for custody of these children. Several months later, I realized I was miserable. I missed my husband and my children. When we were together, my husband was kind and caring, qualities that had initially attracted me and led me to marry him, but I was merely interested in superficial matters, such as looks.

During those miserable months of separation, my life was empty and unhappy. I am now in therapy dealing with my issues of low self-esteem. I am not a racist, but I am an individual who is ignorant about what matters in life and the nature of prejudice. I have learned prejudice can be present in all races and that I should judge others by who they are, not what they are or how they look. 

Conclusion

Somali women are no different than Somali men in coping with the challenges of courtship and family life in the United States. Somali family life is evolving as spouses juggle traditional roles and the requirements of modern life.  A lot of opportunities exist for women to seek careers and education here in America. However, these opportunities can create problems for some men who have difficulty accepting these changes. Some men resist change because it undermines their traditional roles as the sole providers.

Aside from the difficulty in reconciling tradition and modernity, there is also human nature, which can be double-edged. It can be a boon or a bust to a marriage. Human nature does not change regardless of race, time, religion, or national origin. There are—and will always be—men and women who are insecure, jealous, addicted, kind, secretive, altruistic, and generous.

Most of the Somali immigrants in the United States marry within their community. However, is American culture slowly, but surely, creeping into the Somali approach of courtship and marriage? Gone are the arranged marriages that were once common among segments of the Somali society. Young Somalis meet at weddings, popular events where they get together. They also meet at Somali concerts, high school, college, and through social networking. In fact, several websites are specifically geared to Somali singles.  Young Somalis prefer the term ‘courtship’ to the term ‘dating.’ Dating has a negative connotation for many because the relationship automatically assumes pre-marital sex. Generally, the community frowns upon premarital sex.

For older singles, courtships happen by referral and or chance meeting. This segment of the population is more flexible about meeting someone and, after a very short period, tying the knot. Such marriages are necessitated mostly by the search for companionship and fear of committing adultery. The standard for marriage among the middle-aged is less stringent. The prevalence of single life among the population is a reflection of the high rise in divorce in the community. It is also due to the civil war in Somalia, which led to hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing their country and others were scattered across the five continents. Many men died in the war, families lost loved ones, others were separated through immigration, and the collision between tradition and modernity became more acute. In a way, Somali courtships mirror the social engineering that is taking place in the diaspora: Young people born or raised in America are grappling with the need for love while at the same time trying not to deviate from the conservative culture in which they were raised.