Jodoh (Where Are You?)
Jane Austen’s 1813 classic Pride and Prejudice begins with its famous first line:
But what about me? A 26-year-old woman with no prospects, not possessing standard beauty, no (read: limited) prior experience in romantic relationships, still doing my degree, with not much savings, no stable job, no steady income, and technically, from both a feminist and capitalist perspective, not much to offer?
Growing up, I never thought I would feel this pressured to get married. I imagined myself as one of those strong women who could defy peer pressure, cultural expectations, and the invisible auntie council that somehow always knows who is single, who is taken, and who is “next.”
But apparently, when friends and cousins begin getting married one by one (or at least start entering serious relationships), I am not as formidable as I once expected myself to be.
Every year, on my birthday, I would post one particular quote from the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Penned by Emma Thompson (of course, Emma) and delivered by Charlotte Lucas, it goes:
“I’m 27 years old. I’ve no money and no prospects. I’m already a burden to my parents, and I’m frightened. So don’t judge me, Lizzie. Don’t you dare judge me.”
I cannot wait to use it next year.
Not because I enjoy public self-dragging as a birthday tradition, although, to be fair, there is a certain literary elegance in doing so, but because next year, it would really match my age.
Twenty-seven.
The age Charlotte Lucas used to justify marrying Mr Collins. The age where, in Austen’s world, a woman’s romantic prospects began to look less like a blooming garden and more like a clearance rack nobody wanted to admit they had browsed.
And the tragic-comic part is, deep inside me, there is still a much younger Rasyi quietly sitting somewhere, holding onto the dream that I would be married before I turned 27.
She is not loud. She is not dramatic. She does not throw tantrums.
She simply looks at me sometimes and asks, “So… we’re not there yet?”
And I do not know what to tell her.
Because I want to be kind to her. I want to tell her that life does not follow the timetable she made when she was innocent, hopeful, and clearly unfamiliar with the economy, academic delays, emotional unavailability, and men who give mixed signals like they are unpaid traffic lights.
But I also do not want to dismiss her dream.
Because the dream was not foolish.
Wanting to be loved is not foolish. Wanting to build a home with someone is not foolish. Wanting to be chosen, protected, cherished, and accompanied through life is not foolish.
It is human.
Virginia Woolf once said:
“I really don’t advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married.”
And I wonder why.
Was it because marriage, in her time, often meant surrender? A room lost, a name absorbed, a life rearranged around someone else’s comfort? Was it because a woman who wanted to write, think, walk, breathe, and be slightly difficult in peace had very little room to do so once she became a wife?
Or perhaps Woolf was not warning women against love.
Perhaps she was warning them against disappearance.
And that is where the question of jodoh becomes complicated for me.
Because I do want love.
There. I said it. Very un-feminist of me. Very human of me.
Even Woolf, despite all her critical views on marriage, got married.
Quite a controversial marriage, but let's say she finally agreed to be someone's wife.
And for me, if I am being completely honest about it, I want companionship. I want someone to come home to. I want the kind of love that does not make me smaller, but steadier. I want someone who chooses me not because I am convenient, young, accomplished, financially impressive, or beautifully arranged like a CV, but because my soul feels like home to him.
But I am also afraid.
Afraid that wanting marriage makes me desperate. Afraid that not having it yet means I am left behind. Afraid that admitting I feel lonely somehow betrays the strong, independent woman I thought I was supposed to become.
But maybe strength is not the absence of longing.
Maybe strength is admitting, with full embarrassment and theological confusion, that yes, I want to be loved. But I do not want to beg for love. I want to be chosen, but not at the cost of abandoning myself. I want jodoh, but not just anyone who arrives with a ring, a salary slip, and an inflated sense of male leadership.
I want what is written for me by Allah.
And that sentence sounds peaceful until you have to live through the waiting.
Because waiting is not poetic when everyone else seems to be moving forward. Waiting is not aesthetic when wedding invitations keep arriving, Instagram keeps suggesting engagement reels, and relatives ask questions with the delicacy of a frying pan.
Waiting is especially not poetic when you are 26, still studying, still building, still trying to become something, while another part of you quietly wonders whether you are already late for a life you have not even properly started.
But maybe jodoh is not only about who arrives.
Maybe it is also about who I become while waiting.
Maybe Allah is not delaying love to punish me, but preparing my heart so that when love comes, I will recognise peace instead of chaos, sincerity instead of mixed signals, and responsibility instead of mere attention.
Maybe being single at 26 is not evidence that I am unwanted.
Maybe turning 27 unmarried will not be the tragedy younger me feared it would be.
Maybe it will simply mean I am still here.
Still learning. Still praying. Still occasionally dramatic, but increasingly self-aware. Still hoping, even when hope feels embarrassing.
And perhaps one day, when the time is right, the truth universally acknowledged will not be about a single man in possession of a good fortune.
Perhaps it will be this:
That a woman who waited, worried, cried, made du‘a, doubted herself, laughed at herself, and still chose not to settle for less than peace was never behind.
She was being written carefully.
Yours, 25 years 9 months 12 days old,
Rasyidah.
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