Cycle

Months - or perhaps even a year or two - after we began the relationship, he told me about how when he was younger, he was approached by two older women. One was a relative whom he had a long term relationship with, the other was with an experienced older woman who taught him things he hadn’t known. As he recounted this, I saw a pattern – he went through it, now he is doing the same to me. We learned in school that children who have had abusive parents are more likely to grow to become abusive parents themselves; that children with obese parents often become obese; that children with alcoholic parents are prone to also growing to be alcoholics. I immediately recognized that the same must be true for him – that he entered into the relationship with me because he went through things as a child. Instead of serving as a light-bulb to let me run – realizing that this was simply a pattern and not ‘divine’ love – I felt sorry for him. The sadness that I felt for myself, I immediately transferred to him…’its not his fault’ I would think to myself…he was a victim. 'Miskeen…he still has the affects'.

I battled in my head with this idea for a bit. I wondered if I would be able to ‘lure’ a boy decades younger than me the way I was being lured - the way he was once lured. The thought didn’t sit well for me at all. And somehow, I just stopped thinking about things as a cycle.

Years into the relationship he told me that another older lady was in love with him - obsessively in fact - and that he had to go through regular measures to put her in her place and fight away her seductive attempts. I never put all these links together – but now that I think about it, he does seem to have had some pretty random experiences and love affairs. Even if he was a victim as a child, as a grown adult he has no right to replicate what he experienced…especially given the fact that he knows how it feels to be so young and so confused…so lost as to where to turn. And, the fact that another older lady was attracted to him as well – while we were together – something must not be right with him. May Allah bless him and forgive us all for our mistakes and wrong judgments. Do things working in a cycle make him less wrong?