I used to believe loyalty was something you either had or didn’t have. It was an on-off switch. I had to choose who to be loyal to and who not to be. I was raised to be loyal to family, no matter what. It didn’t matter if family treated me the worst any human could be treated, family was family. I thought I had to prove my love for my family by being 100% loyal. And I had to continuously prove it, not just once or twice. I had to prove I loved you by showing you that I was loyal no matter what. In this way I confused and interwove my understanding of love and loyalty.
I thought the rules were:
I have to love family no matter what
Friends, who choose me, I must be loyal to or they won’t be my friends anymore. So take the disrespect and harm, or lose the friendship and be alone. No other choices exist.
You don’t choose community because it’s based off who and what you are. You’re stuck with it, so deal with it.
Strangers/community can jump to friendship levels, because they choose me for mysterious reasons.
When I learned loyalty wasn’t an on-off switch, but there existed a range, I was blown away. It flipped my understanding of the world of relationships on its head. Truly. If it’s a range, then how do you know who to give your loyalty to? How much? What does “some loyalty” look like? What are the rules to the range? It was inconceivable to not be 100% loyal to my family “no matter what”. Yet it made sense. Everything else I learned about didn’t exist in black and white, why would loyalty be an exception? It took a very long time to break free from this particular training.
I learned that I can choose who to be loyal to, and I could use my own standards. I strive to prioritize my relationship with Allah above everything else. Okay, there’s a new concept, how do I live loyally to Allah? Next, I value myself. I have to because I live with myself all the time. Wait, isn’t that selfish? Turns out, no. That’s just the reality of the situation. I need to be loyal to myself to survive and to be healthy. Ouch – there was a lot of self betrayal to process and heal from, when I slowly learned that point. I can’t give love if I don’t have love for myself. You can’t give what you don’t have, right? That also meant learning – what is self love?
Okay, so I had: 1. Loyal to Allah. 2. Loyal to myself. Then what? Well, I learned about my values. I have values. Truth, integrity, kindness. I value good character. I didn’t know it but what was developing were standards for relationships. I’d never learned or believed I had a say in who my friends were. Because of my low self esteem and self worth, I believed I was lucky to have anyone as a friend. I was not taught I could choose my friends. When people said choose your friends wisely, I was like, “How? When I choose, they’re not interested in me back. Then what?”
How? When I choose, they’re not interested in me back. Then what?
I can’t control who is interested in being my friend, or even who is available. I can control who I spend my time with.
I can’t control who is interested in being my friend, or even who is available. I can control who I spend my time with. If it’s true, that I behave and think like the average of the five people I spend the most time with, and I have values and standards, am I okay with behaving and thinking like the people I spend the most time with? Or is it better for me to spend time alone?
Part of my healing journey involved joining multiple new communities. Each centered on some combination of personal growth and healing. All required self-evaluation, reflection and valued truth, integrity and kindness. What a wonderful place to start building a community of support! It’s amazing to me how Allah takes care of me every step of the way, I only need to keep moving and pay attention. Subhana’allah!
The model I use to think about relationships, is in the structure of a series of rings. Everyone starts out as strangers. As relationship grow and develop, the most trustworthy people end up in the closest proximity to the center. So every person I meet starts out as a stranger. Strangers receive minimum trust. They are placed in the outermost “ring” – basically outside the circle. Relationships that develop over years, where trust is carefully and slowly built, resulting in high levels of trust, end up in the inner circle. Basically my values, standards and their trustworthiness determines where someone ends up in my circles.
Strangely, love doesn’t factor into this as big as trust does. I love community members even though they may not be “inner circle friends”. And, I spend more time with people in my inner circles, so there’s more chance to develop love in those relationships.
The image reflects the trends I’ve noticed where general relationships end up settling for me. There are a ton of exceptions because when individual relationships grow they move into specific spots based on my values and standards, not based on the world’s definition of our relationship. Where others place me in their circles is irrelevant. Because their choices inform their behavior and result in how I’m treated. Since how I’m treated is inherently part of trust building, I don’t need to worry about what they think, their beliefs, or what they want are. It all reflects in their behavior and how they treat me. I’m in a better place to witness more accurately how I’m treated because of all the self-growth work I’ve done (I better guard against unconscious projecting, better hearing and seeing people as they are and where they are at, less fantasy engagement, less judgments and blaming behaviors, and so on).
Seeing all this, no wonder I couldn’t tolerate the idea of an arranged marriage. I didn’t even get to choose who I loved in the historical (left) set up. This made it so how I was treated, or how I felt was irrelevant. The other person’s character was irrelevant. My safety was irrelevant and dependent on others keeping me safe. I didn’t have any responsibility or power in the original set up.
Reflecting on this, I thought love informed trust and loyalty. I learned to love people who harmed me. The formula: Love => Loyalty + Trust did not work. It just wasn’t true. This rewiring has led to the formula: Trust + Respect => Loyalty and Love. Practicing this for the past six years has led me to a happier and safer life, so I feel more and more confident this is the right model for me. I am empowered in this formula and all my historical relationship have changed. I think they had to for me to learn to accept a safer and happier life.
Peace and Light,
Mariam-Saba
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