Too long but important...what to do for her?

Question

She is wonderful girl. We decided to get engaged within only one week while I was spending my vacation in Palestine 2 months ago where my father’s family live and we signed the marriage contract to get the process of getting her visa moving faster. I’m American doctor and I started my pediatric residency by my arrival to the US. I became very busy as my schedule was too crazy. And I believe if I have to spend the rest of my life with someone I want to have time to get to know them. And I don't have the time right now. So we broke up a week ago. The last thing I got from her was as below. Kindly you read it patiently and tell me what to do. I am extremely frustrated with how things are and I don’t know how to make it up to her.
“I know things get so bad lately by the process of contract dissolution. It was converted to families’ conflict which was easily to be avoided if your father just waited until you and I had chosen to end it in a civilized way. I know you don’t care about the way my family and I want it to be. But you should realize that this will cause a big problem to me and to my family too. In here we agree to sign the marriage contract while we realize very well that we choose the person we want to spend the rest of our life with and this is not a stupid thing. For me, I know exactly the general aspects I want in the person I want to be with so it wasn’t difficult to know enough about your personality during the short time I saw you before engagement and then the other things that I’ll detect will be treated because any other bad things I may detect could be easily treated for me as the general good things were existed indeed. And I thought the same you were thinking as you were very enthusiastic for my personality and attitudes that I thought gave you good idea about me to choose to sign the contract so as to be the first step to get married. I didn’t know that it is normal for you to end the contract whenever you want, and I still couldn’t imagine that your excuse was because I got angry when you fell asleep and when you didn’t respond to my phone calls that night while I was burning that may be something bad happened to you. I just wonder if all engaged people break up just because one of them gets angry at the other! You know also this is a culture which makes me in a very bad condition to be insulted and rejected by my fiancé. I do not want to tell you about the pain and the heartache this caused to me because I know you do not care about it at all, but I just want you to know that this would make the people here to ask for a long time what happened and what things got you to reject me like this. Unfortunately I made a bet on this relationship in front of myself, my family, my friends and all the people here. I had overconfidence that I finally did the best for myself. Yes I was mistaken. My fault was that I followed my sense, my heart and my imagination. Okay I was disappointed then and I spent a very bad time that made me sick at home for days ago as I couldn’t understand how you decided that we would never carry on this relationship, I always believe there must be a terrible thing should make us to break up as we couldn’t find any other solution to solve our problem.
My illness and sadness made my family got angry from you and your family. They tried to do their best to make me refreshed again. My parents said a lot of things about Allah willing and about the best things that Allah wrote for us. I believe this is not your or my willing. This is what Allah wants us to do. He wanted us to get engaged for reasons I still don’t realize and he also wants us to break up now. But finally I can’t forgive the game was played with me. I understand what you said that you didn’t know that it would make this terrible situation to me. And it is not my fault that your family here and your father over there didn’t tell you about these things and they didn’t tell you about your obligations after ending the contract, and I can’t understand how your father did not tell you about all these obligations that are normally related to the contract signing. He is from our town, so he surely knows about all these things and when he called your family here to end the contract, he must have been realizing that this will hurt me a lot and this will affect my social status, my reputation and my family name.
You remember the jealous people who tried to make us upset after our engagement. They started to send me some messages to say: hey…hard luck… you lose the bet!
Well finally I don’t care about what people said but my family do. My parents said that if I forget the pain they will never forget how their daughter was suffering and getting the hard insult and pain in front of their eyes!
May be you did not mean to hurt me, may be you did not mean to cause me this pain… but unfortunately this was happened. I need long time to overcome the misery and sadness, I need long time to retrieve trust in my sense and in my feelings… also it needs long time to trust people again. All these things will take time to be cured. And this is because of you whether you accept this fact or not.
All my family and my friends ask me not to forgive you and they do pressure on me to take the money written in the contract… this is not to compensate what happened to me because money will never cure the wounds this thing caused within me. They ask me to do because this is the only way I have now to punish you!
But this is not my way to punish people who hurt me. I don’t punish them by taking their money.
May be you will be so angry to give me the money that you did not know you will pay if you choose the divorce. And you insist that this is a sin to be done according to your readings about Islam. But I wonder if you read something about playing with others’ feelings and reputations and if this is a sin or not!
I don’t try to play the victim role in here. I know it was also my fault to agree to get engaged that so fast way. I think we both were misleaded to this trap that your family here wanted you to get engaged to a girl form the toen to keep their hope that you could come to stay here some day. And may be this made your family over there to feel threatened of losing you after a while. May be you thought that I agreed to get engaged to you just to get out Palestine as well as to live the America dream. May be you finally thought that I hidden the information about the money in the contract just to catch you in a trap so as to force you to marry me. May be you think that I’m looking for your money now to spend them on myself and to be rich of! I still can’t forget how you insisted to insult me by saying you would send some money for me to purchase what I need… how terrible you are!
You will never understand how you hurt me… you will never understand what the pain you caused to me.
You only care about yourself and about your money… you only called me to ask why I should take money for divorce and this is what made my family to be more angry at you. But I still want you to be sure that I will never take any money from you. I just want to let you know that I’ll face some problem with my family for not agree to take the money but I only have the right to take them or not. So don’t worry about this. I promise I’ll do my best to end the contract without getting the money from you. This is the point I want you to be sure about. Firstly I have to convince my family that I don’t want to take the money as I do not have any plans to punish anyone. But you know I don’t want them to be angry with me for this… I just want them to keep on giving me their love and support during this difficult time and I don’t want to face any problems with them now… they believe that punishing you is the only way to retrieve my lost dignity and esteem. But please please please do not tell any one about this deal (especially your parents because I’m scared your father would do another stupid thing that will make me in a very bad condition in front of my family and that will make them keep their mind).
Other thing I want to talk about that I’ll send back the ring and the other gifts to your family here. Also I’ll send back you your 200$ that you gave me before you left. And if I miss any thing, let me know please. And if you have anything to say before ending this, just let me know. And please update me about the paper.
Take care of your self and good luck,”

Answer 1

I will start by saying I know nothing about different cultures and especially contracts. What I will say, after reading your question 3 times, you have done the right thing. Marriage is not something to jump into after only a week or two. Becoming a doctor required years of schooling and training. Marriage, though not to that extreme, should be given the same devotion. Think of the engagement, or getting to know you, as the schooling and the early years of marriage as the training (internship) and the years shared after as the doctorine or shingle on the door. If this union is to be in the eyes of Allah, or your own heart, then given time and patience both of you will work things out. Parents, here in the States, don't like to see their children hurt emotionally any more than parents through-out the world, but her letter to you was more concerning towards her parents and family being shamed and upset about her broken marriage contract. As Americans when we marry we do not marry our in-laws we extent our families hoping both sides of our extented families get alone especially when the children arrive. It is you and her that this union should be about. Take your time, don't let pressure from outside influence your decision to marry hastily or at all for that matter. One other thing bothered me was the reference to someone being angry because of a phone call. Really think about this, as a Doctor, you will be busy your whole life with other peoples lives and you won't always be able to take her phone calls or will sleep during dinner with her or not be able to go shopping or parties when she wants you too...if she's angry now add some years to that anger, it'll just get worse or bottled up.

Good luck in all you do, Doctor

Answer 2

Love will over come anything...Do you love this girl? If so, why treat her this way? Being a doctor does take up alot of time and you knew this before you got involved. Did you really want a relationship with this girl. Her letter is harsh, but look what you did to her. Think before you do or say something that can cause problems. If you truely love her then you should make time for her. If you didn't love her why worry about it....but it sounds like you do love her or why would you care. Talk to her....Talking things out can make a big difference with weather you can be friends or if there is still a chance for a relationship.

Answer 3

Out of all this, it is really sad to see that there is no love included anywhere. i realize that you don't know her very well, nor does she know you very well, and is that how things are done there?
If it is, then you have disgraced her and her family as well as your family too...
the best you can hope for is to tell her that you are very sorry to have hurt her or her family, that it wasnt your intention to do so, and tell her that you feel like you would not be honoring her very well by marrying her so fast. that your schedule has you so busy that she would spend way too much time alone in a new country as you would not be able to be there, also tell her that you want time to get to know her better and spend some time with her before you marry her and that your schedule just doesnt afford you that luxury right now... beg her forgiveness, and her family's forgiveness too.... and tell her that you would still like to get to know her if she is so willing, only that you would need to put off getting married for a time... and see what she responds with..

Answer 4

Honestly, you can't make it up to her. You made a very bad decision to get engaged so quickly. If you want to make things a little easier on her, give her the money. I'm sure she can use it well. She sounds like a remarkable woman and it's too bad you didn't get to know that before causing the situation you're in now.

Answer 5

Obviously the girl's self esteem is gone down by the sudden unexpected break up.Looks like the girl really loved u,she shared with u so many things even after the breakup!looks like she wants to communicate with u more.

Answer 6

I fell asleep after the first few lines....what was that all about??

Answer 7

are u writing a story?

Answer 8

another bottle of "SHUT THE HELL UP" for the good doctor.