I wanted to ask a q about being gay. I’m a gay Muslim that has never been intimate with another man, I love Islam & want to get into jannah inshallah, But I don’t know how one can live a life without being able to love, what should I do in this life? I did fall in love with another gay Muslim however we both are religious & made it clear that nothing could happen for the sake of Allah swt. This is too much of a burden on me & I’m tired of having to explain that I did not choose to be this way
You have probably been taught that one can only fall in love with a person they find sexually attractive, and since you only find men sexually attractive, you can only love men. For a young person this might sound very true, since for them sex is one of the most important things in life. The truth is that love is a feeling of admiration, trust and reliance that develops between two people who become emotionally close to one another. You find cases of a husband and wife both of whom are over 70 years of age and who are deeply in love with one another despite the fact that at that age most people have lost their ability to feel sexual desire, and neither of them probably finds the appearance of the other sexually attractive. Love does not need sexual intimacy to make it real.
Being gay is merely a label one chooses for a far more complex physiological reality. Human sexual desire is on a spectrum; most gay men are probably capable of enjoying sexual intimacy with a woman even if they find other men far more sexually attractive. I have also read cases of gay men, who say they only sexually desire other men, who fell in love with a woman. Rather than accepting today’s highly-politicized Western ideas about gender and sexuality, judge things for yourself. You might be perfectly capable of falling in love with the right woman and enjoying sexual intimacy with her, even if you feel a strong preference for men. If I am not mistaken, in the past homosexuality was recognized as merely a strong preference for one sex over the other, rather than a defining part of a person’s identity. It is only today that it has become an identity, and there is no reason why you should submit to this, letting others tell you what you are and how you should live your life. Just because you have a strong preference for men does not mean that you are incapable of loving and enjoying sexual intimacy with a woman.
Even if women are not your first choice, you may be able to enjoy a married life with the right woman that is as happy and pleasurable as most other people’s. Most marriages are not an erotic romance story; marriage is about two people agreeing to create a single enterprise, similar to two co-founders of a business. While sexual intimacy is very important for young married couples, it continually loses its importance as they age. This is not a tragedy; sexual desire requires hormones whose levels continue to fall as we age. One’s weakening appetite for sex does not mean that one also loses their love for their spouse. The opposite actually happens often, where a young married couple have little respect for each other in the beginning while after a decade or two of marriage they start to truly love and appreciate each other, even thought they are older and may rarely have sexual intercourse.
If you think it would be unfair to marry a woman while identifying as gay, you can share the fact with her and let her decide. People marry for many different reasons, and there may be women who will prefer you to the other men available to them because of your personality and other qualities even after you tell them you have a preference for men.
At the present, your case is similar to that of a man who is in love with an already-married woman. There might be no immediate solution, although I believe that as you mature and your sex drive quiets down your ideas may change with it. For now, you will have to accept your fate and appreciate that others have worse fates. Being born gay is probably better than being born blind. There are millions of men in India who desire women but who will never be able to marry simply because the country has millions more men than women. We all suffer from conditions that are outside our control, be it illness, family problems or poverty, and your case is no different.
For now, what you should do is endure patiently and always work to improve yourself and your knowledge. And always remember Prophet Ibrahim’s saying:
And who despairs of his Lord’s mercy except those who are truly lost?1
Life occasionally places us in situations where we lose our patience and want to simply give up rather than go on suffering. It is during those moments that we can prove our loyalty to God.
Best wishes inshaAllah.