Meeting someone is hard if you are a Muslim woman. Meeting someone nice is even harder.

We can’t exactly take the familiar routes to meeting someone and dating is not something we like to do as word gets round. So, some of us join Muslim matrimonial sites in the hope of meeting that someone special.

I have tried Muslim matrimonial sites and I have found these to be nothing more than dating sites in disguise. So, why do these sites try to market them as matrimonial sites? They are far from being so.

They are dating sites pure and simple and they are frequented by people who want to go on dates or have short quick relationships. ‘Marriage’ is just something that is used to encourage women to have sex.

I have spoken to many women who have who have told me horror stories of how they were duped into relationships with men whose sole purpose was just to have sex with them. They would meet these men on matrimonial sites and conversations would always begin with ‘marriage’. There were the familiar ‘Islamic ideals’ conversations.

In some cases these were married men who were pretending to be single. These were men who had no intention of marriage and were simply looking at forging a quick short relationship. These were men who had multiple internet relationships going on at once.

Other times there were those who would go out of their way to share this man with ‘sincere intentions’ persona in the hope of bedding their next victim. I say ‘victim’ because that is what some of us have become.

The promise of ‘money and Islam’ is a toxic combination and a tactic I have become all too used too.

The matrimonial websites are a hunting ground for men who want ‘haram sex’ but seemingly in a ‘halal way’.

It is particularly difficult for those of us in our thirties and have not been able to meet anyone we would like to spend the rest of our lives with.

We, alongside those who are divorced become easy targets.

We will give those we meet the benefit of the doubt. I have met several people who later turned out to be either serial liars who later admitted they only wanted a short relationship or ‘why would I be on a matrimonial app’ for?

Other times the fact that I am looking for a marriage partner must mean I am ‘desperate’.

I know I am generalising on some of the points I have made but it is demoralising that religion is being used by men to simply have sex. That is what is happening.

Yet, we continue to go through the motions.