«لَا اجَّوِّزْتْ وَلَا خِلِي بَالِي وَلَا انَا فِضِلْتْ عَلَى حَالِي»

The speaker describes coming out behind on both counts. The opening negation is best read as denying the hoped-for result, not the marriage itself: the marriage brought no freedom from worry. Meanwhile the speaker has also left behind their former condition, so neither the expected gain nor the old state remains.

In wider application, the saying fits anyone who trades one situation for another expecting improvement, only to land in circumstances more miserable than those abandoned. It serves as a reminder that change does not by itself guarantee that things will get better.

Use it of someone, oneself included, who left a familiar situation hoping for something better and ended up in harder circumstances instead. Marriage is the image, but the remark can be applied to any change of state that proved to be a step down.