Why does it feel like my dua is never answered?

Allah promises response to those who call upon Him: "And your Lord says, 'Call upon Me; I will respond to you'" (Quran 40:60) — but the response is not always the thing asked for at the moment it is asked. It may come as exactly what was requested, as reward stored up in the Hereafter, or as a harm turned away that was equal to it. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "The supplication of any one of you is answered so long as he is not hasty, saying: I supplicated but I was not answered" (Sahih al-Bukhari 6340), and he said the servant continues to be answered "so long as he does not supplicate for sin or the severing of ties of kinship, and so long as he is not impatient" (Sahih Muslim 2735). So delay is not refusal: it may be wisdom in the timing, or a better substitute chosen for you by the One who knows while you do not. There are also barriers a person can lift — the Prophet (ﷺ) described the traveller who raises his hands to the sky crying "O Lord, O Lord," "while his food is unlawful, his drink unlawful, his clothing unlawful, and he is nourished by the unlawful — so how can he be answered?" (Sahih Muslim 1015). Purify your earnings, ask for nothing sinful, and keep asking with certainty and good thought of Allah; the one thing that truly closes the door is walking away from it.

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