Written by: Olivia (Certified ScreamFree Leader) on June 9, 2012 @ 12:45 pm
As Published in Al Jumuah Magazine (okay, this is the rougher draft that did not experience the refining hand of my editor 
)
Cooling the Fires of Marriage: an Approach to Conflict Resolution
Marriage is currently one of the most popular topics in the Muslim community, and not just because people like a love story or aunties are bored (although those are true too). Marriage in America is in crisis, irrespective of religion. As a reaction we constantly hear talks that strive to enlighten the average Muslim couple about their rights and obligations. Popular marriage books by American authors have also been “Islamified” and incorporated into some of these talks, with hopes that if men can understand women a little better and vice versa, we can at least stabilize the rate of the divorce if not decrease it.
While these current talks definitely have their value, I personally believe they’re missing a crucial element—a structured approach to regular conflict resolution. By conflict resolution I don’t merely mean learning how to compromise or when to realize your husband or wife should have the upperhand from a fiqh perspective I’m talking about a whole new way to view conflict in marriage, as a means to a greater goal—the goal of becoming a closer couple with an even stronger bond.
Marital conflict is one of those “make you or break you” phenomena, and Allah created this relationship that is destined for conflict for a reason. Allah says about Himself that He creates nothing without a purpose. Marital conflict has the ability to destroy a couple and land them in a heartbreaking divorce, or it has the ability to deepen a couple’s bond to the extent that they feel something that seems like a taste of Jannah. On an individual level, marital conflict can lead a person toward maturation and self-improvement. What most couples fail to realize is that conflict doesn’t have to drive them. People are not the pawns of their emotions, destined to argue and fight because they can’t help what they feel, unless they choose to be.
Conflict is inevitable in any close relationship. It’s impossible for two people to be emotionally close without some inherent differences, which lead to anxiety. This anxiety is characterized by feelings of fear, anger, frustration, or disappointment and it is very natural. Differences that you can live with when it comes to a friend or even a relative can rock your world when it comes to your spouse, because you have to live with this person every day–you want to be extremely close to them, yet the love you share with them is not unconditional. Having a difference with a spouse may also be a bit of a reality-check, because it makes you realize that just because you believe something, that doesn’t make it right. Even though we logically know that some differences can be valid, we still feel insecure having a difference like that with our spouse. These differences can be related to faith, family, upbringing, culture, politics, intimacy, or even something as trivial as food or favorite book genres.
We might not have a choice about the conflicts that arise from those differences, but we do have in a choice in how we react to these conflicts. Most people don’t make any choice at all about their marital conflicts. Many times a husband or wife will feel upset about something and merely react to that emotion. An argument can often ensue, which can end in a shouting match. Other people are passive aggressive when it comes to marital conflict. Few are the people who see conflict as an opportunity to remain calm and have the foresight to not only see how to get through this conflict unscathed, but to use it as an opportunity for growth.
Firstly, conflict is a time to learn about our self and acknowledgement some of our own shortcomings. And that’s what marriage is made up of—two individuals who each have a responsibility to one another to be the best and most mature person they can be. They are not supposed to always agree on everything—that’s impossible. Conflict is also a time to realize how we have been contributing to any ongoing problems in our marriage, because whether or not we realize it (or want o realize it) marital conflict always involves two people. The good news is, we have the immediate power to make a positive change simply by changing our own behavior.
That being said, I have a bit of a bone to pick with the way we give marital advice in the Muslim community (and non-Muslims give the same advice, just with less of a religious element). Our current approach to marriage advice is to focus on meeting the needs of our spouse. This is the essence of the “rights and obligations” talk that we hear pretty much all the time. This talk seeks to enlighten us about how we are responsible to our spouse, with these guidelines derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah. Men are told that they have to provide for their wife a living based on her ‘urf, or custom. They also have to be patient with her, particularly when she’s PMSing or being overly emotional (facetiousness, noted). Women are told they shouldn’t withhold sex and they should defer the final say to him in a disagreement as long as it doesn’t contradict Islam or make her uncomfortable. We are also taught the technical method of nushooz, or dealing with extreme marital conflict. Additionally we are reminded of stories how the Prophet was patient and loving with his wives, peace be upon him.
However, this talk is not enough (nor do I think it’s always helpful, really). When couples hear this talk, it pretty much has the same effect on everyone. Even though each individual should be taking to heart what he or she is learning and apply it to himself or herself, they tend to think about their partner’s deficits. Husbands will be hoping their wives are really paying close attention to the part about how he needs his alone time or how physical touch is his favored expression of love. Wives are hoping their husbands are really remembering the part about not offering solutions when she wants to vent her emotions or the part about how he can’t force her to live with this mother.
In other words, these talks tend to set couples up for a stalemate with each partner only meeting the needs of their spouse as much as their own needs are being met. The needs-meeting view approach to marriage leaves both husband and wife acting very needy, and neediness in an adult is very immature, unattractive, and counter-productive. Husbands and wives in conflict often sound like whiny or angry children when they share their problems with a third party. He’ll complain that she doesn’t ever want to have sex, and she’ll complain that he’s lazy around the house and still on his mother’s apron-strings. Perhaps they’ll come to a compromise to both start meeting each other’s needs more, but both are always keeping a close on eye and a tight score, and as soon as one person starts to falter the other withdraws in turn.
While is important for us to understand our responsibilities to our spouse, if we never go beyond that, we’ll have a technically functioning marriage but an emotionally dysfunctional marriage. Many are the people who fulfill the fiqhi requirements of marriage but are still unhappy. They’re unhappy because in spite of meeting each other’s needs, they still have conflict about those needs, and they don’t understand why that is or how to resolve it. For instance, a couple may be having sex on a regular basis, so technically this aspect of their marriage is being fulfilled in a fiqhi perspective, but they may still be having a huge conflict about it. There is an entire emotional side of marriage that can be turned upside down even when technicalities are being taken care of. This daily emotional interplay is not properly understood by many couples, in spite of our glimpses into the Sunnah of the Prophet (S). In my opinion a more structured approach to understanding this aspect of marriage and handling it needs to be fleshed out.
So in the rest of this article I will seek to lay out the basic way to handle these conflicts and then in upcoming publications I will talk about the four most common conflicts of marriage: time management, family, household responsibilities, and sexual intimacy.
In regards to handling conflict we first need to stop focusing on our spouse and start focusing more on ourselves. Even when our spouse is doing something we believe is blameworthy, we still first focus on our own reactions as a means to rectifying the situation. This is because even though we believe our spouse is doing something wrong, we’ve usually been enabling and even encouraging their behavior without realizing it. When it comes to conflict, the only person who we can change is ourselves, so the first step in handling marital conflict is to change our own part in a destructive behavior pattern.
Let’s understand this through an example. Let’s say a husband feels resentful and frustrated with his wife because she always gets upset when he goes out with his friends. She becomes passive-aggressive whenever he comes back home and they usually end up having an argument in the end. He blames his wife for wanting to control his time and he believes she’s way too needy. So now he either has to choose between his wife and social life, or so he thinks. If he steps back and takes a look at this situation, he may notice that he’s been making some mistakes of his own that have created this problem. Perhaps his wife wouldn’t mind if he spent time with his friends if he would let her know a little in advance or would come home on time. Perhaps she resents the fact that he always makes time with his friends during Friday nights or other prime times while time with her seems to be spent over mundane tasks on weeknights. Or perhaps his wife expects them to hang out with other couples now that they’re married, but he isn’t even aware of this expectation. It may not be that his wife minds that he spends time with his friends, if only he was just more considerate of her when he scheduled it. Instead of merely reacting to her and making assumptions, he needs to do some calm discovering.
Another example may be a husband who is unhelpful around the house. As a result his wife constantly nags him in the hopes that he’ll feel guilty enough to realize the error of his ways and start pulling his load. But is the problem solely his doing? What part has she played in creating this dynamic? Her nagging is probably her main problem, because nagging only makes him feel the need to resist her attempts to coerce and belittle him. Perhaps when he has tried to help in the past, she criticized him or forced him to do it “her way”, as if her way is the right way and his the wrong way. Or maybe she’s been overcompensating and picking up after everyone for so long, that he doesn’t even realize that something’s wrong. Maybe she withholds intimacy to punish him so they’re stuck in a stalemate with neither one wanting to take the first step in the right direction.
In other words, we tend to enable the behavior in our spouses that we dislike through our very efforts to eradicate it. The husband who thinks his wife just wants to have a leash on him is inflaming her desire to control him by being inconsiderate with his schedule. The wife who resents her lazy husband is encouraging his resistance by her constant nagging or punishing. Whenever we are about to blame our spouse for a problem, we need to pause, step back, and take an honest look at ourselves. Are things really as we interpret them to be? Is she really just controlling? Is he really just lazy? Are these simple character faults in our spouse or are they a reaction to a more complex problem in which we both take part?
The next thing we have to do is look at our efforts to communicate with our spouse about a problem. This involves broaching the subject and telling our spouse how their behavior is affecting us. This process is called “Authentic Self-Representation” by LMFT Hal Runkel, author of ScreamFree Marriage. This involves being calm, honest, and tactful with our spouse when we speak to them. It calls upon us to eliminate any emotional games, vengeful arguments, hurtful language, or passive-aggressive behavior. In other words, if we want conflict to refine our relationship and make our bond stronger, we have to let go of any spiteful attempts to “punish” our spouse or vent our anger at them. We are having this conversation with our spouse, not so we can make them feel guilty, but so that we can overcome a problem as a couple. This type of conversation can only happen between two people who are mature enough to put aside petty attempts to wound each other.
After authentically representing ourselves to our spouse, we have to calmly receive whatever they have to say to us. This may be an emotional tirade that seeks to pull us into a familiar argument, or it may be a valid criticism. In any event, we have to hold on to our resolve to stay calm and respectful, despite how our spouse behaves, and be open to whatever it is they have to say. Our spouse may not agree with us or be willing to change (yet), but at the very least we’ve given them food for thought and set a better tone in our marriage. And after the discussion is over, we have to really let it be over, even if we didn’t agree in the end. Many times marital conflicts don’t have a right and a wrong, but rather involve two valid differences. One partner may think he doesn’t overspend while his wife thinks he does. In reality, the definition of overspending is relative. So while she can tell her husband what she thinks of his spending habits, she has to accept that this person came from a different family with different ideas about money. He may never agree with her on it, so she has to learn to live with that. Of course there are subjects in which Allah has limits (physical force, for example), but these are few compared with the things in marriage which are determined by a person’s ‘urf, which in our case has less to do with the custom of society as a whole and more with personal upbringing (because our society is so diverse).
Throughout this entire process, one thing has to remain in our mind—that each of us as an individual should be contributing our best selves to our marriage all of the time, regardless of what our spouse chooses to do. That is truly an Islamic marriage, because we’re giving of ourselves out of principle rather than simply returning whatever we get. Our behavior is not determined by our spouse’s but by what we know to be right and best. If two people can mutually achieve this dynamic in marriage, then conflicts will make them stronger and closer in the end. Each conflict with be an opportunity for both individuals to improve themselves as well as their marriage. And even if only one spouse undertakes this approach*, they will have the personal satisfaction of knowing that they are fulfilling half of their deen in a way that is most pleasing to Allah as well as remaining a constant source of positive growth for their relationship.
*If someone is being abused, they should also seek intervention, mediation, or counseling as well.
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Assalamualaikum Olivia,
Liked this piece of urs..
Can I post it in my blog?
Of course I would give this http://www.screamfreemuslims.com/?p=682 as the source..
Lemme know!
Sure, no problem. Thanks for asking.
Salamu ‘alaykum,
I understand this question and the way I pose it might be of tenuous relevance to your approach here but I really, really need to ask it.
I have a lot of pressure put on me as a Muslim male to get a good education (I’m fine with that and am happy to spend forever in grad school at my own expense) and then to be gainfully employed so I can one day support a family on my own- even though in broader society this is being considered less and less tenable. I don’t mind. I’m expected to work till I cough blood to support my wife without being able to rely on any assistance from her (financial or otherwise) or anybody else. Again, this is fine and I have no problem with it. Then I’m told that the going opinion among the fuqaha is that it isn’t obligatory on a woman to do her household chores or even to feed her children and prepare meals for her husband with the food he has bought. I don’t mind. The only thing I can demand from my wife and have a right to expect is sex, basically, and what is derivative from it (e.g. she cannot leave the house without my permission).
Bearing all this in mind- why the hell should I refrain from forcing myself on her if she rejects me since intimacy is the only thing I have a right to, basically (despite suffering for many years to be able to afford marriage and then coughing up blood during it just to meet our expenses as a family without help from anyone else)? Why on earth should I not do it when I’ve sacrificed so much just to be entitled to intimacy and have paid such a steep price for it?
And then Muslim women in America tell us that they expect to work outside the home and keep their earnings, and not to have to do anything at home since that isn’t obligatory for them- since women are like that, I think it makes eminent sense for husbands to force themselves on uncooperative wives. If I have very few rights in a marriage and women have so many, it makes sense to exploit mine to the hilt just so that I get some return on the very substantial investment (financial, emotional, etc) marriage represents for me.
I realise that wasn’t phrased as a question but I do want some kind of response. I’m not trying to be provocative (although that’s how it reads)…but this is something I’m really struggling with at the moment as I realise that getting married and having anything to do with women is making less and less sense to me, because it takes so much out of you (financially, emotionally, psychologically) for so very little return. I really admire what you do here on your website and thought you might best understand how to respond.
Thanks.
To annonymous unmarried brother,
I realize what you are saying makes it sound like marriage is a hell for men,but trust me there maybe only 2% women in this world who actually lounge on the sofa in front of the tv all day.I am married and i am from a family where maids and drivers are a norm.However,after my marriage my situation is not as affluent at present.I work to relieve some burden off my husband,i cook(i do get side help from my husband) but basically,i do it all.I clean the home and wash/iron his clothes as well..i control my spending as i realize the situation..and believe me so do all my friends.Additionally,my friends who have kids take very good care of their children as well.So you may have come across some extreme case where a wife works and helps nothing,or spends all her earning on spa treatments,leaves kids screaming on the carpet or a house in utter chaos while she is on the phone…My advice,enter marriage with an open mind and a calm attitude…Also,bear in mind she leaves the security of her parents home and walks with u,that in itself is a very scary step..to leave behind all that you knew and walk into an unknown future with an unknown man…be sympathetic to the biggest emotional change a girl will ever go through in her life ..and inshallah you will see how a true women returns tenfold when she is dealt with love and care.
Walaikum asalaam Brother,
so here’s my answer in those terms anyways, pretending that you’re actually in this reality (and i think youd have to really be in it to understand it)
First, I want to apologize for not getting to this question two months sooner, when you first asked it. I don’t have any alerts with the comments on my blog, so I hope you won’t think I neglected it. I just saw it today. Secondly, I just answered your question as if you were married, but I’m seeing from your ID that you’re not
I sense a lot of anger and frustration in your question, I’m sure of which a lot is very valid. You say you are okay with working until you cough up blood, but when I read a statement like that, I can’t help but think you’re not okay with it. I get the impression that you are very, very bitter that you probably work your butt off and your wife is not as forthcoming with sex as you’d like her to be. I think you would be okay with it if she was more willing to have sex with you as often as you’d like to her to. We are dealing with two issues here. The first is the Islamic issue, the second is the emotional/psychological issue. Both exist in tandem, always; we are always Muslims, striving to obey Allah and we are always human beings, dealing with emotional struggles with one another and within ourselves on a regular basis. From an Islamic perspective, I encourage you to reevaluate your understanding of the rights/responsibilities of marriage. You believe that as long as you are supporting your wife, you are entitled to sex. On the flip side, your wife would then believe that should you ever lose your job, she can stop having sex with you until she sees another paycheck. In reality, when we marry another person, we make an agreement to uphold our end of the bargain, regardless of what the other person does. So if I’m a man and I marry a woman, I promise to put food on the table regardless of whether or not she has sex with me or acts a fool. Likewise, if I’m a woman, I agree to allow my husband to have the upperhand in the marriage regardless of whether or not he’s a layabout loser (sex is not mentioned in the Qur’an, but we can assume that if a husband asks for it, that she should obey him and in light of hadeeth on the subject this is further reinforced). You don’t give your spouse their rights as long as they only give you yours, and vice versa. You are not entitled to sex because you pay the bills, nor is she entitled to your money because she puts out for you. You provide because you’re a husband, end of story. She obeys (reasonably) because she is a wife, end of story. So I encourage you to stop viewing your providing as some sort of payment for sex. You may not think you are doing this, but I believe you are, because you sound very, very bitter. Providing for your family is your responsibility and obedience to God, not part of an exchange. So be happy with yourself that you are being a good man who works hard to provide for his family and stop tying this to whether or not your wife is having enough sex with you. That would be my advice. If one spouse’s rights are continuously neglected they need to seek intervention and help to remedy the problem, not “punish” their spouse by withholding the rights of their partner. Allah gives us a detailed manner in dealing with these problems, such as nushooz and mediation.
Now, onto the other issue, regarding forcing yourself on your wife. I don’t know what’s really going on. I don’t know if she’s totally withholding sex from you, I don’t know if she’s just not in the mood when you are, and I don’t know if you make any efforts to make this as act of mutual pleasure and love rather than a mere physical satisfaction. I don’t know what you’ve done or tried and so I can’t speak to how much of your grievance is really valid, but I’m going to assume the absolute worst, that your wife never wants to have sex with you.
I have heard shuyukh say that a man forcing himself on his wife is a type of dhulm, because of the very nature of the act, which, obviously, involves forceful entry, aggressive behavior, pain, etc. All of these factors make it wrong, because its causing harm to another human being. I’m sure not having an outlet for ongoing arousal is a great fitnah, but it does not justify what most people would call marital rape. The Prophet told a man not to mount his wife like an animal, peace be upon him. This may not seem fair to you. Putting a paycheck on the table is easy for your wife to benefit from. But when it comes to sex, something you’re looking to benefit from, why is it not so easy? This is a situation which Allah has created that may seem “unfair” to a man. There are many situations which women believe Allah has put them in that seem “unfair” to women. Allah knows best why our genders are tested in the way that they are.
However, I realize that you are legitimately very frustrated and angry with your wife. Your wife is doing something wrong by not having sex with you, even if she doesn’t feel like it. So you are right to feel frustrated and angry with her–it isn’t fair to you. You married her, you are both supposed to provide this sort of relief for one another.
So my final question to you is this: what is the goal here? To simply have sex, to relieve yourself? That is a valid short-term goal, but it is obviously going to come at a great long-term price should you continue to go about it the way you are (forcing yourself on your wife). I would suggest that you look deep into the reason why your wife doesn’t want to have sex with you. These reasons are not your fault, they are both of your faults, because every marital problem is a shared problem. So instead of focusing on what your wife is doing wrong, like I tell everyone, focus on what you have been doing wrong. In what ways have you contributed to a marriage in which your sex-life is so troubled? Sex is a window into the marriage–it is the ultimate expression of intimacy and love. If this intimacy and love is gone from the rest of your daily actions, it will not be there in sex. And for a woman, who requires an emotional element to become aroused, she simply won’t ever feel like doing it. Being a provider is not enough to have a healthy sex life. Sex is a mutually enjoyable act, and it is an extension of the way you feel about each other. If sex in your life has deteriorated to this level, I encourage to evaluate how you actually feel about this woman, and how you think she feels about you. I don’t think you want to continue living in a marriage in which you have to rape your own wife. I think you’d love to have marriage in which you experience passion and shared release, one in which she even comes onto you. While that is possible, you cannot achieve that by putting your own arousal and “rights” above that. It is up to you, but you can suffer an erection to try to come onto your wife in a better way, and she may reject you. You can be persistent and find that she really wants to open up to you, but is very afraid to allow herself that vulnerability and sharing with you because she is afraid you will betray her trust by forcing yourself onto her again. Your angry (thats legit) and she’s probably deeply hurt (thats legit). Do you want to fix this for real, or just live this marriage in a cut and dry way, sans the emotional reality of it? I’m sure you can find a fatwa that says you can force yourself onto your wife. I recommend that if you actually want great sex, you focus on yourself and how you can make things better, because the only person we can change is ourselves. I encourage you to take the first step, and be the first to restore sex to the mutually wonderful act it should be. I would advise you to do this by doing small things outside of the bedroom, during the rest of the day, to show your wife how much you care about her, how much you want to make her feel cherished and loved. And even if she’s not responding how you want, take heart that Allah will reward you and if you’re patient, insha’Allah you will see a change. Your wife may not be trusting enough to open up to you right away, but if you’re persistent I believe you will see great changes. But you have to be mature enough to do this. Maturity is doing what you do because its right and best, no matter what anyone else does. May Allah bless your marriage and make it easy for you. I would also encourage you to seek some one on one counseling. Eid Mubarak.
Salam alaykum.
Thank you for your considered response. But what would you say to an unmarried person, who for one thing has no understanding of the relationship dynamics surrounding intimacy?
Walaikum asalaam,
I’m glad you came back with a follow-up question, otherwise I felt rather bad that you may never have gotten the first response.
My advice is this: do not look to fiqh books, or even most fatawa for advice on marital intimacy, aside from understanding halal and haraam. As a student of knowledge who is friends with many students of knowledge, I know how detrimental relying on these sources absolutely can be to the topic on an emotional level.
Fiqh and subsequent fatawa have great value, do not get me wrong, but the fuqaha were focused on dissecting matters from a very dry, emotionless perspective. WIth marriage, for example, they drew a parallel between the marriage contract and a business contract. They had very valid reasons for doing so and it enabled them to understand what aspects of the contract are central to its validity, as opposed to which were optional. They also made a connection between the mahr and a man being allowed access to his wife’s sex, thus the payment of the mahr is required at the time of the contract for this reason. Does it mean he is literally buying her sex? No, but a less introspective reader may assume, and internalize, just that.
When we read these things because we are looking for an Islamic view on marriage, over time it is easy to develop a very dehumanized view of very human issues, like marriage (business and its contracts have no emotional value, where as marriage and its contract obviously does). We start to feel like marriage is business, and sex and money are an emotionless exchange, where one person meets the demands of the contract by providing what is required of them, sex or money.
The detriment of this, which I have pointed out on my blog, is that when we internalize this fiqhi approach to marriage, and the tone with which the fuqaha used in dissecting marriage, we slowly lead ourselves to believe that this is the “proper” understanding of marriage, and we have no idea what place or value emotion has in it, because when we consult books like Bidayat al Mujtahid or sites like Islamqa.com, emotion does not seem exist. This is further compounded by the fact that modern day books on marital intimacy are written by non-Muslims, so we feel unsure whether or not placing any value on them is even appropriate.
So here is my final advice: You are in a position that you cannot fully understand true intimacy; you can never really know the emotional closeness and vulnerability that is inherent in sharing yourself with another person in this bond, so understand that part of this struggle to understand is only breached by actually marrying.
That being said, I believe it is laudable that you do want to know as much as you can prior to marriage so that you can bring your best self to wife. My first advice is a do not: do not look to fiqh books or any online fatwa service to understand marriage wholistically. If you know the basic rulings on marriage, then that this enough, stay off them completely when it comes to this topic.
My next advice would be for you to reorient yourself on the subject. Read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Women-Venus-Communication-Relationships/dp/006016848X This book provides some great insight into the differences between men and women in the context of marriage, and how each can reach out to the other. Keep coming to this blog, where I hope to post more on this topic and perhaps do some digging yourself for other books or materials created by Muslims, like webinars, etc. Screamfree Marriage is a good book, but there are some things that appear objectionable (but really aren’t), due to the writing style so I wouldn’t recommend it straight off, though the majority of the book is worth the read. If you live within the Bay Area of California I will be teaching an Islamified version of this book, inshallah, after Ramadan.
In the end, brother, it is Allah who created human beings with a vast array of emotions that are constantly at play within us. They are not frivolous or of lesser value then or physical selves. Some would argue they are even more valuable–physical damage is far more easily reversed than emotional, and the worst of human behavior stems from emotional distress. For example, even in a sexually frustrated man, abuse or marital rape are the manifestations of emotional responses to his physical frustration. Many men are sexually frustrated, but only a man who is emotionally unsettled, angry or vindictive, would rape his wife.
Your wife will want, inshallah, to experience a depth of love and passion with you that I’m sure you hope to share with her. Marriage comes easily, true intimacy takes a lot of selfless work, a lot of tending to your spouse’s emotions and controlling your own, but you will be incredibly rewarded. When you think of women hypothetically, realize that this is a person Allah created for you to connect with you on the deepest level: you are meant to fulfill one another’s sexual desire, but sex that is merely physical satisfaction, sex with no love or emotional synergy (and men want this emotional connection as much as women), is like a candy with no sugar. Focus on yourself and how you can improve things with her, not how you can prove your rightness and obtain what you’re entitled to, and you will find the height of sweetness.
Thank you again.
My final contribution is this: you complain that some men have an overly legalistic view of marriage. I certainly do; but is that so unfair, when women clearly expect all the benefits that accrue to them from “legalistic marriage”- housing, a large mahr, nafaqa, etc- as well as all the emotional perks of a companionate one? This sounds like having your cake and eating it, to me. The real problem is that women want to enjoy the benefits of marriage in a patriarchal context while dodging the burdens of the same. From your description I should provide for my wife and get nothing whatsoever in return. You say the law is lacking but I say it protects people from the dhulm of others and guarantees them at the very least a certain minimum of rights. It seems to me that marriage as described by you above (with great respect) is a recipe for exploitation (of a man by his wife) offering few if any benefits, emotional or otherwise, and those uncertain at best. Sorry to make a transaction of marriage but that doesn’t do anything for me- it sounds gimmicky and somewhat like one of those dodgy pyramid schemes you hear about every now and then. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have too much dignity to humiliate myself for a woman’s sake and if any party does the oppressing in a marriage I would far rather it were me. I can trust myself far more than I can trust any woman, and if the emotional risks are all made on her side of the equation then I have far less to lose. And sorry sister if this is too candid for you, but if, having gone to all that financial trouble to get married (which is what all sisters expect from their husbands), my wife pushes me away from her I’d feel so angry and cheated and exploited that, screw her, she deserves what I do to her. Why do her feelings matter when it comes to intimacy and not mine? It’s not like she brings anything to the table when she gets married, particularly this generation of women who are singularly reluctant to help their husbands in any conceivable way (domestically or financially). Excuse me while I get this off my chest. And you expect me to put up with her on top of all that? If I had a wife like that, WAllahi I would force myself on her until she begged for khula’ so I wouldn’t have to waste any more money on her. You imply there’s something wrong in the above but I would only be protecting myself from being exploited. And yes, there are such fatawa as you allude to and I have every intention of availing myself of them.
None of which is intended as any disrespect to you, I’m just very angry about all this and appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. Thanks again.
Walaikum asalaam Brother,
So, completely legally speaking, your wife has the right to sexual gratification, to having an orgasm, just as much as you. No scholar will tell you differently. That being the case, do you think to get a wife to have an orgasm, you simply put yourself inside her and thrust? For the sake of legality, you will need to dig deep and find some love and tenderness for this woman, because no woman is going to scream with the pleasure of satisfaction when you rape her or have cold unfeeling sex. Scream yes, but probably, as you said, for a divorce.
A woman’s sexual arousal is directly linked to emotional well-being. I’m sorry if that seems unfair to you, as if you have to be loving and tender to get her off when she doesn’t have to put a paycheck in the bank account to “even the score”. Usually this is not an issue for people, because they don’t view the emotional exchange of marriage as a “responsibility.” It’s supposed to happen naturally with both parties mutually benefitting. And this is my concern when people encapsulate themselves with fiqh alone, and start dehumanizing and slicing and dicing marriage. Marriage will absolutely fail on those terms.
As a woman and as your sister, I would really recommend you think of your wife as an object of love. That is what Allah says about husbands and wives in the Qur’an in addition to the technicalities of the covenant. Love and passion is not meant for one spouse more than the other; both benefit equally. Everything I said in my last post about passion and intimacy, was for YOUR benefit, not something you do to pander to your wife. Being emotionally tender in sex and elsewhere is not an act a man is supposed to put on for a woman. Every man wants love and passion, unless he truly despises women. In that case, please don’t get married. If you really feel, brother, like the thought of raping a woman until she begs you to divorce her is something you find find even remotely satisfying, something you could do and maintain your arousal, take the time to work these issues out before you seek a woman’s hand.
You needn’t apologize, you are welcome to be candid with me as I am with you, on this blog. I respect that you are trying to work this out for yourself mentally. Realize that as a human you have the potential to experience so much more in marriage than what you are imagining now, and it will not feel like “work.” I love to serve my husband, and he loves to serve me. I feel no resentment, no obligation and neither does he, and he is not a push-over. He is a very respectable man, and I respect him more than any other person on this planet and yes, obey him, if it comes to that. I never hesitated to do so, because I never had to even entertain the thought that he would oppress me, he is too just, and thus he has my complete devotion without question. Our marriage is mutually gratifying, and we are as conservative as you in practice, I’d imagine, in the deen. You can find that, if you want it but you need to work through this and let go of the tit-for-tat attitude you’re clinging to so fiercely. Why settle for a sh*tty marriage when Paradise is within your reach? It’s your choice.
To the anonymous, unmarried brother:
“Why settle for a sh*tty marriage when Paradise is within your reach? It’s your choice.”
Exactly.
Pardon my intrusion on this discussion, but I have to wonder why your expectations are set so low? It’s unfortunate if you have had an experience that leads you to believe that the vast majority of Muslim sisters are seeking to freeload off a husband, but my experience is much different. Save for one, — and she was half-joking in all the angst and frustration of grad school — I cannot recall a sister ever asking for a man to dote upon her and answer her beckon call while she kicks up her feet. I know heaps of single sisters who dream about the days they can be good friends and lovers to their husbands, prepare meals for their families, and take care of and raise good children. Of those sisters, very few wish to sit at home forever waiting on a man to do her bidding.
In my experience, people in miserable marriages — Muslim or non- — married for all the wrong reasons with unrealistic expectation of their partners. They married selfishly seeking benefits from the other rather than married with the plan to make a life with together from which they both could benefit. This is why I find the Islamic ways of selecting a mate so beautiful: there is no emotional or financial obligation until both are willing to commit to the other. It’s not like you will be assigned a spouse — even if your parents have a role in choosing for you — with whom you have no chance to say, “pass.”
When I got married, I met several people with whom I knew I wouldn’t be compatible even when all their “specs” looked good beforehand. For me, income and education was not good enough. When I met the man who is now my husband, we put all our cards on the table for the other to see. We discussed all our expectations and differences, and we drilled each other with tough, open-ended questions before we even started getting to know each other personally. There were things with which we were both uncomfortable, at first, but we left each other alone to pray and think about the right decision. Believe it or not, I had the better job, better car and better condo when we got married, and none of that has mattered to either of us. We have no element of power struggle between us, alhamdulillah. We have certainly had conflict, and we have had to continually be patient and forgiving with one another, but we work together to better our deen, to raise our daughter and to achieve our common goals. We take care of each other when we are stressed, sad or ill, and encourage each other. This September marks five years for us, inshaAllah.
I have to admit that I’m quite disturbed and well – being candid – disgusted by the marital rape thing. We should not be angry and vengeful to one another; in fact, we’re supposed to treat each other well for the sake of Allah — not for THEIR sake. What did the prophet (saw) do when his wives upset him? I’m pretty sure “”screw her” I’m getting mine” wasn’t part of the plan. If a spouse is not fulfilling their obligations, if a spouse is making the other miserable, Allah has allowed for divorce, but I don’t know anywhere — ever — that He has allowed for physical, hate-filled punishment.
I am wondering the same thing: why the low expectations? I think until this point I assume you have derived this attitude of women from reading fatawa on sites like Islamqa, where they often talk of what rights a woman has in terms of maintenance. It is very hypothetical and not reflective of the reality of women (thus, i dont recommend spending a lot of time there)
When two people commit to one another, and love one another, they don’t keep score, unless they fear their partner will oppress or exploit them. Realize that while a brother may fear that his wife will exploit him for money, she fears he will exploit her for sex. Should one form of oppression be responded to with another? No. Allah has given us specific instructions for handling that: nushooz, mediation, and divorce.
As Bashir mentioned, most women are not free-loaders, just as most men are not chauvinistic abusers. I had virtually no mahr and paid off my husband’s entire college debt with my personal money. It was an act of love and hopefully a means of earning Allah’s reward. If I have ever been resistant to him, maybe because I was angry or tired, he never forced me into anything, which is an act of love and rewarding for him. This is the mercy and love Allah speaks of, and essential to finding “peace and tranquility” that Allah also mentions.
Think the best of someone, and if you think a woman is a “free-loader” don’t marry her. But in the end you will get what you give. If you are a score-keeper, tit-for-tatter, you will probably marry one. Anyone else will leave you.
As cliched as it may sound, we should be thinking less of the technical “this is mine, this is hers” fiqhi aspect of marriage, and go back to the Sunnah of RasulAllah (sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam).
How did he deal with his wives? How did they deal with him? Some of them came from very wealthy backgrounds – Juwayriyyah was a princess, used to all the luxuries that this background offered her; Maariyah was a slave, used to the degradation that this situation taught.
Yet he was equally loving, patient, and kind with them all, sallAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.
The Sahaabah as well (most of them) were known for the love and kindness they showed to their wives. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the ultimate “tough guy” in Islamic history, was rebuked by a man because that man heard Umar’s wife telling him off (in a manner that man considered disrespectful), and Umar answered – shouldn’t I let her speak to me this way when she is the one who looks after my home, sleeps with me, and raises my children?
Even a technical, fiqhi look at marriage includes “good treatment,” “kindness,” and “gentleness” amongst the rights due to BOTH the husband and the wife.
No (properly qualified) shaykh will EVER tell you that it’s okay to force yourself on your wife to get your right to sex; he will tell you to either discipline her (separate from her, have mediators, etc.) or divorce her. But he will NOT tell you that just because you pay the rent and the grocery bills, that you can climb on top of her and forcibly have sex with her.
It’s sad and unfortunate that we have young Muslim men thinking about marriage in this way – that it’s a contract of money for sex. Just because you have never had experience with the opposite gender in any type of relationship, it doesn’t mean that you cannot imagine women as being human beings with similar needs to yours as a man – in fact, just think of them as HUMAN and you’ll probably be able to think of the issue in a less black-and-white, stripped-of-emotion (and reality) manner.
Sorry to leave you in suspense- I’ve been busy with a few things at home. I did say I’d made my last contribution to the discussion, but since some kind of dialogue is developing here I hope you won’t mind my adding my two cents.
There’s a lot to address here so I guess I’ll start where you started.
A few technical claims are made above that could be easily disputed, however, I’ll concede for the sake of argument that everything you say about the contractual basis of marriage/inter-spousal obligations is correct, since that’s not what we’re concerned with here.
You ask a question about the female orgasm and the simple answer to that question is, well, I don’t know, or I’m not really sure. I suppose I should talk about marital intimacy more generally since that’s a major concern of mine. My parents didn’t withdraw me from sex ed classes, unlike most Muslim parents, because it was felt that I should find out somewhere how it all happened. That consisted of finding out that when you hit puberty, hair starts growing in awkward places and your voices breaks. Oh, and ‘when a man loves a woman very much’, he has sex with her, apparently. Fair enough. After marriage, anyway. And he inserts x into y, and I suppose there is kissing and conversation beforehand (as per the hadith) and cuddling and perhaps a post-coital cigarette afterwards, for the tobacco-inclined. I did biology until college so I can name all the parts responsible, and I understand what happens physiologically (hormone levels, ovulation and so on), but in terms of the reality of it, well, besides a few overheard conversations in high school- where people seemed to be losing their virginity all around me- and what you see in the movies, or rather don’t see, when the lights dim and the camera moves to the curtains, I don’t know very much. At college I really kept to myself, though since I hit the books I did stray into the French Lit. section of the library a few times, but I doubt Sade has anything useful to say to married couples. Cutting a hole in my wife and then availing myself of that- the thought doesn’t really do anything for me. What I am familiar with is many years of sexual frustration (sorry, folks, it had to be said) and feeling desire for the opposite sex with having any outlet for it. I avoiding talking with women as much as possible- outside the classroom I can count the number of conversations I had with the opposite sex on one hand, in as many years of higher education. In retrospect, fiqh aside, this was still definitely the right thing to do. Staying away from women and marriage gave me all sorts of opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have. Not that I could have afforded, or can afford marriage, anyway. Oh yes, and I always get the feeling that you’re judged for not having had pre-marital relationships with women, if not sexual, then at least emotional- by Muslims! I just don’t understand the expectation women have that you’re supposed to go from hardly talking to women in a friendly way to having a full-blown physical relationship in one night- and, on top of that, you’re supposed to be the perfect husband and make no mistakes and know exactly what to do. I think that’s unfair, but I suppose that’s just me. You get to know your wife when you approach her about marriage, which helps with knowing how to talk to women I guess (although how you meet her in the first place I don’t understand- and how you convince your parents that you want to find your own wife, that I really dread). Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to discuss any of these concerns with a woman before I was married to her. I imagine having an embarrassing conversation with my married friends before the contract gets drawn up. Then I guess I’d have to hold her hand and sit down with her, tell her I love her but that this was a journey for both of us, that I had my insecurities and that she’d have to be very patient and understanding because I wasn’t completely sure about everything. I’m sure that isn’t good enough for most of them but, well, that’s the best I can do.
And another thing before I’m done on this most important of marital subjects. I read quite a bit of Freud in college and he influenced my understanding of marital sexuality quite a lot. In a number of essays he wrote…
to be continued…
…he explains how the model whereby men and women abstain from intimacy before and outside of marriage means that, when people finally do get married, men are already very frustrated and women hate sex (that is, they just aren’t interested). Freud was an experienced clinician so there must be some empirical basis for this idea. And, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. We never (or rarely) hear of men being ‘not in the mood’ whereas this seems to be the norm (rather than the exception) for women. From conversations with a learned friend, who knows married brothers, I discovered that anything more than once a week is excessive for a woman, and with her period keeping her out of action for a week every month, that means a husband would be fortunate to have sex three times a month, after marriage. Oh yes, and once she has children she loses all desire completely- something to do with a baby emerging from the same orifice. And then Sh Yasir Qadhi said, before eighteen most (not all) sisters don’t even understand what desire for the opposite sex is- they just don’t have it. And once they lost their virginity, he said it takes on average five years for a woman to climax- for inexperienced husbands it would probably take closer to ten years of marriage to make their wives scream with the satisfaction of whatever, as you put it. I already deal with enough frustration as it is without marriage. Once guys get married I feel their problems in this department must be even worse, because you can’t really miss what you’ve never had (as a virgin) and as a person who has changed his life vision to get married, you probably resent not getting any quite a lot. I certainly would.
As for A. Bashir, you’re very welcome to contribute and you aren’t intruding at all. In answer to your question, and to Olivia’s, this is the impression I get from my admittedly very limited experience with women. This is what I see in my parent’s marriage and what my sister says when I ask her what she wants out of marriage, which is the extent of my knowledge. My mother works full-time, but she doesn’t contribute towards the household income in any meaningful way since it is ‘her money’; she hardly cooks, not more than my father, anyway, and she doesn’t clean up at all (and I resent having to clean up after her all the time). Once a week she does pay a maid to dust and hoover the house, if that can be considered cleaning, and when she isn’t shouting at her husband for a variety of reasons she tells him how much better her friend’s husbands are, because they are given gifts of cars and houses, etc. Which would be totally beyond our means, obviously. The plus side is that I do the laundry, clean up a bit and can cook a little (I’m getting more sophisticated in what I do). The downside is that I basically hate women and can’t understand why anyone wants to get married. In terms of my sister, her husband to be has earn a lot (which is fair I suppose, since she sort of does), own a house, own a good car, pay for a very expensive wedding and fork out a lot for a mahr. The cash value of all the items mentioned would be somewhere in the several hundreds of thousands. My understanding is that, if you want to get married, this is what a woman (and/or her parents) expect you to be able to do. Which is fine, really, it just means I can’t ever get married. That’s probably my fault for not going to med school and for choosing a career that requires a lot of grad school without great financial returns in the future, but I don’t regret that decision at all.
To Anonymouse: you ask me to treat women like human beings, people with the same needs as myself. But I don’t expect my wife to buy a large house, own a good car, pay me a large mahr, pay for an expensive wedding, or pay for anything at all. Nor do I expect the person I marry to refuse to have sex more often than not- actually, yes I do but I’m trying to show you that there’s absolutely no equivalency at all in what men and women want/expect from marriage. Even if you are the egalitarian type, you can’t deny that marriage involves a lot of gender differentiation. And sr. Olivia, with respect, when you say these legal details about a woman’s maintenance don’t reflect women’s lived reality I really wonder what planet you’re leaving on. I really, really appreciate your help and am learning a lot here, however, why do you think the average marriage age of a Muslim male in countries like Egypt is higher than in Britain or the US (last time I checked), for example? Marriage is a huge financial burden for a man- and if the burden is unrelieved by any entitlement to sex I don’t see the point of it.
The example of the sahaba is typically misunderstood and even more so that of the Prophet (salAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). What most women hear from the Khadijah (ra) story is the idea of an independent career woman taking the world by storm (etc)- not exactly true- but they forget the part about her employing and actually financially supporting her poorer husband (salAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam)- which is clear from the sources. Do you understand what I say now about women wanting to have their cake and eat it? Not that I would ever want a wife to support me at all in any way, financially, I just don’t see the attraction in a marriage like my parents’ or the kind my sister wants. And that is what marriage is for me; it’s no wonder, really, why Muslim women are struggling to get married in the States. When women from backhomeistan are happy to cook, clean and pop out kids (after you pay a lot to marry them of course), and non-Muslim kitabis are happy-ish to share the burdens (financial, domestic) of marriage with the man they love, you really have to wonder what the hell Muslim women raised/born in this part of the world are charging so much for.
I’ve noticed a few typos in the above (‘leaving’ for ‘living’ etc), sorry for those as I didn’t read over my posts before submitting them. The part about lack of outlets should obviously read “without any outlet”, which should be obvious from the context- but I didn’t want anyone getting any funny ideas.
Also, I apologise if any of the above comes off as offensive- not my intention to be sure, and obviously there is a lot of resentment I’m trying to work through here and I appreciate your patience.
I’m very glad that your marriages are happy masha Allah, really I am, although I would advise anyone not writing anonymously to conceal that all since hassad (destructive envy) is very real…just my opinion. You can easily anonymise your experiences- e.g. ‘I know a sister who is married who…’, ‘most of my married friends…’, etc.
Also, I have a question. Is it the case that women who expect less from their husbands do so because they already really liked them before marriage and therefore were swayed by their emotions and didn’t think very hard about what that meant for the future? I’m basing this on the idea that women have a very high minimum standard which they stick to (the things I mentioned) but which they waive when they aren’t thinking straight. The question sounds pretty darn sexist and I apologise for that but it *is* a serious question.
And to sr. Anonymouse quoting ‘Umar (ra): I would say, in response, why should I let her speak to me in this way when she neglects my house, refuses to sleep with me and entrusts my children to the care of the (non-Muslim) state? I’m pretty sure he’d understand and give me his stick and tell me to show her who wears the pants, at that point.
Asalaamu alaikum AUB and Eid Mubarak,
That was such a good post, I’m really glad you said all that. I think I’m living on planet earth, though my husband disagrees from time to time, LOL, but that’s more of a personality issue, I think.
Maybe, brother, you are right that there are lot more free-loader women out there then I estimate, but I think in the US you actually have a far better chance of marrying a woman who isn’t one, so if you’re here at least you can keep these things in mind as you look for a wife and have a good chance of finding what you want. Even if women from back-home-istan are happier (on average) with the cold-fish/baby-machine lifestyle, I think because of the expectations of “egalitarian” non-Muslim American marriages and its trickle-down effect on Muslims, you have more women who have varying attitudes about about money and sex. More women here, I think, are willing to be forgiving, or even contributing, with their money, and more women feel that sex is a pleasure they are meant to share in and even if they have a hard time climaxing initially they want to find a way to get there (and there are at least 3 ways).
But I have come to appreciate your frustrations in a new light, after consulting with a few people from “back home,” who tell me that yes, the expectation of men financially is far too high, no wonder they’re bitter. I wonder if that unforgiving expectation is a reflection of the expectation of women to be unproblematic, sexually yielding-yet-unsatisfied, baby machines. I wonder if we, as genders, we are punishing one another for our differences when we get married, shouldering this belief that our spouse will ultimately try to take advantage of us, so we might as well put up a good fight and get what we can, too. It’s sad to me that, while Allah created us differently, we are meant to fit together so perfectly because of those differences. It’s supposed to equate to balance, not such disturbing friction. Friction is always going to happen, but it shouldn’t represent the majority of our reality as a couple, but sadly it does.
I see why you harbor so many sentiments, from your own upbringing to what you’ve heard. I respect that you don’t know what to do with a woman, its not a bad thing. Most women don’t know what to do either, as regards themselves. Most non-Muslim girls know because of masturbation, and many of those girls will still not ever have an orgasm from coitus, but only from the outside means. Sometimes, unfairly, women just expect a man to “get her there,” and it isn’t going to happen like that, because women need to be actively involved and honestly, in good shape for some of the 3 ways. While you may feel insecure, believe me, it isn’t a mark against you that you don’t know what to do. Nothing can be learned in that department except through experience, and the best experience is the kind that Allah has blessed (marriage). Allah will put barakah in it for your chastity. Far better than you know many different women, and you’re always comparing them, or disappointed that one isn’t easily pleased, or wondering if you should find one who is. Forget that.
That being said, I recommend that you take what you hear from other men with a grain of salt. I mean, those statistics you mentioned about 3 times a month a climax once every five years are so incredibly dismal, there’d be many women who couldn’t fathom living like that. If they weren’t Muslims they’d be chain-smoking after that much frustration. Statistics are statistics, but as I mentioned before, a woman’s ability to climax is directly related to her emotional well-being. If her husband has the romantic maneuvers of a bullox, or if she just “lets him on top” and he’s fine with that, or if their marriage outside of the bedroom is something akin to your parents or if its just kids, kids, kids and she’s burnt out with what ones she has and frustrated because of the expectation to have more (it doesn’t have anything to do with something exiting the hole), that has a lot to do with why she can’t get there, not her anatomy. So realize that while that might be the majority of people’s realities, it doesn’t have to be yours (and please don’t let Freud influence your choosing a reality, he was demented, in my opinion).
This is why I’m rather passionate about what I do, on this blog: people can choose to have something awesome, and it is literally a choice that one can make and achieve starting in the here and now. People are willing to settle for mediocrity and living their marriages on auto-pilot, and then they complain that this is just “how it is” and that passion ends in the honeymoon phase. I assert, that if a couple chooses to, they can have more passion a decade down the road, they can have mutually enjoyable intimacy on a regular basis (and they can still be satisfied with she’s on her menses), without all the stumble-footed-ness of being a newly wed. I know people who have chosen this. Many of them are non-Muslims and leaders in the Screamfree Parenting/Marriage community, but this option is there for Muslims too, if we’d just get over the “rights and responsibilities” talk (non-Musims have this issue too, they call it “needs-meeting” marriage”).
But it doesn’t happen, usually, because people don’t want to focus on themselves or what they can do to make that happen; they want to focus on what their spouse is doing wrong, or should be doing to make things better. They want to complain about their own lot in life and how they’re wronged. The only time they focus on themselves is when they wonder what their parents or society or the community expects of them, and are they meeting the bar. How sad. With the one person we can find bliss, we are so reluctant to see our faults and how we can improve, but with the rest of the world we want to look perfect. People won’t find true happiness in that. It will be a lot pretending and dissatisfaction behind closed doors. It’s how the majority of people live their lives, Muslim or Non.
So I say, forget that. Brother, forget your parents baggage, don’t worry about your insecurities when it comes to pleasing a woman, and for the love of God do not cling to those dismal stats about women. Nothing happens without work, but Allah will seriously put the barakah in what you do in marriage, in any department, if you keep focusing on yourself and being the best you can be at it. That sounds idealistic, like you’re setting yourself up to get hurt and disappointed: after all, what if you do your best and your wife just takes advantage of you? It’s what any of us fear who make a choice like this. But I believe its worth the risk, because more often than not, your spouse can’t help but respond positively to that sort of personality and character, and honestly its the only way to finding a heavenly type of marriage. All these people you see and talk to, they’d rather be comfortably miserable, then take the risk and find that their spouse doesn’t meet them halfway. Don’t join that sorry team, if you can help it. Find a woman who wants you and a roof over her head to keep the rain off and pizza once a week, a woman who isn’t chasing the American dream, who sticks the bird at the world, high fives you, and knows that true happiness isn’t in a paycheck.
When you look for a wife, you can bring up these things, you can gauge a woman’s mentality on this stuff, and I recommend you do. Is she a person who believes in acting of out principle, not a scorekeeper or needs-meeter? How does she feel about topics like self-improvment or self-help (is she into that kind of lit)? Is she flexible about her views and sees marriage as a team? Would she marry you if you were unemployed? (I know a sister who married her husband when he was, he had a degree, and she figured they could make ends meet and Allah would make a way in the mean time. She wasn’t gonna wait on this bunk economy, and things worked out very well for them). I know the majority of girls you know may not be like that, and I understand why their fathers don’t want to launch them into financial instability, but even my BIL is getting married unemployed and the girl is desi from Jeddah, and the dad’s your typical uncle. Some people are more flexible then others, you can find someone like that, who won’t be sad forever that youre not a doctor and doesn’t need a 100K mahr.
But if you want someone like that, you need to be as flexible and “teamwork”/high-five-your-wife kinda guy, too. If you’re demanding about sex, a woman will shut down on you. If you approach a woman about intimacy and sex the same way you WOULND’T want her to be with you about money and social expectations, unforgiving and inflexible and putting your “entitlements first”, you can’t find that sweetness. In marriage, you get what you give. And lets say, absolute worst case scenario, she’s just a loser-free-loader forever, you don’t have to stay married, and at least you know you did your best, and (bonus!) you’re a guy so it’ll be easier for you to remarry. But I don’t foresee that happening, if you play your cards right as your look for a wife, ask the right questions, find the right woman. But before you bring that to the table, you have to cultivate it within yourself. If you go into a marriage as you are now, you’ll find that same person waiting for you, just about money as your are about sex. If you change yourself and radiate that change as you seek a wife, inshallah you’ll find a woman who likes sex more than money, because she wants that emotional synergy with you, because you’re such an awesome husband. Mediocrity is for the faint of heart.
Start working on yourself. You’ve taken the first step, which is getting all your baggage out there, and realizing its just that: baggage. While it will always be something you have to grapple with in the back of your mind, it does NOT have to dictate your views and feelings. Shove it away in box in your mind labeled “The crappy way I don’t want to live my life” and get some new bags and fill them with new ways of thinking and feeling, until that becomes the norm for you. Read stuff, blog surf, consult with the people, and I recommend you take what benefit you can from non-Muslim authors, writers, and speakers too. There is a wealth of information there that can be synched with Islam, because as Muslims we are supposed to act out of principle, always, and at the core thats what all this self-improvment stuff is about. Stephen Covey, Hal Runkel, John Grey, and even Dr. Laura (Bad Childhood, Good Life) are psychologists/therapists who empower change rather than telling people to sit around and find validation for their problems from childhood baggage. And of course our beloved Prophet was the best example, and its time we stop seeing his example and something “extra” we can do, but the norm we should strive for, whether we are men or women. He always acted out of principle, peace be upon him.
May Allah make your journey to marriage a successful one for both you and your future wife.
Also, I have a question. Is it the case that women who expect less from their husbands do so because they already really liked them before marriage and therefore were swayed by their emotions and didn’t think very hard about what that meant for the future? I’m basing this on the idea that women have a very high minimum standard which they stick to (the things I mentioned) but which they waive when they aren’t thinking straight. The question sounds pretty darn sexist and I apologise for that but it *is* a serious question.
Sometimes, but not always. I know several women who settled for “low standards” initially out of logic, not emotion I think its a mark of a woman’s maturity that she doesn’t think in theoretical terms, the same as it is for a man. There will be down times financially, bad economies, etc, that have will be hurdled. A man can be unemployed for those reasons, not because he’s a lay-a-bout. Then as for women, there will be times when she isn’t in the mood, or when a guy should lay-off and not demand sex from her, because it would be a jerkish of him to do so. Of course there is something to be said about the wali, because it can happen that a woman won’t be “thinking straight,” but many times now we see walis that have way to high of standards and their girls aren’t thinking straight now because its impossible for them to get married with such high standards. But this is also other wisdom of the mahr, it insures that a man is committed.
Eid mubarak. Thank you for your response.
It’s not so much that I expect a wife to contribute, financially. I don’t. Perhaps I just resent the sense of entitlement- not that there isn’t such a thing as legitimate entitlement in marriage- when it isn’t tempered by a sense of fairness. I think if I let go of the transactional attitude it would really help. I would still worry about being exploited, but I suppose I should just try to be as selfless as possible and not think of my wife’s responsibilities to me and focus on my duties to her. Right (in need of validation here)? If it got really, really bad, we could always divorce. My problem is that I have passive-aggressive tendencies and I can imagine just avoiding my wife and throwing myself into my work instead of talking to her about our problems or my expectations. And it’s already obvious to me that I’m going to have serious communication problems in my marriage- I’m a very private person and I don’t really speak much. I have a few close friends but my tendency has always been to find someone I look up to and tell them everything, while suppressing with everyone else. I guess I could try and make my wife into my best friend (which is what I’d want anyway), but I still worry because I’m a guy who really needs alone time to the extent that I can go for a whole day without talking to anyone. Also, a brother I know who is something of a matchmaker tells me that men who have no experience of dealing with women and their emotional bs (we all have our problems, men included), as he puts it, really suffer in their marriages, at least in the early period. I’m almost certain that the transition will be difficult for me. I want to be a great husband, insha Allah I will be, but I get the feeling that I have lots of problems that I have to deal with first. Would I tell this all to a woman before marrying her? Wouldn’t that just scare her off and make her think I was totally neurotic?
If you aren’t aware of the dynamic in backhomeistan I can fill you in a little. By the way, ‘backhomeistan’ is a fictional locale onto which I project all my ideas about ‘home country’ (which, in my case, isn’t in the Subcontinent…though I was born and raised in ‘the West’). There is obviously a tremendous amount of variation in Muslim-majority countries so it’s unfair to generalise, but I have found this to be true of more than one of them, and of particular people in them, generally speaking. In backhomeistan, there is an understanding that men will marry in the way I mentioned (huge mahr, expensive wedding, house, etc), but it is understood that this expectation is very high. Hence, the sexual double standard (with all that means for female virginity etc) and the idea that ‘boys will be boys’. For the kind of people I’m talking about, at least, marriage happens typically after thirty and society will turn a blind eye towards the indiscretions of youth (of young men, that is), and so for this reason there exists a class of marginal women who it’s basically acceptable to screw around with. I don’t know where they get this idea from, since it doesn’t look like anything in my religion, but that’s how it is. You’ll know what kind of men I’m talking about if you’ve ever known any slimeballs from Muslim majority countries who come to the US for college or work, indulge in whatever they want, sleep with whoever etc, until they can afford marriage to a ‘decent’ woman from back home, at which point they clean up their act and fork out the necessary amounts for a mahr, wedding, etc. This sort of behaviour is unfortunately very common. And they also typically believe this part of the world is a jungle, to the point where they think something’s wrong with me for not sexually exploiting ‘white women’ (I’m not making this sound any worse than it actually is). Unfortunately part of the patriarchal bargain is that when the time comes for Romeo to actually get married his family will have more than the power of veto when it comes to his wife. This is another serious concern of mine. I know exactly what kind of woman my parents want me to marry (someone like my mother) and I really, really don’t share that ideal. I value marriage so much (you wouldn’t think it to read some of the stuff I’ve written above) and it’s so important to me that I can tell from now that it’ll be a very contentious point in my life. They still haven’t gotten over my not going to med school, at 25, and when it comes to the carrying the family name and all that stuff I know they’ll fight even harder to make my life what they want it to be. If it were something less important than marriage, I might give in, but marriage is just too valuable to me. What do you do when your idea of the good life is different from your parents’? It’s not that I would ever be deliberately provocative, but when their priorities in my marriage are status and family reputation and mine is finding a religious girl who can be my best friend too, I don’t see how things can work out. Not to mention that I’ll be disowned (literally, as they have told me in all seriousness many times) if I marry the ‘wrong’ races (basically, all of them but one). This conflict can be avoided but there are others that will surely arise when you’re dealing with these kinds of standards. And these standards are causing such problems in the Arab world that the marriage age is rising beyond that of non-Muslim countries, and what do you think that means? In Morocco, very recently, some people according to the BBC were openly calling for the legalisation of pre-marital sex, not least because marriage has been made so difficult for young men. What do you think will happen to that society, and its Islam, in the course of a generation? And in countries like Egypt where women are already in the workforce in large numbers, surely people can be made to adjust their expectations for marriage. I don’t care if it means a higher divorce rate- medieval Cairo apparently had a very high divorce rate (in the thirteenth century it must have been as high as a third and probably more)- in fact, I think it unavoidably does. But society can deal with that- for example, as in the time of the sahaba (raa) where there wasn’t such stigma attached to divorcees. Stable marriages are important, but what situation would you rather have- one in which some people terminate their marriages (partly because working women have more power to influence their husbands to terminate them), and where people get married early, avoid zina, and divorced women with children can get remarried or stay with their parents or with their kids and support them etc- or one in which, as is increasingly the case in the Muslim world, men and women sleep around before marriage until the men among them can afford to settle down? I think it’s obvious, and I think we really are being confronted with these stark choices as Muslim societies (the Muslim Western diaspora/2nd gen and converts are already facing these issues and that’s why I believe our answers to these questions can only become more important in an increasingly globalised world). And this marital crisis harms everyone, men as well as women, parents as well as children. That much is evident from the ’spinster’ crises in Morocco and Saudi (unmarried women over thirty, in the former case literally millions of them, in the latter, a problem very much of the walis’ creation because of the six-figure standard for mahrs as well as various other problems). It’s a disaster and we have to do something about it, but before it can be addressed on the macro-level I guess I have to sort myself out…lol.
I’m trying hard to cultivate my self (and I spell it like that advisedly) and to get ready for marriage- and I understand that it will be years and years before I start putting out feelers any way I slice it- so I’ve been reflecting on my expectations for a long time. Besides my insecurities about intimacy, which I would find very difficult to let go of- the worry about not knowing what to do, about my wife resenting me for it, about dealing with rejection from my wife because of that I also worry about money stuff. My friend put it well when he said he’d feel really sorry for a woman if she married him and he didn’t make much, and then when she visited her girlfriends they all told her what their doctor/dentist/engineer husbands got them for Eid or their anniversary or whatever. And when I think about it, if I really loved the sister would I want to put her through that? Not just that I’d worry about her resenting me, but that I’d start feeling guilty and that she’d got a bum deal by marrying, well, a bum like me. I don’t care about being cooked for, I would order take-out every day if it wasn’t so bad to do it, but I’d want someone to cook for the kids…etc.
Ameen to the dua.
AUB
When it comes to back home marriages I get the impression, based on my discussions with the people in question, that the marital bond isn’t friendship in the way we know it, it’s more a kind of ‘understanding’ both parties share. A lot of it has to do with the production of legitimate children and honour and reputation- which is why these cultures are accurately, in my opinion, written of as ’shame’ cultures (as opposed to guilt cultures). Obviously, the notion that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as your family/people whose opinion matters in society don’t see you doing it has nothing at all to do with Islam.
My two cents.
Don’t think of it as selfless, think of it as self-centered. Selfless people believe that in order to feel fulfilled, they must constantly sacrifice their own happiness, time, and needs to meet those of others. They believe they always come last. The self-centered marriage (not selfish) is one in which you know that in order to better your marriage, you have to be the best person you can be. This doesn’t just mean learning more about women or how to be good to your wife, this means taking care of yourself full-stop. Taking care of yourself mentally, spiritually, physically, socially, etc. Don’t better yourself for the sake of a future wife, better yourself for the sake of yourself. Some people start to evaluate themselves when they become spouses, others when they become parents, because when we become so close to someone, we realize just how many faults we have, because they can’t help but be exposed. It’s excellent to start evaluating yourself now so that you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you try to live out principle, always, with everyone.
It seems to me that deep down, you have settled for what your parents, friends, and society/culture/the community has sold you about marriage; that marriage is destined to be a disappointment, your wife is destined to be disinterested in you, you’re destined to living life as a workaholic, so why not get some sex when you want it? What else is there in it for you? That was you a few posts ago, but I’m glad you’re reconsidering the garbage people have sold you on how marriage is destined to be, and you’ve realized it will be what you make of it.
As far as finding a wife, one of my favorite life-maxims (and advocated by Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef) is ask for forgiveness, not permission. I understand that there are many social and cultural hurdles to you marrying the woman you’d like to, but it will be up to you breach those hurdles. You have every right, as a human, to marry the type of woman you want, because it is the person you will spend every day and night with. No one can force you into anything. That being the case, I understand the enormity of the threats and intimidation you are receiving from you parents. Another benefit of changing yourself into a person who is calm and principled, is that you don’t get sucked into emotionally charged discussions, even with your parents. When you decide something is right and you want it, you can stand your ground without disrespecting them, and no amount of emotionally charged bait they put in front of you will pull you into a fight. You will be like an unswayable rock, calm and respectful, yet standing your ground. People will begrudgingly respect that, even your parents.
I realize your parents and probably your future wife’s parents will try to make a lot of trouble for you, but your wife may feel just as frustrated and boxed in as you, wanting something more and doubting she can find it. I think if you really want to find the right girl, you can, and you will find a way to make it happen. You mentioned being passive aggressive, and I can see how you are like now about this issue, carrying around this deep-buried anger, letting it fester. Everyone is either passive-aggressive or confrontational, and if you read this blog I talk about how we need to overcome these tendencies that inhibit conflict resolution, that each of us has a responsibility to our spouse to do that.
We have a lot of problems in our ummah, but inshallah you can get married in spite of those problems; don’t let those problems become excuses for why you can’t marry a woman who can be your lover and best friend, and not your parents’/society’s trophy wife. A lot of women don’t care about money and feel bitter that they don’t have as much as others. Women who are raised to value money and what they can show-off will be that way, but more and more women are valuing good character and companionship. Look for a wife on your own, find a way to do that, look through friends who seem happily married and whose wives seem to be in-line with what you may like.