Harmonizing Marital life and Social Responsibilities

Harmonizing Marital life and Social Responsibilities

IF a woman wants to succeed in creating harmony between her private marital relationship and her public social responsibilities, she must first reach an understanding with her husband on how she is going to organize her time between complying with his own particular and general rights as a husband and fulfilling the duties she had taken up in society. We are treating here the case in which the man shows great awareness of the importance of social activities, and good understanding of the necessity of his wife's participation in them.

However, if the marital relationship lacks this sort of understanding upon which harmony could be established, the woman must then work on discovering the weaknesses of her husband - such as needs, emotions, and conditions - and try to behave tactfully to embrace them and to consider them as advantageous chances to convince him of approving her social work.

When the woman fulfills the needs of her husband, shows sensitivity to his feelings, and so on, usually, that would prompt him to accept to give her more freedom in her private as well her public life, and to offer her the opportunity to take up assignments outside the framework of the marital relationship.

However, sometimes the husband takes an active stance in opposing what his wife intends to carry out, which reminds us of the situation of so many husbands whose attitudes are determined by their personal desires - only with no consideration of anything else.

They are the ones who demand that their wives be, above all, exclusively theirs.

We have cases where husbands oblige their wives to stay out of the social or the political arenas owing to their own individual complexes about that kind of work.

In such cases where neither discussion nor the attempts mentioned above are of benefit, the woman should strive to protect, first, her marital life, and then try to profit from the circumstances that allow her to work in the public field - all without causing any conflict between that work and her marriage life.

Then again, if the wife does not find herself able to accommodate both work and her marital relationship, she must then discuss the issue with her husband and present the dilemma as being a real problem threatening their marital relationship so that she can finally persuade her husband to take into consideration her need to work.

Moreover, while we emphasize on the need for the wife to remain, as much as she can, patient until she finds a solution to her problem, we add that the marital relationship should be based upon love and compassion.

So, if one of the two partners has lost the capability of maintaining the path they had agreed on, or if both of them have failed to reach a common perspective of life; they will undoubtedly need to be able to agree on another solution.