As salamu aleikum, beautiful 🙂 Have you ever gone through tough time in your marriage? (‘Yes, duh!’) Have you ever wanted to know how to react to your husbands’ stress without bringing up the sensitive subject? I know these times are tough and you are stressed and tip-toeing around way too much. Today I want to talk to you about surviving these tough times, without loosing your mind and your marriage. Shall we begin? 🙂 (If you are recently married or single, good luck. If you are a veteran wife, grab popcorn).
If you have been married for few years, you may have had some first hand experience. You thought you did the best to keep the situation quiet, but you have a newborn, crazy attached parent-in-laws and a true lack of sleep deprivation wrecking havoc in your body (What’s up, life?:)). You feel that there is NOTHING else to do.
Let’s take an example. Maybe you are like Aysha (If you are Aysha, sorry, it’s just a coincidence). With the newborn on your hands, parents, who think your decision to become Muslim and marry an actual Muslim is beyond human mind comprehension, and a husband, yes you love one another, but you have these little, ehem, differences on how you see or do things. Nothing major. But, you know, here and there. You have no clue what’s the big deal and the dude feels like you just committed the biggest crime ever. Like, seriously, who eats sticky rice or pink cold beetroot soup. It’s disgusting.
So you keep pushing. Kid on the hand, you don’t have brain space to cater for anyone else.
And you hit this huge plateau in your marriage. Not only you don’t feel connected, but you don’t feel like being in it (‘marriage’) at all. What for? The differences are too big and the husband (the kid that never grows up, you know how it is, don’t hide behind the screen) just feels like the third wheel in the marriage. Plus the stress at work and pressures to keep the family life afloat, your husband just seems unable to handle it. So what do you do? You go around and help him, remind him and teach him what kind of husband he should be.
When he is fed up, he just flips and makes you feel like it’s your fault.
I’m sure you have been there. It may be financial difficulties, family problems, health issues, etc.
And there is only way to solve that.
You need to give space and trust your husbands’ ability to figure it out.
Imagine if someone would be coming to your house and will be always commenting on how you should live, how you should cook, how you should clean those hard to reach places in your house. That wouldn’t feel amazing and the person wouldn’t get invited often if at all.
The same is with your husband. He needs space and needs to feel trusted. He is the head of the household and he is capable.
And you need to concentrate on yourself, because you won’t be able to pull of the brave face when you feel shattered and stressed out. It doesn’t work that way.
You need to be in good emotional shape to just be there for your husband. To believe in his abilities to make things happen.
Give space not only for his sake, but for your own. Take care of yourself.
Send your husband out with a kiss and a du’a to work. Smile. Enjoy his company. Encourage him, but don’t push or admonish. There are always kinder ways to remind/help/inspire.
I would like to hear how you approach tough situations. Maybe you have a successful survival recipe that you would like to share with us? Leave a comment bellow.
I appreciate you.
Asalamu aleikum,
Veronika al Mahdiyah.
