As-Salaamu ‘alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,

 

I am sorry to hear that you are suffering this divide between you and your husband. You too have two different ways of understanding what marriage is in Islam is, Your husband’s idea is not supported by the example of our Prophet (saw). He (saw) went to Khadijah, his wife (May Allah be pleased with her) with his problems! That is what makes a marriage the intimate relationship that it is meant to be, wherein one enjoys a personal life, as compared to our public life, which is not intimate or safe for sharing our intimate feelings.

 

I would suggest that you write to the scholars on this website from sound evidence from Q and H for what I have said so that you can show it to your husband. Hopefully, that will influence his idea of what the Muslim marriage is supposed to be like. Most men think like your husband. They think that the man is a dictator in his Islamic marriage. This is not true, Allah says in the Quran that we are “equal, but the man is one degree above” in marriage.

 

This means that the man and women should try to find answers to their problems that are mutually acceptable. But, if they can’t, then he gets the final say, but only after he tried to get an agreement with his wife and could not. In that case, someone’s idea has to take president—and Allah gave him that right. For some strange reason, Muslim men forget the “equal” part and the “one degree” parts and jump right away to the “above part. Go figure. It is called a “slippery slope” in slang.

 

Husbands also do not realize the benefit that Allah has provided for them in a wife: their wives have a wealth of information that they do not have that they can add to their own knowledge base, it comes from her life’s experiences and her feminine viewpoint, two things which are completely outside of his experience and worldview. Nonetheless, husbands, men, people, do not get it. Our culture defines human value as knowing stuff. So, we feel like we don’t have value if we don’t know things.

 

We feel embarrassed when we don’t know stuff and we hide that fact believing it is a shortcoming. This is not Islam! Islam is: Allah is Al-Aleem, the All-Knowing. We are not that-because only Allah is One, that means we are not like Allah. So, our job is humility, the acknowledgement that we do not know. If people were to have this perspective on the world, we would be open to learning, we would be searching for ways to learn, not ways to prove we know.

 

To help yourself now and if he does not come around to sharing with you as his wife, or at least sharing a little more with you what he feels he can benefit from, in the Quran, Allah says that when we feel traumatized, scared, or sad, or the like, we should deal with it by saying “inna li lahi wa inna ilaihi ra jee un” (From Allah we come and to Allah we will return). Thikering this helps the believer see life in its true context, as part of the whole, which includes the next life too. That one short sentence references the beginning and the end of life, thereby referencing the essence of life that this life is for the next, not this one.

 

May Allah Make it easy for you.