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Saudi Affairs
It may be the woman who is responsible for losing her husband and the failure of their marriage. Before this happens, can the wife prevent her husband from thinking of another woman?
Relationship experts and consultants believe that the burden falls on the woman. Despite knowing that the woman cannot control her husband’s actions, they believe that if a woman were to follow certain steps they would erase the idea of leaving or betraying her from husband’s mind.
Dr. Scott Stanley, a writer on marriage, says that friendship between husband and wife is the best weapon for defending the marriage against interlopers. Friendship keeps communication lines open between husband and wife, keeping them in touch with each other’s emotions, feelings and personal problems and enables them to deal with those feelings so there is no opportunity for anyone to take advantage of the other’s weaknesses. Thus it is no surprise to note that a number of successful marriages began as friendships and then became marriages.
Friendship and companionship are the roads to men’s hearts. Consequently the wife must encourage her husband to talk and share his feelings, especially if he is having new experiences such as changing jobs or adjusting to a child in the family. The woman must also stand by her husband in any decision he takes, especially during mid-life when many husbands find themselves straying from their marriage. If the husband finds support and encouragement from his wife, he will realize what a big price he would pay for an amorous relationship even though he knows full well how much he might enjoy such an adventure.
The wife must also be in constant communication and have complete understanding of her husband and his emotional and physical needs and not be embarrassed to talk to him about what they want to achieve together and what will make them happy. The smart wife will close all the loops through which her husband might slip into another relationship that provides him what his wife does not. And if we’ve talked more of the woman’s duties rather than the man’s, it is because we are talking about marriage and is a woman’s preoccupation more than a man’s.
In the film, “The Seven Year Itch” the seductive Marilyn Monroe tries to tempt her neighbor into betraying his wife during the summer when his wife and children are away. Ever since that film, relationship experts have not stopped talking about the period of worry, anger and anxiety that a married couple experiences seven years after marriage. It is an excuse that has been exploited by many husbands and wives to betray each other.
A recent study confirms that the seventh year crisis is a real one and not a creation of relationship experts and behavioral professors. The study looked into 93 marriages for their first 10 years and it found that during the honeymoon, the husband is characteristically full of feelings and emotions, and then the curve of strong feelings begins to come down until the end of the fourth year. After that things begin to stabilize and then deteriorate again in the seventh year.
The first deterioration in the relationship’s health is, in the study’s opinion, a natural inclination for the husband to adapting to the negative aspects of married life. As for couples that suffer from the seven year crisis — they find themselves constantly bickering, their feelings begin to fade along with the activities they used to enjoy and they feel discontent in their marital relationship.
The question that needs to be answered is: How can one prevent that seven-year crisis? Couples who don’t have the four-year crisis and who are not affected by deteriorations in their relationship have given that relationship the proper attention it needs to grow and prosper.
Attention to the marriage here means that efforts are made by husband and wife to develop their feelings in a healthy atmosphere — not, for example, allowing one side to make all the plans or decisions without consulting the other and by taking time out every day to talk for 20 minutes while drinking tea or to dress up and go out once in a while. If the husband goes through that seven-year crisis, it means that the couple have closed their eyes to their problems instead of coming up with a solution for them. They must not, however, give up and must immediately begin to confront their problems wholeheartedly and with an open mind.
© Copyright 2003 by
ArtArabia.com
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