Daily Times

Women and men form the basis of a family unit, which holds the pivot of the moral fabric of our society. Their union should be safeguarded by encouraging married couples to strongly commit to the welfare of the other, which includes understanding each other without prejudice and blame-game. As they are two sides of a coin, likewise, their story has two sides. Today’s story is no different. It has two narratives. One is the narrative of a married woman, in her late 40s, who confided in me about her mid-life crisis last week. She had been married for 22 years and had four children from the marriage of her choosing, one teenage son and three adult daughters. Her spouse and children had always been seen together at family gatherings. They always looked like a happy-go-lucky family. Or, at least they were skilled enough to put up the face of a perfect family.

But as they say, all that glitters is not gold was precisely true for her mid-life. With some hesitation and a pinch of discomfort, she told me that she had been struck last month by her spouse. As she spoke, I could picture her bruised eye from my last visit to her. So it disturbingly assured me that her narrative was honest and far from fabrication. She then leapt the cause of her bodily harm and nagged about the efforts she had put into making her marriage go smooth from its inception. She mentioned with great emotional emphasis that she had sold her hefty gold jewellery to help her husband with his business slump. Not just this, she even brought up handing over the monies she had gotten from her share of inheritance to keep things going. In telling me this, her emphasis was on the exclusivity of these valuables. She kept saying that they were her dearest valuables and still she did not think one bit to give them away for the prosperity of her relationship. After this, she drew an analogy with her sister, whose husband had also been in financial constraints but had refused outright to sell her valuables. She kept saying she was better off. Adding more to her sob story she revealed that her children were under the impression that their father was ditching on her; either because he was in an illicit relationship or because he had secretly married someone. Yet it was unclear whether she believed this or not but one thing was crystal clear that she did not want her children to think it was true so she comforted them with statements that they were critical of their father and must not raise eyebrows on his honesty. Now, this is one side of the story of a married woman, apparently troubled.

To overcome the gulf in our family structures, it is whole-heartedly suggested that men nurture their wives through communication and wives assist their men through troubleshooting ideas.

On the other side of the story, lies the narrative of a married man, in his late 50s, who confided in my husband about his late-life-threatening troubles. He began with his losses in business, particularly how he had been mugged by a business colleague. He went on how he was in great remorse to have recently found out that his only son had been hooked on cigarette smoking. He was wondering if he should put him in his business so that he could keep him close and was simultaneously worried that this would not be so without compromise to studies, which he did not want to be impacted. In his indecisiveness, as some way out, he encouraged his son to join a fitness club in anticipation that his smoking habit might break. Still depressed, he revealed, to our shock, that he had beaten his son up for his lack of sense of responsibility. On the verge of breaking, he said that his children were un-apathetic to him because they had been briefed by their mother that their father was their worst enemy.

If this was the story, what was the bone of contention, I asked myself in the days that followed. I tried figuring out the answer from the description of women and men I had given in my previous column titled “rights-ethic v care-ethic.” There, it had been argued that women are governed by an ethic of care and that men are governed by an ethic of rights. Women’s caring nature implied the need to talk about issues and finding resolution through communication. This is exactly what the troubled mother in the above story felt lacked in her relationship. She felt that she could not talk to her husband about her insecurity over his suspected infidelity. And she was heartbroken to see that they could not develop a bond of open communication despite being married for 22 years and that her giveaways could not facilitate an equation of equals.

The husband, on the other hand, being governed by a strong sense of duty for the wife and children, felt that his business defeat had made him look like an irresponsible person in the eyes of his family. He began to presume that the resolve lay in getting the business working. He felt he could not talk to his wife about his fears because it would give her discomfort. And he was heartbroken to see that they could not develop a bond of ownership of the troubles of the other despite his 22 years of managing the day-to-day needs of the family.

In this way, by putting the couple in the rights-ethic and care-ethic perspective, I figured out that the real bone of contention between the two was their lack of appreciation for their different natures. The wife had failed to acknowledge that her husband was not feeling like a responsible family provider and likewise the husband had failed to acknowledge that his wife was not feeling like a family carer. To overcome the gulf in our family structures like the example above, it is whole-heartedly suggested that men nurture their wives through communication and wives assist their men through troubleshooting ideas. After reading this, let us bind ourselves to correct hermeneutics of family structure that is mutual trust and affection to save us from the evil of the growing gap between our families.

he writer is a permanent teaching faculty at ‘Pakistan College of law’