How Should You Treat Your Wife?

With some people, love ends, or grows weak, after marriage. In fact this is pure error, for the period of marriage ought to win more of your attention than the period of engagement itself: a young man knows a girl for a short period that may not exceed two years, whereas marriage may stretch to thirty years or more — which means that the maneuvers of endearment after marriage should be no less than ten times what they were before.

If you took care to offer gifts to your fiancée on feast days, then you must direct this same care to your wife. And whereas you addressed to your fiancée words of admiration and praise, you now ignore all this with your wife — although she cannot free herself from the bonds of matrimony. Beware, then, of such conduct, for cutting off the maneuvers of affection toward your wife after marriage removes love as well, and makes life a mere duty in which the woman becomes a mere statue or a servant, while the husband becomes a frequenter of cafés and an adversary of the home.

Your praise of your wife's merits must continue, in an indirect way. If she sets before you a delicious meal, fall to it, full of praise for her skill; and if she buys a new dress, say of it every expression of praise and beauty you can. This habit must remain constant so long as married life endures. For love is in fact a kind of deep contentment, and providing it to the wife comes by two roads: that she rejoice in being a woman, and then in being a wife — and your wife in particular.

Wives have principles and rules which they follow to test the fidelity of their husbands, casting nets around them; so take care, husband, not to slip into one of the snares that would cloud your wife's confidence in you. And do not go to lengths in praising another woman in a way that makes your wife shrink beside her, or feel that the other is preferred over her; for your wife's feeling that she is the one woman enthroned upon your heart is what always encourages her to keep it.

Let your wife feel, then, that she is a woman of a superior kind. And if slips and errors escape her, guide her to what is right without wounding her feelings or injuring her dignity. One of the greatest faults of our society is that the rules of correction do not begin in it at the beginning, but usually begin with the utmost penalty, turning the house upside down, with harsh insults and abuse exchanged over a simple mistake — when, merely to point it out, it would be enough to say what is right in a light, friendly way which the wife feels, and of which your quietness makes her more ashamed than she would be if you had turned the house upside down and roused her resentment and her obstinacy.

And work to make your wife feel that she is your partner in life, that she is the ideal wife worthy of you, and you worthy of her. The first gateway onto this road is money matters. Many husbands keep control of the entire income in order to subjugate the wife, making of their family life a "grocery shop" whose owner cares for nothing from the customer but getting the money.

Social life is among the most binding of a woman's necessities. We have by now realized the abnormality of the old arrangements by which a woman took part in social life from behind the window curtain — seeing people through this screen, and speaking with them from behind it as well, and then committing everything in secret, the good in it and the bad, or the utterly bad!

The wife needs social life more than the husband, because she remains at home more than he does, and because she is the real educator of the children. She needs to go to the cinemas, the theaters, and the clubs — and if the husband does not provide her with this, who then will provide it for her?! And by the light of this experience which she gains from knowing people comes her understanding of what her children ought to be raised on, so that they may become a successful instrument in the society in which they are destined to live.

Harmony in the sexual life is likewise counted among the most important pillars of married life. This is a subject that is still extremely sensitive in the East, although it is closely bound up with family happiness, on account of the serious nervous diseases that may result from its disorder. It is the duty of the two spouses to come to an understanding on this vital subject, to acquaint themselves with its hidden aspects, and to remove the illusions that have attached to it — illusions acquired by males and females alike, in a manner as far as can be from the straight path of truth.