Is love alone a sufficient guarantee of a happy marriage?
When she visited me yesterday I could hardly believe that she was the very same Suad who had been my dearest friend in our school days! She is now thin, pale, her personality broken down—and I had known her before her marriage, ten years ago, brimming with vitality and health, happiness shining on her face... What has become of her?
She loved him: When Mounir came forward to ask for her hand, her friends and her neighbors envied her for him. He was a university man of a well-known family, handsome of appearance, and of refined company in Beirut society. And above all this, he
loved her—loved her to the point of madness—and she returned his love. They now have three children, two boys and a girl; their material circumstances are not bad, and all the signs indicate that this family is happy. So why is it not happy?
Suad's point of view: It was not easy to draw Suad out to reveal all the sorrows boiling in her breast. But one thing I made certain of from the start: she is without doubt “miserable”—miserable in the utmost sense of misery. And the cause of her misery, it seems, comes down to a simple matter: ever since her marriage she has lived with her husband's family,
made up of his mother and his sister, and all she asks is to live with her husband and her children in an independent home; for throughout these ten years she has never felt herself the mistress of a house, with a will of her own and the freedom to decide her own domestic affairs and the upbringing of her children. And what wounds her pride is the difference in culture between her and her husband's family; she is a woman of high
culture, and amid the confusion, disorder, and pretension that reign in the house she has nearly lost her culture and the beauty of her personality as a lady, as a wife, and as a mother! Had her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law acknowledged her superiority to them and yielded to her the position of
Dear reader: Do you agree with me in condemning the husband as the one responsible for saving his marriage? Write to me with your opinion—above all if you disagree—and state your reason. Your magazine's editors welcome your opinion...
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