My husband has always openly said that he does not love me and stays with me only for our children and now I do not love him anymore and am very unhappy; what should I do?

Question: I am a mother of three girls and two boys. This is the production of twenty years of my marriage, which my husband openly describes as being a bad choice. He says that he stays with me just for the sake of the children. He does not feel any love towards me as his wife. He is sad and nervous. He insinuates that he wants to get married to a girl that matches his ambition. Now, after my hopeless attempts, I have become like him. I do not feel a deep love for him. I have lost my patience. I do not know what my fate or the fate of my children will be. I cry when I am alone. Does my crying solve my problem or could you show me a solution that would take me near happiness and success with my husband?
 
The answer: To have a happy marital life, one should think deeply before getting married. One should think of the culture, ambition, wishes, and morals of the other person to whom one wants to get married. Without that, life will be full of troubles and sufferings as you suffer now. This is the problem of most of those who get married just to satisfy their lusts; they do not think of what will happen when the lust extinguishes and children come.

Now, let us think of a solution on the basis of “something is better than nothing.” We suggest that you should:

1. care for yourself by using adornments, perfumes, attractive clothes, and nice (unaffected) words even at ordinary times.

2. care for whatever he is interested in, because this is the key to get to his heart.

3. read more about Islamic culture in general, the Holy Qur’an, and supplications because knowledge relieves the heart and guides to the right way.

4. show love to him and to your children and pay careful attention to the sacred instinct of motherhood so that he may understand that you are ready to tolerate every difficulty for the sake of the happiness of the family, of which you and your husband are two inseparable parts.

5. be smiling and ease the atmosphere in the house with jokes and delightful comments. You should not say that what he has done to you has killed this spirit in you and beware of being desperate!

6. not scold him if he insinuates that he wants to get married to a second wife because he will be more stubborn until he achieves what he wants just to avenge his personality.

7. Lastly, supposing he does achieve his second marriage, you should continue acting according to the aforementioned points as if no difficult matter has happened. In other words, you should convince yourself with the reality. Between you and the other woman, who has the right to live her marital life with your husband, there are certain rights and duties that have been determined by the wise Islamic Sharia. Therefore, do not let the Satan throw you into jealousy against the verdicts of Islam, for then you would destroy your religion and lose your life and afterlife. Life is too short and temporary and it is not worth being selfish or wasting time in troubles.

You should realize that when it is difficult for some men to be alone with their wives, either because they have old children or too many guests come too often or the like, they begin thinking of another marriage for some reasons, the first of which is to satisfy their sexual lusts. I do not know whether your husband or your circumstances in the house are like this or not. The assessment is up to you.

Besides all this, I have a word to say to your husband and I hope he will read it with his mind and not with his desires. I would like to say:

Dear brother, I do not doubt that you look forward to a happy and easy life for there is no reasonable person on earth who wants the opposite, not even the scoundrels! Then, try to ponder on your state through answering the following questions:

1. How will you benefit if you destroy your life and get married to another wife? Will your conscience leave you free to be happy with the second wife while you have destroyed the first one?

2. What will you lose if you remain with your wife and children and stay satisfied with your fate?

3. Suppose that you get married to another wife, will you be able to treat your two wives equally and fairly?

After this, I invite you both to think of the following principles and agree, according to them, on what brings you happiness.

1. Be certain that Allah does not determine anything unless it has an advantage for man that most of the time is hidden to him, and when it appears to him, he thanks Allah for not fulfilling his wish, which he had wished for but was not granted.

2. This world and its pleasures are transient and man’s age is too short for him to achieve all his wishes. How many young people are there upon whom accidents come unexpectedly and cut the rope of their hopes and wishes!

3. The value of man is in his good deeds that lead him to Paradise, which has the everlasting bliss that no eye has ever seen, no ear heard, and no mind imagined.

4. It is great for a man to leave behind him after his death a nice picture about himself. This nice picture is contingent on one’s good morals and his respecting others’ rights, which makes others pray to Allah to reward him with good. Will the soul have a pleasure greater than this?