Psychological Contemplations on the Marital Love
Psychological Contemplations on the Marital Love
by Dr. Mohammad Kamal Alsharief
1. From Admiration to Gratitude
Love in general and marital love in particular have two reasons that make us love another person: admiration and gratitude. Admiration is born in our souls when we see another person who embodies the beautiful qualities that we dream of for ourselves and has high value for us. We see them in another person and feel a wonderful feeling of admiration for him making his value rise in our eyes because we see in him the qualities of human perfection as we imagine them. If it is a female and has features or characteristics, we grew up from childhood hearing from our fathers and mothers that whoever has them is beautiful and whoever lacks them is not beautiful.
Man is created in the image of the Most Gracious and loves beauty as his Creator does and exalts its value simply because of its beauty. When the admiration is between the sexes, i.e. a man admiring a woman or a woman admiring a man, then the hormones of masculinity and femininity along with sexual longing charge this admiration with a strong emotional energy that makes us see the one we admire as an ideal being who has no equal among men or women.
If we have even a little hope of having this ideal human for ourselves through marriage, we in our unconscious decide to love him or her. Our decision, although taken unconsciously, is taken by free will. Our unconscious is not only a collection of instincts; it is the person himself who is aware of everything around him and is rational and able to decide sanely, but he is not aware of his own existence without the help of our conscious mind. So we make a decision to love this person whom we admire, and we begin to dream of happiness near him, and believe that we will have no happiness except with him, so we are strongly attracted to him and seek to meet him, see him, or hear his voice, so he fills most of our awareness.
His image and presence become our main concern. His image does not leave our imagination, and his beloved voice always resonates in our ears. We admire his soft or strong, confident voice and the features of his or her face, so we see everything in him through the lens of the qualities that we admire in him. These qualities are qualities that we consider wonderful, so all his qualities seem wonderful to us, and we cannot imagine him having any defects or disgusting characteristics.
Even if we see what a defect in his character or creation is, we rush to seek an excuse for it and to get rid of this stain from his image in ourselves, and our beloved is again perfect, in spite of his defects. We are deceiving ourselves, but we are happy with this deception. Life is sweeter now. And it is more beautiful as long as we have found the girl or the knight of our dreams, believing there is no substitute for him or her because no woman is more beautiful than her and no man is more wonderful than him.
Contemporary psychologists consider this love, which is based on admiration for the qualities of the beloved and the inability to see his faults, not a true real love, but rather “falling in love”, which, if things go well, leads to true love when we love our beloved though the veil of love has been removed from our eyes and we can see his flaws and shortcomings as we see his perfections. Then love will be deeply rooted in ourselves and able to withstand the storms of marital life and remain alive no matter how old we get, how wrinkled our faces are, and how poor in our ability to arouse desire or lust.
It is admiration, not love, that is felt at first sight. From this admiration and on its basis romantic love is developed and formed. In this sweet romantic love, where we see our beloved as an ideal being, free from any flaws, and believe in their perfection, we see in them all the qualities we admire and overlook their faults. We see them as we want them to be, not as they truly are.
We admire him/her and believe our happiness will be near him/her and only him or her, so we seek to be close to him or her and gain his or her affection. If this person reciprocates our love with love and our passion with passion, the lover starts to talk to his beloved about himself and reveal his secrets and hidden things, and the two lovers become keen to spend long times together to know each other well. As two strangers planning to unite and form a family with all the intimacy desired for happy marriages, they need this intense attraction that occurs in the first months of marriage, the honeymoon months as they are called. These are the months of creating acquaintance between a man and a woman who have never known each other, and neither knew anything about the other.
Psychologists do not trust romantic love because it is based on a delusion, that is believing that the beloved is perfect and ideal, while no human has perfect qualities without fault. Psychologists also attribute romantic love to a second delusion, where a lover believes that his happiness in this life will be near his beloved, only them and no one else. Actually, any beloved person can be replaced by another but with some difference in looks and character.
It is true that romantic love is based on illusions, but it is the love that provides the spouses with an opportunity for deep acquaintance, during which each of them makes the other happy, as her husband makes her feel like the most feminine woman in the world when she is near him, and she makes him feel the most masculine and manly while he is near her. During this period, each of them feels the other’s concern for him, his respect for him and his affectionate feelings, and his appreciation of the lover and valuing him or her as most precious to him.
All this fills both hearts with gratitude for the other. So, each becomes attached to the other and becomes bound to the other spouse by a new, quiet love that can last for a lifetime. Psychologists call this quite love and the gratitude from which it emerges “the love of companionship.” They consider it true love versus romantic love because the person in companionate love accepts and decides to stay with his beloved as he or she is with his faults.
After the first months of marriage do their work and remove the illusion (disillusionment), each of the two lovers sees the other as he or she really is, a human being not free of shortcomings and defects. Admiration diminishes, fascination disappears, and gratitude replaces lost admiration. Gratitude, along with what remains of admiration, becomes a strong foundation for a wonderful love that lasts, even if its heat is lower and its emotions are calmer... and romantic love turns into a beautiful memory so that whenever the couple goes through a disagreement they remember it, and regain hope that their marital life would become happy again, so they would not be overcome by despair, but rather work on reform and the return of harmony and serenity.
2. Attraction of the Similar
The perceived similarity between the two in the qualities they like in themselves leads to admiration and attraction. An intelligent woman is attracted to an intelligent man, an educated man is attracted to an educated woman, a religious woman likes a religious man, and a man with a strong personality likes a woman with a strong personality. Thus, similar people are attracted to each other if their similarity is in the characteristics they like within themselves. However, if there is a characteristic in a person that he does not like in himself and wishes he did not have, then he will not be attracted to someone who resembles him in this characteristic.
The shy person is not attracted to the shy person, but rather he is attracted to the socially outgoing person who has the characteristic that he desires for himself, and the fat person is attracted to the fit person because he wishes he were fit, so he admires the person who has the characteristic of fitness, and this is the case with all human qualities, and thus we can understand the man’s attraction to the woman and the woman’s attraction to the man despite their differences.
Our Creator, Glory be to Him, gave Strength to men and gave Beauty to women. Men have strength along with very good taste and a need for women’s beauty, and women have beauty with muscular weakness and a need for strength, so a strong man is attracted to a woman because of the beauty that surpasses him. When humans admire something for its beauty, they desire to possess it, and it seems to them very valuable and precious. When a man sees a beautiful woman, he overestimates her value and feels a strong desire to possess her beauty if not literally symbolically through sex will do.
Thus, we are attracted to others because they resemble us and because they complete us. Marital life brings together those who are similar and those who are complementary so that a person may feel comfortable befriending someone who resembles him and may be comfortable befriending someone who completes him. For example, when a man or a woman is attracted to a spouse and marries him or her the good qualities of masculinity and femininity are combined for him or her to let him or her enjoy both qualities without abandoning his or her own gender, with which he is satisfied and proud.
3. From Romantic to Realistic
During the first months of marriage, which tend to be very happy, with the romance they almost always have, each spouse is keen to give the other the best he has. During these months, a relationship between the two selves is formed and attached to the spouses. Both feel that their future is linked to the other and that they will spend the journey of life together. With the months and years, the relationship strengthens despite the disputes that occur between the spouses after the end of the romantic period. Love increases daily and decreases daily according to the state of admiration and gratitude that generates love in the human self. Admiration increases and decreases, as it is not limited to admiration for appearance but is also admiration for character, behavior, morals, culture, and personality.
The more a person improves in his appearance or any of these qualities, the more the other party’s admiration and love for him increases. But love does not depend on admiration alone; There is gratitude. The more a person feels happy with the closeness of another person and senses the other’s concern for him and his happiness, the more gratitude he feels for him and his love for him increases in return... But if intentional or unintentional harm comes from the other party, then gratitude decreases and decreases until it is replaced by anger and hatred, and the feeling of love disappears. When love is lost, it cannot return unless the offending party stops his abuse and until the offended party forgives and pardons the wrongdoer so that he can love him again.
Thus, levels of love between spouses vary up and down, between decreasing and increasing according to the circumstances, and lucky and successful spouses are those who can maintain the love of the other party live and strong by always being keen to win his/her admiration and gratitude, these two and only creators of love between humans. “If you honor the generous one, you will own him.” Likewise, the couple who honor each other owns him/her through being kind and benevolent. The poet said:
Be kind to people, and you will enslave their hearts, for men have always been enslaved by good favors.
4. To Enjoy Peace and Tranquility
Although all spouses dream of becoming fathers and mothers, the Creator has shown us in the Holy Qur’an that the greatest and primary goal of creating people in two sexes, men and women, who mate is the mental peace and tranquility they find in their secure attachments to each other and from the sense of security they derive from their mutual love and mercy. Allah Almighty said: (And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves that you find tranquility in them, and He has placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed, in that are signs for people who reflect.) (Al-Rum: 21).
For both spouses to feel tranquility and security in marital life, basic things must be achieved for each of them. As for the husband, his wife must be beautiful in his eyes, considering people have different tastes in beauty, and his wife must be obedient to him without grumbling nor procrastinating in obeying him waiting until he becomes angry and revolts, but rather she is easy to submit to him because she sees him worthy of being obeyed. Therefore, she believes in his manhood, and his ability to behave properly, and the truth is that her obedience to him and her trust in him makes him feel his manhood and develop more self-confidence, so his gratitude to her is greater, and thus he loves her more, and if he loves her, he pampers her and his satisfaction with her makes him see her beauty and ignore her faults, so she is in his eyes the most beautiful of beauties.
Through his love for her, his pampering of her, and his fulfillment of her desires, she feels her femininity because he makes her feel precious to him, and he is keen to make her happy as much as he can. It is a fact that a man generally does not accept orders from his wife, but if he loves her, her wishes, desires, and dreams become like orders that he does his best to fulfill.
In the past, an Arab Bedouin woman said to her daughter about to get married: “Be his female slave, and he will be your male slave.” Contemporary observations do prove this.
A man harnesses and uses all his energy to make a woman happy, who makes him feel masculine, so her happiness becomes a goal for him to strive for. Thus, she promotes his feeling of masculinity, and he nourishes her feeling of femininity, leading to filling them with tranquility and a sense of safety and security.
5. His Silence and her Revealing
What wives complain about most is their husbands' silence. When the husband returns home with worry on his face, his wife asks him what is on his mind. He answers that it is nothing. This wife is in pain and feels that her husband is treating her like a stranger because he does not reveal his secrets or complain to her about his concerns.
If a woman experiences something that is bothering her or is preoccupied with worries, she chooses the people closest to her to talk to about what is bothering her and tell them about her worries. Her talking about what is on her mind and revealing it to a specific person is evidence of how dear and trustworthy this person is considered by her. Therefore, she sees her husband’s concealment of his concerns from her as evidence that he does not consider her intimate enough to him, and he does not consider her trustworthy for his secrets. But the truth is different. The truth is that men are different from women. Men have been instilled with valuing power and independence since childhood, and they see complaining to others as a weakness, so most men tend to remain silent and not talk about their concerns. They try to overcome their problems on their own.
When a man generally talks about a problem he is facing, he does not mean talking just to find relief like women do. Rather, if he talks about his problem, he is indirectly asking for help from whomever he is talking to, while women generally want to talk about their problems to someone close to them who sympathizes with them, listens to them, and gives them patience with kind words. If she wants help, she asks for it frankly and shamelessly, but if she does not ask for it explicitly, what she is seeking is only attentive and understanding listening with a sympathetic ear and nothing more. Women think about their problems out loud with someone they love and trust, while men tend to think about their problems silently and alone.
This means that a woman should not insist on her husband trying to make him tell her about his concerns because her insistence irritates and bothers him. She should always remember that his silence and secrecy are not evidence that he considers her a stranger to him, but rather it is evidence of his masculinity based on strength and independence. On the other hand, if his wife tells him about the problems she faces at work or at home, he must listen to her with a sympathetic ear and refrain from proposing solutions to her problems because she does not want him to solve her problems for her. Rather, she wants him to listen to her so that she can release what is on her chest and vent for herself. She will be relieved, and she will be grateful to him if he just listens to her without volunteering to solve her problems, because the female nature is different from the male nature, and the spouses’ awareness of these differences makes their married life happy and peaceful.
