WHAT makes a man decide to marry another woman when he is already married? Specifically, what are the causes of men marrying housemaids? Is the first wife at fault? Or is the man simply being hard to please?
Such marriages have become a bit too common in Saudi society and if you listen to the women’s point of view, you’ll end up believing that men are never satisfied and they want to have everything and everybody just as they want. Men, on the other hand, say everything is the wives’ fault. They are always busy with their social lives, always ignoring their children and their husbands, filling their lives with shopping, long telephone chats and the latest: lingering at beauty salons! So who is to blame? And who is the victim — men, women or children?
Abu Naif, age over 40, tells his story of why he married the housemaid. In his opinion, it was his wife’s neglect of family obligations that led him to marrying again. He says: “After marrying my first wife and having a son, Naif, I discovered that my wife was negligent, didn’t care much about her family and would spend hours on her makeup instead of caring for her children. She was arrogant, was always looking down on others and never entered the kitchen. I tried to draw her attention to her family obligations but unfortunately, she was only concerned with herself. Anything I wanted was done by the maid so it was logical that I should marry her. I have never regretted marrying Lama, our maid. I hope my story will be a lesson for other women who do not respect married life or know how to take care of their husbands.” So Abu Naif puts the blame on his first wife.
Abu Sultan, in his mid-50s, on the other hand admits that he loves his wife of 35 years, yet age seemed to “wither” her so to speak. He says: “I married my wife more than 35 years ago when she was very young and didn’t know much about life. I loved her and I still do; after all, she is the mother of my children. She was simple and innocent and I have never got angry with her or criticized her for her actions. Everything changed, however, when the children grew up and she became hardened by experience. She began ignoring me as if I were not at home. I rarely saw her; she was always away, visiting her parents. She always said she wanted nothing now that her children were at an advanced stage in their education. I was fed up with her way of living and could bear it no longer. The only alternative was to marry a second wife and enjoy with her what is left of my life. I found my dream in my Filipino wife, Fatima. She worked as a maid for some of my relatives. With her, I found the love and compassion I was looking for. What is wrong if somebody once worked as a maid? She is well-mannered and I don’t bother about any social differences between us. She has committed no crime and I am proud she has done a decent job and I do not feel embarrassed about this. The natural place for her is with me in our home. Now I am sponsoring her as my wife and not as a maid.”
So what men want seems to be attention and care, but women seem to have a different view. If men say they were neglected and they had to seek attention elsewhere, wives say they were betrayed by their husbands and can never forgive or forget.
Sara from Riyadh tells her story: “I was introduced to my husband through a matchmaker. I agreed to marry him and I spent with him two of the most beautiful years of my life. He was handsome, knew how to use words which are always sweet. But all that was fake and he was showing me only one side of his nature. We had no children during those years and he then began to hint that he wanted to marry again because he wanted children. I did not take him seriously at first because I never thought he would. We had an Indonesian maid but I decided to do without her since I couldn’t communicate very well with her. My husband agreed to send her back to Indonesia and then one day I found out from a friend that my husband was married to the maid!
“I could not believe it! When my husband came home I confronted him and he did not deny it. He had not sent the maid back as I thought but he had married her and they were now living in an apartment on the other side of town. I began thinking of what happened and how to respond to his betrayal. I went to my parents’ home and stayed there. He came to take me back but I refused and asked for a divorce. He refused to divorce me. Then my father intervened and convinced me to go back and live with my husband. I hate him and despise him because he betrayed me. Imagine that he found nobody to marry except the maid!”
Umm Abdul Majeed finds it hard to believe what her husband did to her. She says that her life with him was perfect: “We had four children and we were living happily. I shared my life with him and took my share of troubles. When I felt that I needed some help at home, he got a maid; she was nice to the children and a hard worker. One day my mother got sick and I had to take care of her in her house. She died and when I came home, I found the maid had taken my place and my children were calling her mother! I’m still in shock and I don’t know what to do. Should I leave him or should I stay with my children?”
A psychologist at Jeddah Psychiatric Hospital, Fatima Al-Rifaei, says, “These cases don’t constitute a phenomenon. Each one is based on a personal motive and a specific need at a certain time. What these marriages lack is durability; by their nature, they exist to satisfy a need and that need might end at any point. Men who get into such situations usually overlook how much the new wife will or will not fit into his society.”
Economically speaking these marriages are affordable for men since the wife usually needs financial and social protection. Al-Rifaei points out: “Men in these cases want to feel superior and they want an obedient wife, more like a slave, so these marriages amount to rash decisions based on immediate requirements and the need to feel superior.”
This may be so but it does not alter the fact that the women in some of these cases were not there to save their marriages; they took their husbands for granted and moved away from their families.
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(This extended article is based on the original story by Hala Al-Naser in Sayidaty magazine.)