At his feet lies paradise?

One of my single girlfriends recently said that she got turned off by the thought of marriage after listening to so many marital woes and divorce stories.

She fears that her ideal holy matrimony would soon like the rest of her many friends turn sour and inevitably, shatter into broken glasses, so to speak.

I don’t blame her though. Just look at the statistics provided by the Syariah Judiciary Department Malaysia (JKSM) which revealed that the number of Muslim couples getting divorced rose by 2.3 times from 20,916 in 2004 to 47,740 in 2012, and to 49,311, last year.

According to the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) parallel to the number of divorces, Muslim couples getting hitched has risen steadily in general from 112, 262 in 2004 over the years to 148,806 marriages in 2012.

I was also once a skeptic on marriage especially having to be in a family with so many divorce cases.

Thank God, my unfounded theory proved me wrong. Seven years ago my husband swept me off my feet with his charm, kindness and gentleness ... and voila! Seven years down the aisle – I'm married and blessed with three children.

I have to admit, even after seven years of tying the knot, I am still learning the ropes of handling the whirls and turbulence of being in a marriage. I must say that I'm still at that stage of getting-to-know-him-and-him-getting-to-know-me kind of phase.

My mother told me once that it takes effort to be happy, hence like any good wife, one must always give in for the sake of a harmonious relationship – until of course if one should be abusive then, that’s a totally different approach (and a different column) all together.

Apparently, according to the many married and single Malay women I know, like centuries before, the mentality of many modern Malay women have not shifted much.

Many married Malay women are (still) too afraid to ask their husbands to share responsibilities, many too are even afraid to point out the rights and wrongs of their husbands’ doing or actions or even the things their husbands say.

They would rather swallow the agony or even curiosity rather than speak out to face the consequences of being yelled at or worst, the 'cold' treatment by their husbands.

Many married Malay couples today are just too hopeless to even have a decent conversation on anything regarding the changes and the lives of husbands and wives like sex, the display of affection, keeping the faith, building trusts, managing jealousy or even anger or motivation.

Simply said, everything that a couple could possibly talk about now, in the name of marriage, that they couldn’t prior to holy matrimony.

Would it be because today's married couples see each other as competition rather than a team member?

Or would it be because Malay husbands take the 'leader' role oh-so-literally that they expect women to blindly listen and run the house for them at all times?

When I was a kid, my mother told me that ‘syurga di bawah tapak kaki ibu’ which means ‘paradise lies at the feet of the mother’ and that no matter what, a child must always obey his or her mother.

‘Come smell my feet that smell of heaven’, my mom joked.

And when I got married, my mother said that my paradise is no longer with her, it lies (now) at the feet of my husband, ‘syurga di bawah tapak kaki suami’.

Deep down in my heart, I feel that this saying is rubbish, but I believe it nonetheless only because (come on) my mother said so.

I am gullible when it comes to my mother. I believe everything she says.

You see my point? Almost all of my Malay married and single friends have heard of this saying ‘syurga syurga di bawah tapak kaki suami’ and live by it. And like majority Malay girls (like me), they too take it,literally.

And only recently I realised that, no thanks to this saying, that this whole yearning for ‘paradise’ in the afterlife for Malay married women is what made the women today be close to submissive towards their husbands.

I blame that old Malay saying for all this (married) womanly woes. And I wonder who started saying this?

And only recently in my head, the more mature me began to re-look at the values my mother is trying to instill in my system when she highlights this saying.

Now I feel that this saying is not exactly apt especially in this day and age. Women should never shift their love and focus away from their mothers (and fathers), no matter what or for whoever for that matter.

This whole paradise shift saying really, commonly got men especially husbands to commit to only being the bread winner of the family and nothing else.

So really, who started this whole ‘husband-paradise shenanigan’? Must be a man.

And so I start to question: Why would my paradise got shifted to this man whom at this point of time, did not contribute much to my life, at least not as as much as my mom’s contribution through my whole lifetime?

How can husbands even compare to mothers who love us unconditionally?

A wise man once told me, ”Marriage is a 50-50 thing. It is about equal partnership.”

And here I was raised and taught that equal partnership in marriage means understanding things may not always be 50/50.

And so, should his feet lies paradise, then, why are most married Malay women being treated like maids instead of angels?