25/10/2025
I sometimes put myself in my wife's shoes and realise it must be a tough call to have to ask consistently from a man even for the basic needs of the house. Look, I am an average Nigerian, and an average Nigerian even where he doesn't consider himself poor, moves in and out of being broke some of the times. So the crisis of wanting to be the perfect husband while your financial realities makes a mess of it isn't lost on me.
I ask myself how would it feel to ask and be told "I don't have". then you ask again, and then again, and get the same response. Or no, you are a kindhearted and considerate wife that knows the financial realities of your husband, but then you have to bring up the needs of the house and you are wondering how best to present it. You have to do this over, and over, and over again.
I think about these things and it opens my eyes to perspectives I might have never contemplated. When we portray spouses in our conversations as witches and monsters, it gradually erodes compansion and mercy from our hearts. Wives must be ungrateful creatures to not see how tough it is to provide in this economy that feels more like getting water out of a rock. Husbands must have hearts made of stones to not understand the plight of their wives. Away from all these negativities, sometimes put yourself in the shoes of your spouse and try to view the world from the lense of their mind and see how tough it is from there. Do you know how hard it is to work, only for bills to gobble it all up and want more? In the end you are perceived from the angle of what is left not what you have done!
When you put yourself in your spouse's shoes, it softens your heart towards them and expands your endurance and tolerance. When I think of how hard it must be to balance being considerate and having to seemingly push a man beyond his limit to provide for the family, I try to control my response. I try because we are in the end, humans, and can't control our reactions all of the time. But then I try to make the process easy, and if you can, do so too.
Don't always want to present yourself as poor before your family so they don't ask you for their needs. For some, there is no differnce between when he has and when he doesn't. He always presents himself poor to buy sympathy. Don't always wait to be reminded to do your responsbilities where you can help it. I am not even asking for something new, it is something some of us already do. have a fixed schedule such that you dont need to be reminded. If Allah makes it easy for you, buy in bulk to reduce the frequency of asking. Do certain things out of impulse, not only when prompted. Buy bread whenever you can. Driving home and see soup ingredients? get some. You stumble on some amount of money? buy a bag of rice in the house. just build that spending and very generous attitude to your family, may Allah bless you and increase you in rizq.
I very much understand how paucity of funds can limit the implementation of all of these, we ask Allah to ease our affairs, but we can't judge everyone with thesame brush. While some are truly unable to do this, others can if the just adjust their lifestyle and mindset towards their family. Don't wait to be prompted to do what you should in your house hoping she will get tired of asking and stop, which is what happens sometimes - many times! you might celebrate this as a win and more money for you, but what you lose in quality of marital relationship and blessings can not be compared in value to the little you will save, which you usually will not spend in a beneficial cause.
Let's try to put ourselves in the shoes of our spouses and be merciful and compassionate to each other. We aren't perfect and we aren't going to be perfect, but I assure it is tough to be either of the spouses, and we won't get the appreciation we are looking for by trying to show whose is the toughest. Compassion comes from trying to be understanding and considerate not thinking we deserve more because we do more.
May Allah bless us for all we do for our family and soften our hearts more to be merciful, considerate and compassionate spouses.
Abu Imran
