Ms Ana..I would like my wife to help out my mom and ofcourse respect my parents..why would that make her a servant? My mom took care of my grandparents, cooked, cleaned..so is that suppose to make her a servant..it would really piss me off if my wife ever ask me to move out
wow, the sexist desi men are here! why shouldn’t your wife deserve her own household to take care of? why does she have to move in with your parents? unless the parents are incapable of living on their own, or need help, she shouldn’t be there, b/c its just the “proper” way of doing things. And is it difficult for you guys to help out? Or is cleaning, and cooking, and taking care beneath you? Is that your wife’s job? Unless there are circumstances requiring our presence-there is no way that i will agree to living with his parents. And hell if u need to live with parents, is there something wrong with living with hers? 
Yeah cook, clean, and take care of others-sounds like a servant to me. Was there anything in it for her? That is not the woman’s only purpose in life. I intend to have a job, my own house, my own life. Does that sound selfish? I don’t care and i don’t think it does. I intend to share my life with my husband and children. Not his entire extended family as well. If i need help with something around the house-he better get his ass in gear.
as for the topic at hand-i have a question. For those of you who had straight-up arranged marriages (like my parents who met on their wedding day) how on earth are u supposed to make love to a stranger? I can’t even imagine.
First of All, My parents do need me to stay with them because they are old and they cant take care of themselves. Leaving me in their old age will be very in-human. I wil provide my wife food, shelter, clothes to wear and my self and lot of respect frr her. THats the mose I can give her and I expect her to respect me and my family and take care of them as if she takes care of her own parents.
Ms Ana..I would like my wife to help out my mom and ofcourse respect my parents..why would that make her a servant? My mom took care of my grandparents, cooked, cleaned..so is that suppose to make her a servant..it would really piss me off if my wife ever ask me to move out.
Saggy - I agree with you completely that you do NOT discuss these type of things on the DAY you get married, it HAS to be hashed out BEFORE.
As for taking care of one's parents - I completely agree with that 100%. What I do NOT agree with, is making this surprise revelation on your wedding day, in front of 1,000 guests and relatives, or when your new bride is shaking in trepidation.
As for the wife taking care of the husband's family - it is a very honorable and rewarding thing to do. BUT it is NOT her obligation. The man is supposed to take care of HIS OWN family, and the woman HER OWN. Your wife is not a free handmaid, that she has to COOK, CLEAN or take care of ANYONE except you, the husband, and that too her ONLY ISLAMIC DUTY is to look after her husband's physical needs - she need not cook or clean or sew or dust for him if she does not want to. If she says I do not want to cook, the man has to provide for food for himself *as well as * for her, that is is responsibility.
All this cooking cleaning potty-washing is cultural practice, NOT Islamic. Aside for caring for her husband's person, a woman is not - NOT - obligated to do anything beyond that. Whatever else she does, is of her own free will - or should be - and not at all forced. You may ask any Islamic scholar this, and you will get the same answer.
That said, your parents and family are your own obligation. If you get a wife who is Masha'Allah such a good person that she takes care of the needs of your family as her own, she will be rewarded accordingly Insha'Allah. But it is not compulsary for her to do so. RESPECT and love of your elders is DIFFERENT from washing their dishes.
Also, the same goes for the man. A woman is to look after her husband and her children, and her own parents and siblings as and when she needs to. They are her first priority, not her in-laws. If you want to read your wife her "rights and duties household list" the night of your wedding or at any time before or after your marriages, you also should expect to be rightly read a list of rights from her side as well. But knowing the ego of desi males, you will not tolerate that, will you?
How would u like it if your wife on your wedding night gave you a lecture on being good to her parents and brothers and sisters? Could you tolerate that? Then why expect compliance and obedience and softness from her, when you are all set to torture her by disregarding her own family and the people she is being separated from physically, in order to enter your household?
Is this fair?
What your mother had done for her inlaws Alhamdulilah is commendable, but she has also given up a great deal of her own self to do that. Girls nowadays are not likely to do that, that's why the forewarning.
The day after my wedding, my father-in-law said I was no longer a new dulhan, and asked me to attend the kitchen. Do you know how it feels? No, because you are a man. A woman dies enough in her heart every second of everyday, taking taunts and torture from society and people around her. It is not fair to expect her to tolerate cold-hearted demands from the one person she is supposed to be most intimate with, and who she looks to for all the comfort in her world- her husband.
There has to be a balance in what the husband and wife demand of each other, in terms of everything. Marriage is about sharing - not one-sidedness. If she cares for your family, you have to care for hers as well. If you can achieve that balance, you will be the best husband and wife couple, both religiously speaking as well as morally.
Simple example: your wife's mother is a widow. Your parents are both alive. You have the opportunity to do Hajj. Would you think for one second of taking your mother-in-law rather than your own mom? If you can achieve this without any compulsion while warding off "ghar damad" taunts from your relatives, you have my undying respect as a man.
Same with a wife. If she can love her in-laws as her own family, she has everyone's respect, admiration and love.
But in no way is all this to be forced on the other person. When you do not even know the girl before your wedding night - how can you expect her to love your family? And even if you know the girl, but she has no idea about your family, how can you expect instant affection?
The best thing you can do, if you expect your wife to settle in at once, is to enlighten your family as well, as to ways that they can make your bride feel comfortable and welcomed to her new home. If you want her to share your family responsibilities with you, you have to let her know that they are welcoming her with open clean hearts and of their own choice. They have to be sincere in their affections towards her, and not let the display of love die out after the first week.
How the husband handles his own family is very important in making an impresion about you on your wife. Remember, you and she are a family unit in yourselves. Everyone else, after marriage, just becomes your extended parts - but you both are the integral ones, and it is your feelings that are most important, because that is how the extended parts will be kept happiest.
ana if u read what i wrote above..i did tell asif to discuss this way before marriage..and right now we are not discussing what Islam says about all this..there has to be a mutual understand between the husband and wife..they are suppose to think alike, be the best of friends...and if my wife is the only child of her parents and her parents need help then i would make them move in with us so we can takecare of them too..whatever ur father in law said to you was really stupid and mean..i wouldnt move out even if my parents can takecare of themselves..i love them too much and they loev me too much so why should we live apart...u know what i cant even imagine leaving them
if my wife wants to work after she gets married i wont have a problem with that either...i would probably have to do house work then too to help her..which would really suck but hey i try to be fair :)
714 ur response does not surprise me...i bet u were born and brought up in the west..u know even if ur inlaws couldnt takecare of themselves i bet u still wouldnt move in with them..u would tell ur husband to put them in a nursing home
Ana: I can see where you ar ecoming from. I totally agreed that wife deserves as much respect as husband does. Some men refuse to compromise and some women refuse to compromise as well. I understand there should be balance of compromising. Usually, one party is dominant and ther other is submissive. Even in western society I dont see man compromising as much as woman.
and I do know men who are submissive to their wives. There is nothing wrong in it. Therefore, THere is nothing wrong in a women to compromise. Thinking that by compromising you are "not" treated equally is not correct. But, it should be seen as an exra effort that will be rewarded by God in this life and hereafter. I know lot of women who due to their stubborness are divorced and if they get another chance will be more "flexible" to make things work.
Yes, its hard to leave your parent and live in some one elses home and treating ur husband's family as urs but its not impossible. My mother did it. My grand mother did it. My sister did it who is from this generation. Why can't u?
Do u know what men has to do when he's working at his job. He takes all kind of **** from his boss, sometimes even clean his Boss son's ****. Work in the sun all day long or clean bathrooms etc...
for who? So that he can maintain a family and can take care of his and his wife's expenses, Home, bills......
There is a trade-off.... But the ppl who compromise wins....
My mom told me how dif time she had with her in-laws but now she's a very happy wife. My fahter treats her like a queen. I cant beleive right now, my fahter even cooks for us... something my mom never imagined 15 years ago... It takes time, patience and flexibility to "fix" things... after all.....according to the effort is the reward.
Yeaaaaah. I know that too. But our parents gave up a lot so that their children - boys and girls - would not have to live thru the types of societies and pressures they lived thru. So we owe it to them to be strong, never ever forget them, but also not forget ourselves either.
See, I've been around a lot of weak men, and I've seen how their and their wives and childrens' lives have been destroyed by this intense family interaction. So by now I've got very strong feelings about this.
I know what men go thru at work, coz I work too, day and night. Lots of women know that, and they appreciate what men go thru all the time, it's not like we don't know. But it's just the guys.. with pressure from other men, from their families, from society - it's soooo easy to say I'm a firm believer in equality, and sooo tough to act on it.
Compromising is what a person ends up doing all the time in a marriage, every step of the way, with someone or the other, something of the other, till that's all that's left pretty much.
(btw - why bring me into this? I was just citing an example...)
Anyway.. as long as y'all understand, I guess that's fair.
Do u guys - CH, NYA, Chanji, Roman, Devil's Own, etc.. - necessarily have to spread filth in every thread? Can't you just pls. restrict it to Cafe or whatever? There are some things in life that are serious.
Roman, I am surprised at you. Why do you encourage this? Aap ko thodi si bhi sharam nahi aati? Aur itna problem hai aap ko, to pls. kisi aur sey fatwa ja key parwaiye, is thread mei kya kaam hai aap ka?
I may be a person with very questionable morals, but still, there is a limit to everything.
DON’T YOU DARE . 
I knew, just knew that stupid bull**** would come out. Yeah i was brought up in the west- and that has NOTHING to do with it anything. Can’t you people ever argue without assuming that everything in the west is wrong? You will find stronger and better muslims here then in many other places. People who have to keep their identity-not those who take everything for granted. and i would NEVER put his parents in a nursing home-i am very against that actually. Don’t pass stupid judgments. I was brought up in a traditional and conservative family. If it was your wife’s parents, if the situation was reversed, would you move in with them? What makes my answer so “western” what is wrong with my answer? that i don’t think a wife is there to wait on her husbands demands? If there is a reason to move in with your in-laws its a different story. But not because the husband just can’t bring himself to move out of his parents house. My mom is a traditional wife in every sense of the word. She doesn’t live with her in-laws b/c they are in Pakistan. But when they are here, she treats them with every respect. And they often treat her like crap. And as for husband and his job, etc. What if the wife has a job too?
ANA-i agree with you. :k:
Ok, I’ll veer back on the topic. Anyone consider waiting?? I mean jeez, your married and boom your in the sack 
Definately not my style. I’m not going to do some “hypothetical” thing here, I’m talking about myself, when I say how desparate do you have to be to do the first day? I mean, with all the opportunities many of the guys have to have relations before marriage, what the hell is the point of marrying someone? Just to get in the sack. yes, yes I know I’m overdramatizing here and I am also aware of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ but I would rather let the lady take the lead on this.
I really would expect the wifey to live with my parents, I mean I just cannot imagine living away from them. By that I mean, living in the same town, so I can see them everyday. Although my parents are pretty liberal by desi standards, I don’t believe in letting go of ones parents after marriage. In the future, when I have kids, I definately want my parents to move in with me because I want my parents to instill the same great values that they gave me. I know I sound very one sided but my family situation was wonderful and there is no reason for me to not replicate that.
I don’t expect the Mrs. to be a housewife, because I find career women to be more appealing, while the house work could definately be done by both of us. The problem I see with many Pakistani men is that they either believe in dominating over their spouses, or are intimidated by their wives..why does it have to be either? The preferable option should be working with a consensus. Looking good thus far 
rajput-i can see where u are coming from. but what if she feels the same way? what if the girl doesnt want to leave her parents. then what do u do?
and i asked a sort of similar question, but no one answered it. And even for those who do know their spouses well, when u haven't done anything at all either, can u just go for it the first night? that just seems a little scary
RF, for those who haven't done it... it is their raison d'etre. WEdding is just a facade for letting go of the years of pent up frustrations. I have known Indian and Paki guys who couldn't get a date to save their lives, kept harrasing their parents to find them the "right" girl by the time they hit 25. There is nothing like a 25 yr old couple that hasn't had sex. The bumbling and fumbling and despair at dissatisfaction can lead straight to hamdard.
And how come it's always these ugly and fat people who haven't been laid before. Something stinks!!
just because people move to the west doesnt mean they have to become totally amercanized…i mean there are some great things about here but still we have our own culture and we can’t just forget that. 714 we are talking about culture and not the religion.
rajputfury :k:
714 I have a feeling that we wont be hooking up with each other :)
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I really would expect the wifey to live with my parents, I mean I just cannot imagine living away from them. By that I mean, living in the same town, so I can see them everyday. Although my parents are pretty liberal by desi standards, I don't believe in letting go of ones parents after marriage. In the future, when I have kids, I definately want my parents to move in with me because I want my parents to instill the same great values that they gave me. I know I sound very one sided but my family situation was wonderful and there is no reason for me to not replicate that.
I don't expect the Mrs. to be a housewife, because I find career women to be more appealing, while the house work could definately be done by both of us. The problem I see with many Pakistani men is that they either believe in dominating over their spouses, or are intimidated by their wives..why does it have to be either? The preferable option should be working with a consensus. Looking good thus far
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MY GOD!! My GOOODNESS DEAR GOD!!!
I mean I just cannot imagine living away from them
WHAT A BIG BABY YOU ARE!!! Baby!!! From now on, I will call you Baby.
Although my parents are pretty liberal by desi standards, I don't believe in letting go of ones parents after marriage.
You mean YOUR parents, rite? What about your wife, would it be ok for you to go sleep in your parents' house and her to go home after a hard day and sleep in her parent's house... since everyone needs to not let go of their parents, yeah? SUPERB idea. That's fair, I think.
I mean, what if her parent's like the place they live in just like your parents like the place they are at, and no one wants to move to each other's place. So, u guys can just split after midnight, and get back in the morning, rite? COOOOL.
I know I sound very one sided but my family situation was wonderful and there is no reason for me to not replicate that.
Baby, we all have had wonderful families, you're not unique. Can your wife replicate her wonderful family situation as well - which may be a dad working abroad and mon at home and kids in borading school - but still a perfectly happy family situation? So you can stay in the US, she can stay in Pakistan, when u have kids, send them off to Eton. Wonderful replication... and it's fair too.
I don't expect the Mrs. to be a housewife
AY THERE'S THE RUB!!!!!!!!
You are perfectly happy - like sooooooooo many desi men - to send your wife off to work nicely dolled up, and come month-end you put both your earnings in a joint account and draw on that for the mortgage.. it's all been sooooooo beautifully planned. Woman gets her "independence" - coz, yeah OF COURSE .. she is a working woman after all... she's TOTALLY independent - rite?? But the little minor problem just crops up after about FIFTEEN YEARS that she's been SLOGGING 9-5 like a SLAVE "sharing" your responsibilities - and WHAT does she find in her bank account? ZILCH - for HER, that is. She can't take a weekend off to go to Mexico BY HERSELF - coz she's "family", and she has to drag the whole squadron along with her. BUT THE WHOLE DAMN FAMILY DOESN'T GO WITH HER TO THE OFFICE TO EARN THAT PAYCHECK - DOES IT?????????
Oh so swwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeet.
I find career women to be more appealing
BULL $HIT. You find the fast-talking hot babe in a business suit more appealing, not coz she's dressed in a cotton shalwar kameez but coz she's "educated" and can act civilized in society. Don't give me this Equality Bull$hit - I've heard it all a thousand times before - and when it comes to a man's EGO - trust me, this equality BS all goes DOWN the drain.
The problem I see with many Pakistani men is that they either believe in dominating over their spouses, or are intimidated by their wives..why does it have to be either? The preferable option should be working with a consensus.
YOU my dear, are ALSO a Pakistani man - so don't go dissing yer clan so easily. Desi women are a beautiful match for you guys, I love watching the interaction between couples, and it's just amazing how many henpecked Pakistani husbands there are out there - simply because they just HAVE to bring their ego in the middle all the time in front of outsiders. They act like lions outside the home, and mice inside. It's ridiculous. When you respect your woman 24/7/360 inside or outside, she will repond accordingly and never give you a reason to feel dominated or superior. But men don't seem to understand this... and serves them right the way they get treated in the end. Serves them damn right.
*** You here means ALL the men who have the same type of comments or thinking that Rajput Fury detailed, not just him. **
Ana, stop exhasperating over every single post. The "BAD EXPERIENCE" that you claim to have gone through, not everyone will go through. Maybe it was 'cause of your own short commings. Stop insulting others opinions and if you want a punching bag ... one word .. academy !
Wadi - this is not about me. I have been a woman's rights activist long enough to know what goes on in marriages - in the US, yes, with couples who are in the 20-40 year range - yes; who are well-educated, talented, and THICK, yes.
For every one woman who is happy in her married life, I can show you three that are not - because of their husbands. And it is this type of thinking - this mentality that young boys get into themselves that comes from God knows where - that is the root cause of somany problems. The resent their wives successes, they resent their wives happinesses - this is not a unique phenomenon - it is very very common. And I'm not gonna shut up and say nothing about it, because it's NOT fair to those young innocent girls who have just a few basic expectations to lead a happy married life, and who end up going thru hell because of these pre-established stonewalls that they encounter at every turn.
If you have ever been to a women's shelter organization in your area, you will hear from each and every woman just one comman theme - we just wanted to be happy. They try everything to mak etheir marriages work - but the men don't relent. Boys grow into men - and I don't like to see these type of weak ideas start to take so strong root that tomorrow they will go and wreck havoc somewhere on someone who didn't deserve it.
As for insulting others opinions - opinions that deserve to be insulted, I will do justice to. What's eating you?
Ana - Ok so I haven't been the leading proponent of battered desi women everywhere, should I be called a misguided "boy" for that? Does it make sense to push something down others throats 'cause you feel strongly about it? For every battered woman you see there are a lot more out there who're happy with their lives. Now you have the right to disagree with me but before calling me out, can you please provide concrete statistics of abused desi women vs. abused women in general, and then pinpoint it to the "boyish" mentality of desi men???
Do you see where I’m getting at?? Just 'cause you see the world with green glasses doesn't mean it's completely green. And what is this BS I hear about men only marrying after they've attained complete physical and spiritual maturity. I thought Islam (which you have mentioned here quite a few times) encouraged couples to marry early. So what's eating me? Frankly I’m annoyed by your attitude as Miss "know it all”. I don't claim to know everything but here is one word of advice for you. You live and you learn in a marriage, and if you're always willing to learn and your main goal is to keep your partner "happy" then ultimately it will be so. Sorry for being such a boy, and a desi one too.