“Your family loves you rich and your husband loves you chaste.” You may have heard this proverb, part of which is trying to pass on the concept that the husband will love only the wife who enjoys full health and wellness.
Of course, no one chooses illness, this heavy guest who puts marital life in some cases on the line and may expose it to an end, leaving those who are afflicted with it not only sick, but also disappointed and shocked.
In one of the dialysis units in a government hospital in the Egyptian capital, Nasreen sat.
A, a pseudonym, the woman in her thirties, contemplating the faces around her, between a young man, an elderly and an old man, contemplating the white hospital walls with fingerprints and black spots on them, perhaps those were people who tried to rely on the wall so that they could get up from their places.
She looks at her phone watch in boredom, there is still some time before her turn, other than the time she will take for the dialysis session, she thinks about how exhausted she is after the session, trying to exhaust her mind a little to remember: Is there anything left from yesterday's lunch for today? ?
And if there is nothing left, will she be able to bring a quick meal to her husband and two children, who is unable to do anything after the session but sleep?
Her phone rings with the tone assigned to her husband.
The husband’s voice comes to her seriously, he does not know that she is in the dialysis session today, she forgot to tell him, and he never asked about the sessions’ dates, and he did not try to come with her even once since this arduous process began a year and a half ago, she asks apprehensively “money” Your voice?", to tell her the serious voice, whose facial features you can't see, "Nisreen, I can't finish, to take care of my children's expenses in full, don't worry, and the children will stay in your arms and with you, but excuse me, I can't finish! I won't go back to the house, this is your home And kids, I'm going back to my family's home, so I can see what I'm going to do with my life later."
This was what Nisreen told the editor of Maidan about the conclusion of her marriage, which ended after she contracted lupus erythematosus, which occurs when the immune system attacks the body’s tissues and organs, causing disruption of the various body systems, including joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs (1).
For a year and a half, Nisreen had been seeing her husband's continuous prayers since she got sick, hearing his supplications and his prayers for her to be healed, but she saw in his eyes a look that she could not understand, the look of someone who was given a life he did not want, someone who lived with her the life of the forced.
In a study conducted on a sample of 2701 marriages, aiming to examine the role of the emergence of serious physical diseases, such as cancer, heart problems, lung diseases, and/or stroke, on the future of marriage, the results found that the wife’s illness alone was associated with a higher risk of divorce.
These results indicate the importance of health as a vital factor for the future of married life. (2)
Illness may not only cause pain, but it can also change lives
Afaf S., a pseudonym, a woman in her thirties, found herself facing a disease that her family did not even dare to mention his name, when the biography of this disease came, they referred to it as "the disease that has no name (in the Egyptian dialect: which does not tolerate)".
When the doctor told her that she had this disease, she remembered the horror that hovered in the eyes of the women of her family from the specter of this disease that had befallen one of her aunts.
She did not know who she was talking to to throw this heavy load off her chest. If she told her mother, she might have just lost her life from shock and fear for her. She decided to call her husband, I told him about it. The husband's voice came to her frantically, but he tries to reassure her that the tests and x-rays are wrong, and this has happened a lot before. He told her that they had to do all the tests again and go to a second and third doctor. He warned her not to go alone, he would accompany her until he assures her that this first diagnosis is baseless.
But the second and third examination confirmed the correctness of the first diagnosis, when Afaf had overcome the first trauma, and reconciled with the presence of the disease, she must fight it, for the sake of her mother and her child, who was not yet four years old, and for the sake of her husband and his love for her.
Afaf says that she married six years ago, loved her husband since she met him, he was humble, but she fought all circumstances and faced all obstacles in order for their marriage to take place, but after months of the scene of the husband's hesitation with his wife to doctors, and with the start of receiving treatment and the exhaustion that it causes, The husband decided with words that he did not even bother to pick her up that he would not be able to continue, Afaf told Maidan: "The strange thing is that I was not surprised, as if I was ready to hear this decision and wait for its time, although, before this moment, this decision to leave was not even in my imagination, he tried My husband has to lighten the weight of his heavy words after this, he told me that he loved me, and he loves me, he told me that he tried a lot to adapt to the situation, but he could not, and this does not seem to be a fixed period for him, I knew that part of his decision is his fear of bearing expenses The treatment, he was stingy even with regard to his own needs, I calmly collected my things and took my child and left for my mother’s house, this was about two years ago.”
She adds: "The really strange thing for me was that during the past two years, he did not ask about his daughter's expenses. He did not ask, even from afar, how to save her expenses with the treatment expenses. He did not ask to see her once. I thank God that I did not give up my work when he was repeating this request." From me, I loved my work and did not want to leave it, my work is the lifeline that God gave me so that I could cover my expenses and the expenses of my daughter.”
A study published in 2009 confirmed that a woman is six times more likely to separate or divorce after a diagnosis of cancer or multiple sclerosis than a man is, and the study reached this conclusion when it examined the role that sex plays in what is called "partner abandonment." It also found that the longer the marriage was, the more likely he was to survive the disease. In the same context, another study indicated that the total divorce or separation rate among cancer patients is 11.6%. However, the researchers were surprised by the difference in rates of separation and divorce by sex, when the woman was ill, the proportion was 20.8%, compared to 2.9% when the man was ill. (3)
“Female disease was in itself a stronger predictor of separation or divorce in each of the patient groups we studied,” says Mark Chamberlain, M.D., professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine and author and director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at the Cancer Care Alliance in Seattle. .
He asserts that this study was conducted primarily because doctors noticed during their practice that divorce occurs almost exclusively when the wife is the patient.
Why, then, does a man leave his sick wife?
The study authors explained this in part by the inability of men, compared with women, to make commitments and care for a sick partner, in addition to women having a better ability to bear the burdens of maintaining the home and family (4).
Second marriage due to illness
Shahira.M, a pseudonym, a woman in her forties, had just finished her chemotherapy session, she sat exhausted on the hospital bed, thinking about the condition of her children and the recurring problems between them and their father since the beginning of her illness. Since she was diagnosed with cancer, she has been attending sessions alone or accompanied by her mother or One of her brothers, Shahira sought thousands of excuses for her husband for that, according to her conversation with Maidan, she said that his work, the responsibility of the house and the children were enough for him, but his problems with the children, especially the son, were incomprehensible to her.
Shahira says that things became clearer when she was visited one day at her mother's house by his sister, who came from Upper Egypt to her capital, to talk to her, and asked her to nominate a suitable bride for her husband.
The visitor was not satisfied with what she said, and added, with a slight shyness in her voice, "I only ask you to let the son be with you, he is a man and you need his company, and of course it is not permissible for him to sit with his father and wife, but the two daughters will live with their father, just as they are currently."
Shahira says that she was listening in astonishment to the woman who, in words that seemed to her like a fantasy, depicted the features of her future life.
Abandonment may also be due to the son's illness
As for Nihal.A., a pseudonym, a forty-year-old woman, she has a different story to tell to Maidan, saying: "My son and I did not get sick, after the son passed his first years in life, we were surprised that he had a mental retardation, then my husband went crazy after knowing this, my husband and I Cleaners, we did not get an education, and we have no source of livelihood except our effort, this is our only child, I did not understand why my husband was angry or angry, what could this emotion do? What is my fault or the fault of this poor person in the first place? Shocked, let him vent.
But Nihal's husband was not satisfied with the excitement. He had more to do. He made up his mind to leave the child to his mother, and go to marry;
Because he wants a healthy son who will help him in life and have a support in his old age.
Nihal says: "I did not believe that he would actually leave us, but he was so firm that he got married less than 4 months after our separation. About four years have passed since this, during which he never asked about his son or his treatment."
Commenting on this, Mustafa S., a pseudonym, a fifty-year-old nephrologist, tells Maidan: "The cases we see in dialysis units clearly testify to how husbands deal with their wives' disease without the need for social analysis or statistics, during the cases I saw and dealt with. Throughout the years of my work, when the wife is ill, she often sees her sister, mother, or even her brother as companion.”
But if the husband is the patient, then with a percentage close to 100%, the wife will be accompanying him, and even more than that, when the husband suffers from kidney failure and needs a kidney transplant, the first volunteer to donate will be his wife, but in the case of the wife being infected with the same thing, the husband will not be, Unfortunately, in many of what I have seen, there is a possibility to donate in the first place."
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Sources
Lupus
In Sickness and in Health?
Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life
Men more likely than women to leave partner with cancer
Men Leave: Separation And Divorce Far More Common When The Wife Is The Patient