| Source: | http://qa.muftisays.com/?7542 |
| Question ID: | #7542 |
| Question: Wife frequently staying over at her mother’s | |
| My wife frequently visits her mother who lives a 40 min drive away. I have no issue with her keeping a relationship with her family. My wife’s mother calls her everyday. My wife’s two brothers, their wives and families, and her two other sisters who are single live in her mother’s house too. They are all adults aged in their mid 30’s to 40’s. Wife’s mother insists my wife does chores for her (so wife drives over there even though her siblings live with her and can do these chores). She insists my wife visits her often and demands that she stays the night when she visits on weekends - the overnight stays has been a source of continuous arguments. I visit my our own mother weekly for an hour who lives within walking distance. My wife tells me I’m controlling, unreasonable and abnormal as a husband to complain about her staying overnight. I’m starting to question if she’s right but I don’t like being alone at weekends - if my wife goes one morning, she comes back late at night the following night. She complains that her brother’s wife visits her family for a week at a time (same distance) and it’s considered normal in her family. I don’t consider this as normal and it definitely wasn’t normal in my family or the families we know - visits to in-laws still happened but maybe for Eid etc ie not several times a month. Its upsetting me as I was almost better off when I was single, a lot of the time these overnight visits are mentioned just a few days before - after my wife has had a discussion with her mother so I try and see if my friends are free to give me company that weekend instead but they’re not available at such short notice. Where as when I was single, I might have planned a meet up a week in advance. I am sympathetic as her father died a few years ago and my wife regrets she didn’t spend more time with him before he died and my mother in law is not healthy, she has heart failure and is disabled so she is worried about the same thing happening again. At the same though, my mother had bowel cancer, has survived and has diabetes, has not completely recovered from the chemo but is always very insistent in not interfering in our marriage so ensures the time I visit her is short in order not to interfere with time spent with my wife. Unfortunately that same understanding and empathetic attitude is not displayed by my wife’s mother who demands to be centre of everyone’s attention. I have asked why can’t her siblings to do more and been told they just refuse so her mother calls her to come over. I need some impartial advice as me communicating my unhappiness about the situation to my wife seems to be getting nowhere and she probably thinks that because her mother is elderly she has an Islamic duty to follow her mothers instructions over mine. But I also want to know in accordance with Islam, am I being unreasonable in asking her not stay the night but to come back the same day? | |
| Answered by: | Ulamaa ID 04 (London) |
| Date: | 20/10/2022 21:14pm |
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
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| Mufti Qamruzzaman London, UK |
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| www.MuftiSays.com | |