When a man loves a woman

Speaking about marriage in one of my posts, I said that love is complicated .
Although I never got married, I understood by now, that love is the last factor in a marriage .
Marriage is more about understanding, compromising, sacrificing, sharing goals .
So it is complicated anywhere in the world but in different forms, depending on the mentality and traditions of the place .
For example my Emaraty lady friend I mentioned in my previous post, she had an incredible life seen from outside .
She got married to this police officer, I believe he was in some high rank, they had beautiful, healthy and educated children, lived in a marvellous house, came to Europe for holidays, bought expensive stuff .
Yet there was something not working .

During an internet conversation, my friend confessed she had had a couple of arguments with her husband, which led her to think about drastic solutions .
First, he did not want their daughter to go to a mixed university .
He was bedouin, which means not very much open minded and very tough .
But in a way she had won that battle .
It was she and the daughter against the husband, his brother and her own sister who had married him, but she  did it .
She explained the girl needs and that the world is moving on from some standards, so time had come also for them in order to do so .
When again there was a dispute about the fact that being her children all grown, she wanted to try to have her own way in business, her husband was even tougher .
She told me : "see, he has given me everything he could . Treated me and the children in an excellent manner, and also I gave everything to the family .
Now, I feel the time has come to give everything to myself . "
So she came to the conclusion that if he hadn't allowed her, then they would better go for devorce .
And that I think, shocked her husband, who, after so many years of marriage and knowing how much love there was between themselves, regardless of their union being arranged , understood that his wife needed more .
Bedouins are tough and simple minded, but in their simplicity there is a great heart .
So he understood and allowed her to start her business, just proposing himself as curator of the commercial part, and she accepted .
She went for a gym with a coffee shop and felt herself relieved .

Marriage, as earlier explained, is a family thing, so when there is some particular issue, they all are somehow part of it, in good and bad .
When the matter is on marrying a foreigner, that can be painful .
If the family is very conservative, the man can also go through it, but he must have a very strong personality and stand by his wife for every little thing, without entering in conflict with his relatives .
I recall a friend, whose mother was American and Catholic, who used to say : "every time we go to our grandmother house for Friday's visit, we are always the last left for greetings, as if we are some second class grandchildren" .
And this was not due to the fact that her mother was Catholic, rather for being a foreigner .
Marrying an outsider for some, is a sort of betrayal .
This is not the mentality of all .
I remember reading that Carol, the author of one of the most famous blogs of the Gulf, American bedu, has great memories of her family and especially of her mother in law .

This is the same attitude which brings some Arabs to be racist against black people or against fellow Arabs with mixed blood .
I remember being at a restaurant once, and witnessing a fight between two of same nationality, with one accusing the other to be black and not of pure descent .
They were drunk of course but as they say, in vino veritas .
There is this thinking that an Arab is worth to be called so, only if both mother and father are .

In general, I would say that some Arabs lack flexibility due to their being closed in their own world and fearing that opening up, necessarily means to lose something of their identity .
In the same way, here in Europe we fear to be stripped of our sovereignity as long as more foreigners come to our land .
With time, education and exchanges, I am positive this attitude will slightly modify .