There are many different types of intelligence; emotional intelligence is just one. But it is the type of intelligence in which many women naturally excel.
Men tend to have certain types of intelligence: spatial awareness, technical know-how of specific fields, abstract thinking. Women tend to possess a different set of skills: our ability to manage emotions, empathise, and build strong social relationships.
We women are the glue that holds the family together. We are the agents of cohesion, unity, bonding. Without us, things fall apart.
As Muslim women, we want to harness our inherent emotional intelligence to enhance our performance in the roles of Wife and Mother. This brings feelings of joy and safety to our husband and children, enriches the inner life of our entire family, and raises our collective happiness levels Insha Allah.
What traits does the emotionally intelligent Muslim wife have?
- Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent people clearly recognise their emotions, values, strengths, and weaknesses. They reflect on how their feelings impact their moods, thoughts, and actions. They live life consciously, not unconsciously just moving on autopilot. For example, when feeling stressed, they may notice tension in their muscles, their heart beating faster, their thoughts racing. When their anger spikes, they quickly realize what’s happening within them and are able to spot the issue in real-time.
Without self-awareness, people live life in a defensive, knee-jerk reactionary way, reacting arbitrarily to things instead of responding thoughtfully. And then it’s easy to overreact and hurt people.
A wife who has high levels of self-awareness is cognisant of her own feelings and her own mental and emotional state. She is self-aware enough to pause and take stock of her own emotions and moods, and then adjusts her actions accordingly in her interactions with her husband. If she realises, for example, that she’s just in a dark mood, she understands this fact clearly and correctly attributes her feelings of irritation or annoyance to her original mood and not to her husband who just walked into the room. She owns her feelings and doesn’t project them onto others unfairly.
- Emotional Regulation
Once you are aware of your emotions, you can start to regulate them. If you can tell that you are feeling stressed, you can begin to try to find ways to de-stress. There are good ways to de-stress, and then there are bad ways.
An emotionally intelligent wife knows healthy ways to regulate her emotions. She will practice simple but effective techniques like Zikr, sending Salawat on the Prophet ﷺ, deep abdominal breathing, or pausing for a minute to give herself time to regroup. She will journal, writing down what she’s feeling and thinking to get it all out on paper.
So, for example, if a discussion with her husband turns into an argument, an emotionally intelligent wife will pause, take a deep breath, and re-set. She may apologise for getting defensive, express her respect and love for her husband, and ask him if he wants to continue the discussion now or revisit it in a little while after both feel calmer.
- Empathy
Empathy is an understanding of how someone else might be feeling. It’s a way to connect with others outside of ourselves.
Someone who has little empathy is self-centred and selfish, unable to see beyond themselves and their needs and wants. This usually also comes with an entitled attitude and callous, inconsiderate behaviour toward others. There’s no real capacity to even consider the feelings others because one is so consumed with thoughts of the self.
But the emotionally intelligent wife is able to feel and show empathy for others, especially her husband, children, family. She can put herself in their shoes and imagine what they must be feeling and going through. This gives her a tolerant, understanding attitude that makes interactions with her soft and safe.
For example, if her husband came home from work one day, grumpy or angry, and in response to her cheerful greeting, he snaps at her impatiently, she has two options. One option is: she can react reflexively to his brusque tone and take his anger personally, and have a full-on fight with him. Or, option two: she can immediately sense his bad mood and correctly assess that she isn’t the source of his anger. She realises that he is probably exhausted from his long day, and surmises that something probably happened at work that has upset or hurt him. She sees his impatiently snapping at her for what it is: misplaced anger that he most likely didn’t mean to direct at her. So, she doesn’t take it personally.
She feels for him, and because of her empathy, she’s able to set aside her own potential feelings of hurt in order to see his pain. So instead of taking his grumpiness as an attack, she looks at him with understanding and either gives him some space to decompress from work, or goes up to him to give him a loving hug for comfort. She knows what he needs in that moment and is empathetic enough to offer it to him generously.
A good husband truly appreciates his wife and her natural skill set, so different from his own.
- Where he is hard as he must be in dealing with the outside world, she is soft in dealing with him and within the family.
- Where he is disagreeable with strangers in his mission to protect the family, she is agreeable and cooperative with him.
- Where he is dominant as he carves out a place for himself and his family in the communal hierarchy of society, she is submissive to him and offers her support.
- Where he leads bravely, she follows trustingly.
- Where he makes decisions based on his masculine intelligence and left-brain rationality, she balances him out with her feminine intuition and right-brain creativity.
Both sets of skills are important and necessary for the well-being and tranquillity of the family.
“And one of His signs is that He created for you spouses from among yourselves so that you may find tranquility in them. And He has placed between you compassion and mercy. Surely in this are signs for people who reflect.” [Rum, 21]
Allah Ta’ala has created us women with a specific set of skills and a special type of intelligence.
We bring سكينة (tranquility), مودة (affection) and رحمة (mercy).
Let us accept and fully embrace our natural wisdom and feminine capabilities, instead of trying to warp ourselves into sub-par men.
Modernity tries to tell women to deny their natural femininity and to chase masculinity instead.
They are wrong.
Femininity is beautiful, important, vital.
What Allah Ta’ala has given us women is enough. Alhamdulillah.
This article was authored by Umm Khalid; A Hafizah of the Quran, Muslim home schooler who focuses on children education, Muslim marriages, family and feminism.