Do you trust your spouse?

Your wife is not your God. You need not doubt, you need not trust. It is a game -- don't make it so serious! But you have been told to trust your wife, to trust your husband. And because of this very teaching, distrust arises. In fact, you have been told to trust. For centuries it has been known that it is very difficult to trust your own wife, very difficult to trust your own husband; it is next to impossible.

If your wife is interested in you, how can you trust her? If she is still interested in men -- and you are only a man, and there are many many men who are far more handsome -- how can you trust your wife? If she is interested in you she must be interested in others too. She can be trusted only when she loses all interest in you too; then, of course, you can trust her. She has lost all interest in men -- she is almost dead.

You can trust your husband only if he is no longer interested in your body. If he is interested in your face, your body, your proportion, your beauty, how can he avoid being interested in other women's bodies, other women's faces, other women's beauty? It is impossible. You are asking something inhuman or something superhuman. And your poor husband is neither -- neither inhuman nor superhuman. He is just a poor husband, a poor human being... or a poor wife.

Don't demand such impossible things. It is natural; your wife is bound to fantasize about other men. It is impossible for her to dream about you, remember. I have never heard of a wife dreaming about her own husband. Who dreams about one's own husband or one's own wife? For what? Is the day not enough? Do you have to devote your night and your dreams also to the same woman, to the same man?

In dreams you are free; that is the only freedom left. In dreams you have a private world of your own. Your wife cannot peep in your dreams and say, "What are you doing? Stop!" In dreams you can have a few parties with the neighbors' wives. And nothing is wrong in it, nobody is harmed. Just, you have a good sleep and in the morning you have a smile on your face. Don't ask the impossible. 

Mulla Nasruddin said, "For the whole ten years of our married life I always trusted my wife. And then we moved from Calcutta to Poona -- and I discovered we still had the same milkman!" 

There is no need to trust or not to trust your spouses, why bring in the question of trust? it is just a game! Play it joyfully. You make it too serious. And when you start demanding, "Be faithful to me!" you are creating a situation in which it will become impossible for the poor woman to be faithful to you. Give her total freedom; then she may be faithful to you.

Life functions in a very strange way. If you give her total freedom you are WORTH trusting. A great faith may arise in her. If a wife gives total freedom to the husband, that shows she loves him so much that she would like him to be happy in every possible way. Even if sometimes he is happy with some other woman she will feel happy because he is happy. And then a totally different quality of trust may arise. I am not saying that it is bound to arise -- it is not an inevitability. I am saying perhaps, because about human beings nothing can be predicted.

The relationship between wife and husband is a very strange relationship because these are two different worlds. The woman functions in a different way, from a different center. She is more intuitive and the man is more intellectual. That's why they are attracted to each other. Not only physiologically they are polarities, but psychologically also they are polar opposites. They are intimate enemies. There is bound to be a little conflict, and that is not bad; it keeps the relationship alive. Whenever you see that the husband and wife have stopped fighting completely, that means the marriage is really finished; nothing is left now. Even fight is not left... all is finished. 

The butcher and the milkman were discussing the pros and cons of married life. "Do you really believe it is better than being single?" demanded Kali, the butcher.

"In a way," said the milkman, who was fond of philosophizing. "After all, if it were not for marriage, we would have to do all our fighting with strangers." 

Yes, that is true. It is good to fight with your own wife; at least the fight is with the friend. Otherwise you will have to do your fighting with strangers.

There is no need to demand these things -- trust, faith. Live together joyously. Make as much out of your being together as possible. 

Rather than doing that, people create such problems, useless problems, and destroy all their joys. The wife has no obligation to be faithful to you, neither do you have any obligation to be faithful to her. You love her, she loves you; that's enough. Don't bring faith into it. If love cannot keep you together, nothing else can keep you together. And if love cannot keep you together, then anything that can keep you together is dangerous. 

 

Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Volume 10”