Career and marriage, or career versus marriage?

By Ridwan M. Sijabat

JAKARTA (JP): Some working women, some day, may have to make the unenviable choice of sacrificing either career or marriage. The two, in some circumstances, are not always compatible.

While many successful career women lead successful married lives, there are cases where successful women's marriages go down the drain, says well-known psychiatrist Naek Lumban Tobing.

Couples, where the wife is more successful than the husband are especially vulnerable, says Tobing, who writes columns on sexual problems and marriage guidance for several periodicals.

With two-income families now a growing phenomenon in Indonesia, it is not unusual to find marriages where the woman's career is more successful than her husband's, and she earns more.

This can make a husband feel inferior, and this, Tobing says, can be destructive in any marriage.

Inferiority also breeds contempt, and leads to disharmony, bickering, dishonesty, eventually to sexual disharmony and even infertility, as well as separation and divorce, says Tobing.

He says that in most cases, both partners should share the blame for the failure of a marriage.

"Many married couples cannot have a harmonious sexual relationship if the husband feels inferior because of his wife's advancing career," he says. "In the meantime, the wife is insensitive to the husband's feelings."

Tobing runs a clinic in the elite Kebayoran area in South Jakarta providing sexual counseling for married couples.

He says the troubled couples he sees often had not realized their prolonged conflict had its origins in the husband's feeling of inferiority because his wife was doing better in her job than him.

In trying to overcome this inferiority, some men become household dictators, and often resort to violence. "Why? Because they have no other way of competing against their wives."

Others seek compensation with other women. "In metropolitan cities like Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan, there are places for men to satisfy their sexual urges. Alternatively, they have affairs with women from their workplaces," Tobing says.

But inferiority can also affect a man's sex drive, he warns. "Men first become afraid of, then hesitant, or unwilling to have sex with their wives, and sooner or later this affects and weakens their libido."

Asked why men feel inferior with a successful wife, Naek said, "our culture still cannot accept it".

Tobing says that generally men prefer to marry women who are younger, poorer and less intelligent. "Many men feel uneasy about their wife being the dominant partner in the marriage."

Ideally, instead of feeling inferior, a man should be happy that his wife is successful, he says.

Men should learn to accept the possibility that their wives are more successful than they are in their careers, he says. "It is natural nowadays to see a wife with a better career, who is more intelligent, and who is earning more money."

As religious people, these couples should consider it as God's grace, Tobing says.

Since this is a new phenomena in urban Indonesia, tradition does not have the answers if problems do occur.

Couples in such a situation should decide who is to be the dominant partner, Tobing says. "They should be open to one another and discuss solutions. The last thing they want is to let problems degenerate into endless conflict."