Obedient Wife = Happy Family?

My Malay counselee asked me a couple of days ago whether I know much about the OWC (Obedient Wife Club)which she has strong views against. I had come across that name but had not bothered to know more. She enlightened me about the OWC in KL advising its members to be a "first class prostitute" to their husbands. The club believes that satisfying their husband's sexual desires will prevent loads of social problems and curb the proliferation of prostitution. My counselee does not abide by the idea and thinks the club is advocating wives to be husbands' sexual slaves.

I do not want to disagree with her but instead I shared with her an encounter I had whilst interning at the Family Service Centre some time ago. A husband had called in to ask for counselling because his marriage was on the rocks. He was a young man of early thirties and was able to divulge frankly to me the circumstances leading to the emotional strife between him and his wife. The couple had a new born baby of nine months. His wife had denied him sexual favours right from the day she was aware of the pregnancy until the baby was already nine months. In fustration the young man secretly watched pornography and called sex hotlines in another room while engaging in self satisfaction. When the wife discovered his "secrets" she was abhorred and a cold war ensued between them excalating to the wife toying with the idea of divorce.

Fortunately the marriage had not reached a point of no return and I was able to persuade the wife to have separate counselling sessions with me prior to the joint sessions. To my greatest surprise the young woman had absolutely no knowledge of the physical needs of men. She covered her mouth in horror when I enightened her about the "comfort women" during the Japanese World War II and why the Japanese had to resort to such an evil crime. Armed with researches on the gender differences in sexual needs I highlighted to the young lady that the most common reason women gave for initiating sexual intercourse was to receive love, intimacy and care whilst the most common reason for men was just TO RELEASE SEXUAL TENSION. "Yes" I had told the young woman then and now repeated it to my counselee, "despise them (the men) for all you want about their primitive animal instincts but that is how they are constituted, it is like denying a tiger food!"

I can still remember that case was quite interesting and enlightening for me too. During the joint sessions when I encouraged both husband and wife to express their feelings, the wife described feelings which surprised the husband and myself too. Apparently after she caught her husband in the self satisfaction act (sorry I am too conservative to use the M word here) she could not thereafter remove imaginations of her husband engaging sex with different women whom he chatted with over the sex hotlines. Hearing it directly from his wife, the young man realised for the first time how his activities impacted his wife; and had to repeatedly assure her that not a tinge of emotion was involved with those other women.

I told my counselee that as absurd as the OWC sounds there may be a slight glimpse of good advice in what they are advocating. In fact if I don't remember wrongly, there is a Chinese saying or maybe Cantonese saying (Cantonese always have excuses for vices)that goes like, a perfect wife is one who has the social graces of attending officious functions and at the same time possesses the looseness of behaviour in the private bed chambers (yin fu). Perhaps the OWC just need to change their name and refrain from using the word 'prostitute'. Sure enough in today's papers, the OWC may have a branch in Singapore but probably with a different name, the "Happy Family Club"!