At least 25,000 women are raped in Peru every year and a great number of the cases, particularly among young, poor women, are resolved by offers of marriage, which many victims feel obliged to accept. These facts, although extreme, reflect an attitude, prevalent in our own culture, that makes domestic life so difficult for couples today. We still live with stereotypes of each other and even more so with a basic inequality, historically, and in today's culture. To view women as objects of male lust, accessible to male whim and violence, destroys any meaningful relationship between the two sexes. What chance can any domestic setting have if it begins with such a misunderstanding of marriage as that portrayed in the Peru story.
Domestic life has roots in servitude.
Even when men and women have rejected the cultural traditions of submission and natural inequality, their lives together are difficult. There's room for an interpreter. Or the example a participant in our discussion group on today's topic shared about workers at a corporation who were given the choice of having either a day care center or a fitness center. The individuality of each and the significance of distance and self-determination must be honored at the same time that each is receptive and even vulnerable to the other in the building of intimacy. This self and other issue is central in any close relationship.