Instead...

Instead, apart from soothing and comforting the sexual instinct, it has many other aspects and dimensions of excellence, worth and importance, like raising a family. It gifts man with other factors such as commitment, completion, progress, maturity, development of personality, comfort and many more valuable benefits. Commitment to a wife and family brings magnanimity, splendour and a sense of social responsibility, and makes many of his capabilities and sleeping talents bloom and bear fruit.

After marriage, the personality of a man changes into a social personality and he considers himself absolutely responsible for the security of his wife and children’s future. On this account, he uses the sum total of his senses, initiatives and abilities.”[^2] There is an enjoyment and progress in raising a family to which nothing can be the substitute. Martyr Mutahhari (ra) says in this regard: “There are ethical characteristics, which can not be achieved, except in the school of family raising.

The foundation of a family means developing a kind of interest in the fate of others. The moralists and ascetics who have not crossed through this phase have a sort of immaturity and childhood in their personalities to the end of their lives. And it is one of the reasons why marriage has been stressed upon as a sacred matter and a service in Islam.

Marriage is the first and preliminary phase of exit from the (shell of) natural personal self, and the expansion of human’s personality.”[^3] Similarly, he says about the training mode of marriage: “There is a maturity, a maturity, which does not take shape except in the shade of marriage and raising of family. It is not shaped in school, formed in a crusade against ego, nor is it inculcated and raised through night vigil and prayers.

It does not even come into existence through love and attachment with pious ones.”[^4] What a large number of people have been observed who did not follow any principles of ethics, religion, and society, and a form of frivolity, heedlessness, and debauchery overwhelmed their character. But after getting married, their character, morale, and attitude changed and they became sober and dignified. And their habits and manners began to show a kind of graciousness and sagaciousness.