A wife leads one into a small island state of SE Asia (7)
I believe the answer is:
sarawak
'state of se asia' is the definition.
'sarawak' can be an answer for 'state' (I've seen this before). I'm not sure about the 'of se asia' bit.
'a wife leads one into a small island' is the wordplay.
'leads' suggests taking the first letters.
'one' becomes 'a' (a thing is one thing).
'into' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'a small island' becomes 'sark' (I've seen this before).
The first letter of 'wife' is 'w'.
'a'+'w'+'a'='awa'
'awa' put into 'sark' is 'SARAWAK'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sarawak that I've seen before include "State of Malaysia" , "Region in N. Borneo" , "State within Borneo" , "island state" , "Malaysian state (Borneo)" .)