Dear Agatha,
Thanks for all your efforts at helping people solve their problems. I have one that I want to share with you. I really don’t know what to do. I got married to an old friend I picked from the street about four years, ago. We dated for close to three years before we got married.
Because I was pregnant, my parents did everything possible to make us happy irrespective of the fact that his mother didn’t contribute anything to the wedding.
Unfortunately, I lost the baby after the wedding and ever since, he and his mother have been misbehaving to the extent he has asked me to go. According to him, the baby that brought us together is gone. I tried and eventually left: but after a month he called me. Three months on, it has been one problem to another. If he isn’t accusing my mother of causing the death of my unborn child, since she took me to the hospital when he and his mother weren’t ready because he didn’t have a job. Whenever we fight, he picks his things and go over to his mother’s to stay.
Recently, he accused me of answering calls in the night. He not only beat me as a result of it but, picked his things and left for his parents’. When my daddy called his mother, she lied she wasn’t in town so I went to his office to demand payment for the money he collected from me.
He called his mother who in turn called my father, telling him she doesn’t even know if her son and I are really married hence, the need for us to go our different ways. I have left his house for my parents’.
Can I start another relationship because I am bored being alone?
Worried Rose.
Dear Worried Rose,
No matter the challenges your marriage is going through, wisdom demands you apply caution. No marriage is without challenges, sacrifices and sometimes regrets.
You are going through these challenges because at inception you didn’t put the right things in place. People don’t get married because they have to but because they want to. You got married because you got pregnant; and not because you both desired it at that moment. But having done it, you must put in everything to make it work.
A lot of us go through life with so many burdens we can do without. This is often because, a lot of us refuse to outgrow our childhood days. We bring into our adult lives so many unnecessary garbage from our youths. Some of the mistakes we make in our adult lives are actually those things we ignorantly thought were right for us, the mistakes of our parents and all the adults that had one thing or the other to do in our lives.
The burden of your marriage began the moment you and your husband accepted to take on the burdens of your sets of parents into your marriages. None of you bothered to investigate the weaknesses in your own parents’ marriages: instead, you allowed them infect your lives with whatever issues they have been battling with in their own marriages which you and your husband know but, are too blinded by affections for your parents to see.
Honestly, there is no way you can both move beyond the point your marriage is, if you and your husband don’t move out of the control of your set of parents.
In addition, you need wisdom to overcome the overbearing influence of a mother-in-law.
You have made the first major mistake of not knowing the nature of your husband before getting married to him; don’t make another costly mistake of ending this marriage without X-raying precisely what you feel for him. Granted things are not too good between both of you now but, if left on your own to tailor your own way by your parents, things will turn out differently.
This is why you need to exercise some patience for now, at least until you are sure of what you really feel for your man and marriage.
This is the point you ask yourself the all important questions, did you ever love him that much to marry him in the first place? Would you have married him if it hadn’t been for the pregnancy in the first place?
If the baby was the reason for the marriage; what do you feel now for him? Do you think you can grow to love him, if given the chance? As a matter of fact, how deep is your love for this man?
There is also the matter of your perception of him. In your mail, you said you picked him from the streets. This kind of attitude often than not, gets one into trouble because once you think it, you unknowingly begin to act it in such a way the other person is made to feel inferior. If this is the case, there is no way your husband or his family can be comfortable with that kind of attitude from you or your family.
In the first place, it was wrong of your parents to completely taken on the wedding expenses. No matter how much money they have, they should have allowed him contribute something to the wedding after all, it was also his wedding. Doubtless, your parents meant well, thought they were doing you and your man a favour; but experience should have taught them that in matters concerning marriages and in-laws, caution should be applied to avoid wrong interpretation of one’s motives.
As the case is now, your in-laws are misrepresenting the offer of your parents to sponsor the wedding to mean you want to dominate their son. Perhaps the opposition to your marriage wouldn’t have been this stiff if your parents had left the two of you to manage your problem, when you got pregnant.
Sponsoring the wedding looked to your in-laws as an act of desperation; one done to make them appear inadequate as well as inferior. There was no way they wouldn’t have sourced money from friends or relations if they had approved of you in the first place. Telling you and your family they don’t have money was to show their lack of support for your relationship with their son. This is the issue your parents should have tackled instantly instead of paying for the wedding expenses.
The fact that they failed to act where and when they should, contributed to the problem you are having with your husband. As it is, if you want to have peace in your marriage, it is high time you took responsibility for your actions. There is no marriage in life that is free of problems. The difference between successful and failed marriage, is the extra efforts we put into it.
If you end this marriage on account of the issues you are having with your husband, would you also run away when problems come in your new relationship?
Problems are meant to be solved, so learn to tackle the one you have in your marriage now to avoid greater problems in future. Begin by praying for your husband; he needs your support now more than ever before.
It isnt normal for a man to pack from his home to his parents’ whenever there is a disagreement between him and his wife. This is the point you begin your prayers from. It is important you stand in gap for him.
This is in addition to changing your attitude because there are things that need practical solutions which prayers cannot change. Do a proper check of how you are a problem in your marriage. Granted, your husband may have his own problems; but only a wise woman knows how to pray her home to success.
Overtime, with the right attitude, your in-laws would come to see the goodness in you and accept you for who you are.
It takes patience and wisdom to win the toughest of marital problems.
Good luck.
