My Girl Takes No Order Until I Bark

Dear Agatha,

I am 26 years old while my girlfriend is 19. Our relationship is just nine months old.

Our problem is that hardly will day passed without any quarrel due to her rudeness to me. She never listens to me until I shout at her, after which she will begin to cry.

It has become the pattern of our relationship and I am no longer comfortable with her behaviour, though I love her.

Agatha, could this be as a result of her age? Can she still be said to be a child?

Worried Guy.

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Dear Worried Guy,

At 19, she still has a long way to go. At the tail end of her turbulent teenage years, she is bound to still be stubborn and an irritant to anyone close to her. She is at the age where receiving instruction or abiding by the rules is most difficult.

This is because she already sees herself as an adult and doesn’t understand why she can’t have all the freedom that go with the age.

Your job as her boyfriend is not to get irritated but to show her through your own good example that being an adult doesn’t stop one from abiding by rules.

Shouting at her will only frighten her and make her wonder at the wisdom of exchanging one form of restriction for another. Don’t forget all these while she has been under the authority of either her parents or guardians, whose rules she has to abide with to prevent problems from them.

In her mind’s eyes, she sees her relationship with you as a visa to the world of unlimited freedom one in which she can do and undo.

Right now she isn’t sure with you breathing down her neck with the very rules she is running from. You have broken the mirror of the perfect world she had all along dreamt of. Her cries are therefore signs of frustration, despair as well as disappointment.

Being eight years older than she is, give her the benefit of your experience. Help her understand through patience and understanding that there is nothing like absolute freedom. That life is about moderation and that our senses of responsibilities to the feelings of others around us demand we always strive to put their interest first before ours.

That having a sense of responsibility for others is the check nature has placed on our freedom.

When next she refuses to obey simple instruction, let her understand that a relationship without its own sets of rules cannot succeed. She has to learn to respect you as the leader of the team for you to appreciate her position in your life. That if she continues to behave like she is currently doing, the love you have for her might not be able to sustain the relationship.

Also give her the opportunity to make her mistakes because that is the only way she can learn. This is possible through patience and tolerance on your path. Desist from being too rigid and appreciate the fact that you too went through this subtle crisis in your own time.

Good luck.