Sunday, May 10, 2009

My Old Husband Brutish, Sends Me Packing


Dear Agatha,


I was 17 when I was persuaded to marry a 37-year-old man because of the inability of my father to send me to school.

As a result, my father pressured me into early marriage to a man who presented himself as being God send.

A year after, I gave birth to his son and contrary to his promises to send me to school at the time he came for my hand in marriage, he refused.

In addition to his refusal, he began to maltreat me and after two years of living with him, he sent me back to my parents without my one-and-a half-year old baby.

This is my second year in my father’s house. What do I do?

Franka.

Dear Franka,

What really transpired between your parents and the man on one hand and you and him on the other hand? Did your parents at any time use you as collateral to get money from the man? How much do you know about the conditions that led your parents pressurising you to marry the man? Why did they insist you marry a man 20 years older than you? Did you ever bother to find out why they wanted you to marry him beyond the issue of them not having the money to send you to school? What efforts did they make at reconciling the two of you and helping you get the baby?

Such pressures couldn’t have come from the blues without some money exchanging hands. Their inability to protest his treatment of yours as well as taking a child of one and a half years from you underscores the existence of some underground negotiations between your parents and husband, which you aren’t privy to.

If it were just a case of sending you to school alone, your parents would have been bold to confront him but if they have collected some money upfront, it would be difficult for them to protest his ill-treatment of yours.

What you should do now is to first ask your parents the terms of their agreement with this man. Beg them to tell you the whole truth since it would not only help you understand his behaviour towards you but help you move forward with the new choices you have to make.

The fact is, unless you have a clear understanding of why he behaved that way, it might be difficult for you to ever trust another man sufficiently to marry him. This is one point you have to stress to your parents who in the first place failed you.

Had your parents strived despite their financial limitations to live up to their responsibilities towards you, this man would have applied some measure of respect in handling you.

In addition, you could also have complicated issues between you and this man by your own inexperience. Being so young and in the circumstances you married, there is the tendency you must have put up certain behaviour he simply couldn’t tolerate or cope with. It is only expected that you would transfer your frustration at not being able to go to school like your peers, anger with your parents’ failure and disappointment at the age differences between you two. Being so young, you naturally regard him as being too old and your shame at being seen with him may have influenced you to behave in ways completely unacceptable to one older than you. As your husband, his position demands respect, loyalty and honour from you at all times irrespective of the conditions the marriage took place. Anything short of this would be interpreted as disrespect from not only him but also by people around him.

Being a lot older than you, he is bound to react violently to some attitudes you put up that appear to insult his age and position. And because of the way your family presented you to him, his anger may have also gone overboard.

Had your mother, in particular, educated you on your duties to your husband and your home, perhaps he wouldn’t have been so brutal in his reactions to you.

Having stayed away from him for two years, can you pinpoint your own contributions to the break-down of the union? Given another opportunity to either go back to him or remarry another man, what lessons did you take away from this experience? What are the things you would like to do differently? This is the point to start from. Knowing what were your own faults, would help you know how to make amends without bitterness and sense of self- righteousness.

Whether you like it or not, you both have a baby, so you cannot afford to remain bitter with him. You may be young in terms of age, but your experiences are not that of a young woman anymore for the simple reason you have been married and a mother to an innocent life. That child demands you bury your own bitterness and frustrations with life as well as the choices forced on you by your parents. One of your duties as the mother of that child is that he grows up without bitterness and sad memories.

Growing up completely without knowledge of you is capable of making him very bitter in future because only stories told him by a bitter and disappointed father would remain etched in his memory. For this reason, you have to make the effort at erasing some of the disappointments you encountered and that he also acquired while the marriage lasted. This is to enable both of you sit down to discuss the welfare and well-being of the baby.

Without both of you first clearing the debris of your joint pains, negotiating the happiness of that child would be difficult. As the mother, it behoves you to bury whatever pride you have and make peace with him.

Besides the baby, deep in your heart, do you feel anything for this man beyond regrets? Do you see yourself going back to him? If not, let your parents begin the move for the two of you to properly annul the marriage to give you the freedom to begin all over again.

However, your new beginning must feature the issue of self-empowerment to prevent you having to depend solely on a man to do everything for you.

Your parents owe you more than accommodation. If they cannot send you to school, they must be able to give you some money to begin any of the small businesses a lot of people are now going into. They must equip you with whatever they can afford to help you realise who you are in life.

You are their primary responsibility, not that of any man. They should begin the process of investing in a quality future for you and not offer you to the highest bidder to marry. However, you must begin to take responsibilities too for your life else you risk being hurt the more.

Good luck.