Dear Agatha,
I am 33 in a relationship with a 28-year old lady. We are both in love and have taken the decision to spend the rest of our lives together, a decision that will be formalised within the next year.
Sadly there hasn’t been any week since we started courting that she hasn’t picked quarrel with me over one issue or the other. And most of the time she is always in the wrong but I still make the effort for peace to reign.
Agatha, I am not cut out for this. I desire to have a home where I will long to come to after work, not a house that has a woman who takes delight in nagging at every opportunity and is very stubborn too.
Though, am not perfect but at her age, I expect her to be able to overlook certain things and move on with life. It seems she simply enjoys nagging and making it obvious to everyone that is around her that she finds everything wrong.
I am thinking of changing my mind because I can't stand nagging of any kind.
Ayo.
Dear Ayo, I understand your situation and the attendant fear of making the wrong choice. There is nothing as irritating and bothersome as having a partner who nags at everything and is insensitive to the feelings of the other party.
Marriage is a journey of a lifetime, one that has no place for mistakes and sentimental decisions. Although founded on sentiments, it is entrenched by objectivity and realistic options of the situation at hand.
There is no way you can ever be happy if your choice gives you nothing but trouble.
If she has consistently picked quarrel with you at every given opportunity, then it shows a flaw in your relationship. This must be properly addressed if you hope to go far in your marriage.
What makes a home isn’t the structure or the quality of the décor, but the peace that envelops the place. Anywhere can be a house but not all houses are homes. If you seek a home, be careful whom you bring into it to share your space.
Solving issues like this takes time and patience. Being completely different persons, from dissimilar homes and cultural orientations, your views of life would expectedly differ unless both of you put a lot of efforts at working on your differences.
A lot of the time we are reflections of our family background. What type of home did she grow up in? What type of woman was or is her mother? Chances are if she grew up in a home where the woman of the house nagged and complained about virtually everything, she would take her cue from her. To understand this, take out the time to investigate her mother by asking her pointed question about her childhood days. It would also help you a lot to ask people she grew up with leading questions about your fiancée’s mother.
Although this information would not change her immediately but it would arm you with the knowledge of how to tackle the issue on the premise you are still interested in keeping the relationship.
Electing to change her would require you to ask how she felt all those years when her mother nagged her father or them over very mundane issues.
This is an issue where going physical or anger isn’t a panacea. What would work is using the memory of the past to create guilty and awareness of the likely consequences of what is most likely to happen if she continues in her current attitude. Without you spelling it out to her, her memories once tuned to the old channel of her youth would remember all the many times she wished she had another mother, how her mother’s attitude negatively influenced some aspects of her wrongly, which till date she doesn’t like.
Recalling the past would help her in more ways than anything you do, appreciate the harm she is doing to her own life and relationship with you. Only fools would want to live life through the negative examples of others.
This method would help her confront the reality of the negative training her mother impacted on her without you saying a word for or against it.
This way, you help send her back to the school of morals and ideal conducts without either of you fighting over the matter or exchanging hurtful words. The past holds a strong answer and lessons to our future. For the discerning mind, the past if properly deployed often points us into the right direction because it comes with heavy experiences.
She may not instantly be reformed but I bet you over time, she would stop nagging for fear of having a negative home or unhappy husband like hers while growing up.
We need help to change and sustain our zeal to do what is right. This means you must also hear from her why she thinks nagging can change things when a simple ‘please’ would have been wonderful.
Again, you have to show her the way by your example of courtesy. If you have any reason to disagree with her, give her the benefit of courteous approach as opposed to her rude attitude. Life is a big school of different faculties and departments. Its courses can never be exhausted in a lifetime. There are always different ways of doing the same thing. One of the cures to her problem is to expose her to another way of making known her displeasure. If she gets it right, nobody would notice she complains. You notice because she is crude and rude about it. If she were nice about her complaints chances are you would have done things her way before realising it.
As patiently as you can, sit her down to discuss your observations, feelings, regrets and wishes with her over her constant nagging as well as the fear it is generating inside of you. Tell her that one thing love cannot endure is nagging and for your sanity you might be forced to give up your love to have peace in your life.
Even the Bible warns against a woman who nags and since this is the only time you both have to work on the problem, don’t be afraid to say precisely what you mean. It is the only way you both can be happy.
Good luck
Posts
