Dear Agatha,
Thanks for the super glue you use in mending broken hearts through your soothing words of advice.
I am 23 years of age and got married in the traditional way early this year. My husband is 30 years of age and in Ghana because his business is based there. I am in Lagos on my Industrial Training (IT) and stay with my father.
Recently, my husband told my father to allow me visit him in Ghana since it has been six months since we last saw. My father refused and now my husband is sounding fed up of the whole thing.
Please help me because I don’t know what to do.
Uzo.
Dear Uzo,
What excuse is your father giving for refusing you to visit your husband in Ghana? Was there any problem before or after the traditional wedding? Didn’t he collect bride price from your husband when the traditional marriage was done? What is the role and attitude of your mother in all these?
You may be 23, a child in the eyes of your father but let him realise that your status as a married woman has removed you from under his control to that of your husband. Under the law, your husband’s wishes take pre-eminence over his. So, he is wrong to keep you away from this man whose interest in you he has consented to before your both families and friends.
Asking for his permission to visit your husband is only a mark of respect to him because you stay under his roof, not his right. So, he lacks the authority he is exercising to keep you away from your husband.
This is the point you should make very clear to him unless, of course, your father has other reasons for wanting you by his side, your place is by your husband, no longer with your father.
You have a responsibility to your man, more than your father because there are certain things your husband can do with and for you which your father can never dream of doing with you. You are to your husband what your mother is to your father. No matter how much your father loves you, his wife remains his wife and her place or position in your father’s affairs cannot be substituted by you. So, denying your husband of the pleasures he enjoys by virtue of his marriage to your mother is selfish and unreasonable whatever his excuses may be.
Being a married woman, you are old enough to make your decisions. Sincerely, you don’t need your father’s permission to go and visit your husband. You have done the right thing of informing him, of letting him know your whereabouts but the decision of whether to go or not rests squarely with you.
Your husband has every reason to sound fed up. For six months he has had to endure your absence, curtailed his emotional desires for you and deprived himself of the essence of being married. At 30, your husband is in his prime and most virile. That he is requesting you to visit him shows he has deep feelings for you and wants you to help him reduce the pressure of his emotions and protect him from the temptation he is daily exposed to by your absence.
And if you are sincere, you feel the same thing he feels in Ghana. It couldn’t have been easy for you to live very far apart from the man you agreed to marry. Something compelling must have taken place within your heart and body for you to make the decision to marry him.
There is more to being married than the ceremony. If you delay the process of laying the right foundation or miss out on the opportunity of the early days to fine-tune your differences, your marriage may never recover from the consequences of what is happening to both of you now. Then it won’t be your father’s problem but your headache since you are the one wearing the shoes.
Six months is a long time in the life of a marriage especially a young one. If your husband isn’t the disciplined kind, these six months could distract him sufficiently to get another girl pregnant. Is that what your father want? Being a man, he should understand better than you the endurance limit of the average male especially a young man.
If he loves you as his daughter, he should be the one encouraging you to travel to your husband. We all get married at the point we know that our limits are running out, where we can longer bear the pressures of nature. When a man takes on the responsibility of a wife, he deserves every respect that goes with the title of a husband. How would your father feel if your mother’s father sits in his house and issues command to him on when or not to see your mother? To desire one’s wife isn’t a crime rather it is right of your husband to want you by his side.
Don’t wait until the dreaded happens when another woman takes your place by his side. Once a man starts getting fed up of a situation, especially the type your father has created in your marriage, he becomes vulnerable to his anger. When this happens, he forgets reason and allows his emotions take the driver seat, which means the first woman that engages his attention becomes your successor.
Call him and tell him to send you money if you don’t have enough to take you to him. Let him know you feel everything he feels and that you equally want to be with him else he might begin to think you are in alliance with your father to keep both of you apart. He may even think you are lying about your father’s attitude to mask the real reason you don’t want to come over.
Honestly, if you delay too much in going to him, you risk losing your home even before it has a chance to begin because he would begin to suspect and doubt you. Once a man begins to suspect his wife, it would take the wife a whole lifetime to make him belief in her again. Don’t give him the chance to call to question your loyalty to him.
If there is any time the Bible and law permits a child to disobey his or her parents, yours is a typical example. Your loyalty is now to your husband and not to your parents any longer.
Good luck.
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