Dear Agatha,
Before I say anything I want to appreciate your commitment to your God given assignment. Having read other columns like yours, I make bold to say yours is way above because of the seriousness as well as honesty you bring to bear on issues. God is really using you and I pray He will also solve your own problems too.
Please help me recover my home. How do I make my mother-in-law leave, wean my husband from her apron strings and keep his family at bay?
For the six years I have been married, I haven’t enjoyed any moment of peace in my home. If my mother-in-law isn’t breathing down my neck, it is one of my husband’s siblings asking for something. Whenever I complain, he says it is because I don’t like his family coming close to him.
The recent incident that is making me share my story with you and the public has to do with the issue of his determination to send their last born to a private university. Although the lady has since resumed at the Covenant University, the dust generated by this decision of his is threatening to the peace of our home. This is because I also have to send my younger brother to school and need the money to pay his school fees at a private university I also wish him to attend.
My salary can’t afford the fees and he is refusing helping me to pick the bills whereas, he would gladly do it if the request coming from his own side of the family. He said he would pay the fees being demanded by the University of Lagos and that if I move him out of the place to a private university, he won’t pay. He is our only boy and I want the best for him.
Because of this issue, he has stopped coming home early saying I am nagging him. Weekends he takes off with the children leaving me on my own. He seems to be avoiding my company all because I insist he pays my brother’s fees. Is it right? If I have tolerated him wasting funds on his family, coped with his mother’s constant present, her harassment and criticism, why is it difficult for him too to make me happy by doing this for me? Don’t I have the right to make demands on him? Are my people too not entitled to his income? I am really hurt and it is all beginning to affect my marriage. I now see him as being wicked, uncaring and insensitive to the things that are important to me.
I honestly feel like ending it all. Please help me Agatha because I am fed up.
Hurting Wife.
Dear Hurting Wife,
Be careful you don’t import a foreign problem into your marriage. What would be your excuse for ending your marriage? That he is caring for his family, repaying a debt he owes his mother who from the day she conceived him to the day you married him, was there by his side or because he offered to pay for your brother’s university education in a Federal Government-owned university, instead of the private university, you want him to go on account of your husband sending his sibling to a private one?
You are allowing the jealousy of your husband’s close relationship with his family prejudice your handling of this matter.
In the first place, he hasn’t said he won’t help your family just that he cannot afford to send him to a private university. As a good wife, you should first of all appreciate this gesture on his part because in all sincerity, it isn’t part of his responsibility to train your brother. That he is offering to, underscores his love and respect for you, so say thank you first for this offer.
We get the best out of people when we learn to appreciate the little things they do for us first. Telling him thank you could make him change his mind about his decision but insisting he does the same thing he is doing for his family for yours isn’t right in the sense that this family made him the finished product you love and are living with today. If his mother didn’t train him, care for him, provide him with all the support base for the realisation of his dreams, would you have gone out with him or married him for that matter?
Whatever he is today comes from that woman you now think has no right to his money and time. Those siblings you think don’t deserve his attention taught him how to care and be responsible. Without them to help him learn how to relate with other people, take into consideration their emotions, perhaps he wouldn’t be so perfect for you. Whatever the flaws you see in him are the very things that made him so special to you and ideal enough for you to marry. Learn to appreciate this very important thing if you hope to be happy and enjoy peace in this marriage.
Don’t forget you are also a woman, a mother who would one day become a mother-in-law. How would you feel if your daughter-in-law in later years prevents her husband from helping the same people he grew up with? Stop you from visiting your son and making demands on his money and time on account of her being his wife? In this woman’s shoes how would you feel? Happy that you are no longer welcomed in the house of the man you gave life to, made sacrifices for, endured long hours of anxiety when sick or depressed? Don’t forget this woman could have stopped you from coming into her family if she wanted to. She didn’t because she felt you could make her son happy. If you are accusing her of putting unnecessary pressure on her son to do her bidding what would you call what you are doing, putting pressure on him to pay your brother’s tuition?
If you are really desirous of your sibling attending a private university, why not make up the difference since he has offered to pay the fees in his current university? Why would you want your brother to attend a school you cannot afford to pay for? Being your brother and your desire for him to have what you think is the best, collect whatever your husband is offering and balance it for the sake of peace in your home. If you play your cards well by being grateful and full of respect for him, he might decide to pay the fees in full not because he has the money but to reciprocate your respect and appreciation of his person. It isn’t just you but your brother too has to learn to show appreciation to avoid taking liberty for granted. This may be difficult for him to do if you as his sister fails to package your husband to earn the respect of your family. If you persist in disrobing your husband on account of his refusal to send your brother to a private university in the presence of your family, it may not augur well for you in the long run because they would use the same words you used against him to drag you in the mud too.
Be careful you don’t use your own hands to destroy your home. You have a good husband. Many men would rather call your bluff. Offering to pay the fees means he is meeting all the other obligations to you and the children.
On the contrary, you are the one being insensitive, wicked to yourself and family and completely unreasonable. You have a right to his time and money but your family doesn’t. If he is doing it, it is because he loves you and has come to accept your family as being part of the package. If he were to tow your line of argument, your family should be kept outside the marriage just as you want him to keep his family out of your home. Marriage is endurance, sacrifices, support, tolerance and plenty of trust in God. Your husband has made an important concession, in your interest you must learn to see his family as part of the package of being married to this man. If you fail to accept his people as yours, don’t nag or blame anybody when he also begins to demand your family stays out of his house. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Whatever the issues are with your marriage, invite the presence of God into it through prayers and not nagging.
Good luck.
Before I say anything I want to appreciate your commitment to your God given assignment. Having read other columns like yours, I make bold to say yours is way above because of the seriousness as well as honesty you bring to bear on issues. God is really using you and I pray He will also solve your own problems too.
Please help me recover my home. How do I make my mother-in-law leave, wean my husband from her apron strings and keep his family at bay?
For the six years I have been married, I haven’t enjoyed any moment of peace in my home. If my mother-in-law isn’t breathing down my neck, it is one of my husband’s siblings asking for something. Whenever I complain, he says it is because I don’t like his family coming close to him.
The recent incident that is making me share my story with you and the public has to do with the issue of his determination to send their last born to a private university. Although the lady has since resumed at the Covenant University, the dust generated by this decision of his is threatening to the peace of our home. This is because I also have to send my younger brother to school and need the money to pay his school fees at a private university I also wish him to attend.
My salary can’t afford the fees and he is refusing helping me to pick the bills whereas, he would gladly do it if the request coming from his own side of the family. He said he would pay the fees being demanded by the University of Lagos and that if I move him out of the place to a private university, he won’t pay. He is our only boy and I want the best for him.
Because of this issue, he has stopped coming home early saying I am nagging him. Weekends he takes off with the children leaving me on my own. He seems to be avoiding my company all because I insist he pays my brother’s fees. Is it right? If I have tolerated him wasting funds on his family, coped with his mother’s constant present, her harassment and criticism, why is it difficult for him too to make me happy by doing this for me? Don’t I have the right to make demands on him? Are my people too not entitled to his income? I am really hurt and it is all beginning to affect my marriage. I now see him as being wicked, uncaring and insensitive to the things that are important to me.
I honestly feel like ending it all. Please help me Agatha because I am fed up.
Hurting Wife.
Dear Hurting Wife,
Be careful you don’t import a foreign problem into your marriage. What would be your excuse for ending your marriage? That he is caring for his family, repaying a debt he owes his mother who from the day she conceived him to the day you married him, was there by his side or because he offered to pay for your brother’s university education in a Federal Government-owned university, instead of the private university, you want him to go on account of your husband sending his sibling to a private one?
You are allowing the jealousy of your husband’s close relationship with his family prejudice your handling of this matter.
In the first place, he hasn’t said he won’t help your family just that he cannot afford to send him to a private university. As a good wife, you should first of all appreciate this gesture on his part because in all sincerity, it isn’t part of his responsibility to train your brother. That he is offering to, underscores his love and respect for you, so say thank you first for this offer.
We get the best out of people when we learn to appreciate the little things they do for us first. Telling him thank you could make him change his mind about his decision but insisting he does the same thing he is doing for his family for yours isn’t right in the sense that this family made him the finished product you love and are living with today. If his mother didn’t train him, care for him, provide him with all the support base for the realisation of his dreams, would you have gone out with him or married him for that matter?
Whatever he is today comes from that woman you now think has no right to his money and time. Those siblings you think don’t deserve his attention taught him how to care and be responsible. Without them to help him learn how to relate with other people, take into consideration their emotions, perhaps he wouldn’t be so perfect for you. Whatever the flaws you see in him are the very things that made him so special to you and ideal enough for you to marry. Learn to appreciate this very important thing if you hope to be happy and enjoy peace in this marriage.
Don’t forget you are also a woman, a mother who would one day become a mother-in-law. How would you feel if your daughter-in-law in later years prevents her husband from helping the same people he grew up with? Stop you from visiting your son and making demands on his money and time on account of her being his wife? In this woman’s shoes how would you feel? Happy that you are no longer welcomed in the house of the man you gave life to, made sacrifices for, endured long hours of anxiety when sick or depressed? Don’t forget this woman could have stopped you from coming into her family if she wanted to. She didn’t because she felt you could make her son happy. If you are accusing her of putting unnecessary pressure on her son to do her bidding what would you call what you are doing, putting pressure on him to pay your brother’s tuition?
If you are really desirous of your sibling attending a private university, why not make up the difference since he has offered to pay the fees in his current university? Why would you want your brother to attend a school you cannot afford to pay for? Being your brother and your desire for him to have what you think is the best, collect whatever your husband is offering and balance it for the sake of peace in your home. If you play your cards well by being grateful and full of respect for him, he might decide to pay the fees in full not because he has the money but to reciprocate your respect and appreciation of his person. It isn’t just you but your brother too has to learn to show appreciation to avoid taking liberty for granted. This may be difficult for him to do if you as his sister fails to package your husband to earn the respect of your family. If you persist in disrobing your husband on account of his refusal to send your brother to a private university in the presence of your family, it may not augur well for you in the long run because they would use the same words you used against him to drag you in the mud too.
Be careful you don’t use your own hands to destroy your home. You have a good husband. Many men would rather call your bluff. Offering to pay the fees means he is meeting all the other obligations to you and the children.
On the contrary, you are the one being insensitive, wicked to yourself and family and completely unreasonable. You have a right to his time and money but your family doesn’t. If he is doing it, it is because he loves you and has come to accept your family as being part of the package. If he were to tow your line of argument, your family should be kept outside the marriage just as you want him to keep his family out of your home. Marriage is endurance, sacrifices, support, tolerance and plenty of trust in God. Your husband has made an important concession, in your interest you must learn to see his family as part of the package of being married to this man. If you fail to accept his people as yours, don’t nag or blame anybody when he also begins to demand your family stays out of his house. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Whatever the issues are with your marriage, invite the presence of God into it through prayers and not nagging.
Good luck.
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