Dear Agatha,
I have read your responses to the many problems facing people in various relationships, on the Internet, and have come to the conclusion that you can help me out with my own problems too.
I have been living with my girlfriend for the past two years. She’s a Japanese while I am a Nigerian. We both live in Thailand. She has a hot temper and can easily get angry and shout at the top of her voice in the room. Sometimes, I am scared of the noise she makes when she is angry but she immediately comes begging when her anger is over.
These have being going on for years. Financially, she helps me whenever she has and I help her whenever I have too, but she helps me the more. She sometimes destroys things in the room whenever she is angry. Our understanding and cultures are totally different. She insists that I marry her but I’m not strong enough emotionally to accept that because of her behaviour. My friends are telling me to marry her because of her financial capability but on the other hand I am not really happy to go into marriage with her despite the facts that she helps me a lot. Please, I need your advice.
Anxious Boy.
Dear Anxious Boy,
You are right to be apprehensive because there is more to marriage than money. Your friends are not the ones who will live with her. You are the one whose life will be tied to hers forever. Marriage without peace, harmony and respect is worthless even if money is in abundance.
When the slightest mistake provokes violent reactions to the point of breaking things in the house, it calls for caution. More so, as you are an emigrant in that country, there is no telling what she can do when really provoked or when she is in such a state. By virtue of your position, she can really make trouble for you with the local authorities when angry.
You sincerely need wisdom to paddle this canoe ashore. What you should do is to concentrate more on her person with a view to seeing how both of you can blend your differences to the point of harmony.
To do this right, you must irrespective of whatever may come out of this, tell her how uncomfortable and fearful her temper is to you. Letting her know at this early stage that her monstrous temper could get in the way of whatever plans she nurses for the future of both of you might help her fight the impulse of being destructive as well as shouting at the top of her voice when angry. Explain as gently as you can that from the part of the world you come, her behaviour is completely out of place and that for her to be accepted by you or your people, she has to learn how to control her temper. And, that while she has the right to be upset, shouting at the man she intends getting married to, destroying things bought with hard earned money isn’t your idea of the perfect wife and life you want.
Refusing to point this out to her will never help her fight this attitude. For both of you to have stayed together for two years means she has some positive attributes you want in a woman. It can’t all have been because of money and security in that country.
It must have come significantly from the happiness you get being close to her. Because you are also not perfect, listen to the salient plea in her character. She cannot be doing this to spite you and appears helpless in controlling the vice in her sober moments. She knows it might push you away from her hence the quick apologies that follow her every eruptions.
In various ways, we display our need for help to people close to us without knowing what we are doing. Help her to see herself in her temper and outrage by pointing her to the damage being done to you two. When she breaks a valuable item, tell her that is the way your heart is constantly being damaged by her behaviour and that no amount of apologies can get it back to its wholesome nature.
Overtime, she will, with your help and understanding of her nature, come to appreciate your concern for her.
That temper may be a sign of insecurity from childhood. Even if you both end up not marrying, you owe it to your friendship and the years you have been together, to help her overcome this side of her. Sit her down to listen to her story from as far as she can remember. Sharing your life story with her as well as what you expect from the woman who will share your life would help give her an inkling into what you really want which at the end of the day may initiate a positive change within her.
The positive change you are able to bring about in her today, maybe the anchor of your happiness with her tomorrow.
Good luck.
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