We’re like strangers sharing the same house

Dear Agatha,

I have a challenge in my marriage. My wife not only nags but she is lousy, dirty and knows nothing about fashion. 

She knew when we met that I love very fashionable women. 

In the first year of our marriage, she managed to hold on to the qualities I noticed in her. 

But eight years down the road and with three children, she has now neglected herself so much I can hardly recognise the woman that lives with me in the same house.

Honestly, I am fed up trying to correct her. She instantly flares up each time I try to bring up the issue of her appearance.

She ends up accusing me of having extra marital affairs and that I want to turn her into one of the women I am dating outside our home.

I don’t have a girlfriend now but I am seriously contemplating having one if it is the only way to have peace in my home. 

With a girlfriend, I won’t have to bother how my wife looks like or what it is she is not doing. I still care about her, which is why I am complaining, if I don’t there is no way I would notice all these things about her.

What I can’t reconcile with is the fact that she has allowed those around her shop to influence her negatively. 

She doesn’t behave like one who has seen the four walls of a school not to talk of being a graduate. 

Everything about her screams illiteracy.

It is so painful because this woman was once my pride. 

Her level of reasoning these days keeps baffling me. 

If I didn’t know better, I would brand her a complete illiterate. 

These days, I don’t even bother to discuss anything with her.                                                                        

I have done everything humanly possible to make her appreciate my feelings for her but she keeps frustrating me at every point.

I have gotten to that stage in this marriage where I am ready to walk away from it all but I don’t want my children to suffer. 

These days, I don’t feel any excitement for her and have been sleeping in the guest room for over two months now. 

The situation is that bad we are like two complete strangers sharing the same house.

Much as I have never supported divorce, Agatha, I am no longer interested in this marriage but I need help with the children. 

How do I do away with their mother without my decision having negative impact on the children?

Moses.

 

Dear Moses,

Marriage is a process of constant stock taking and realignments. 

Yes, you may have in your estimation done everything humanly possible, but until you achieve results, you haven’t done anything at all. Divorce is usually not the first option because there are no guarantees that the next person would fare any better. 

It only becomes an option when everything else fails and there is a threat to life.

In your case, there is no threat to life nor have you done all you should have to save your marriage.

From all you have said, it is obvious you lack the knowledge of how to get her back into line.

This means you have to get her people involved in the matter. 

No woman wants her marriage to collapse hence would do anything to protect it once she smells danger locking in the corner.

She hasn’t taken you serious in your complains because the matter is still limited to the two of you. 

Once you tell her people what you have been facing as well as your decision to walk away from it all, she would begin to take you serious. Nobody would tell her the truth like her people; these are people she grew up with and can’t accuse of bias like she would your people.

Tell them everything. At this critical stage, don’t hold back anything for the sake of your children. Also, go to those friends she started with; the once she grew up with and were in school together. 

Get them to use their lives to point her at the differences between them and her; remind her of her place.

Let them help you remind her that you are not against her interacting with those she is trading with but that she should be able to hold her own any day. 

She should be the one influencing them and not the other way round.

Since she is likely to protest you talking her out to get her the kind of dresses you want her to be in, look for a friend who has the time and passion for exercises. 

Pay for her to be enrolled in one of these exercises centers. 

Give this friend money to take her shopping. Pretend not to be involved in the efforts of her friends to repackage since it might cause a division between the two of you.

In a way, you are also to blame for who she has become. 

When was the last time you took her out? One thing is to complain another thing is to demonstrate your care. 

Yes, she is fat, shapeless and a nag. These are physical changes. The person you married is buried somewhere behind all these changes. Deep inside her is that sweet looking lady you decided on out of all the women you dated!  

That woman hasn’t gone away but simply lost in the challenges you are both facing as a couple. Your wife needs something, a memory from the past to bring her back. 

What were the things she likes when you were still dating? That special gift, place she liked? When was the last time you took her out?

Just like you have observed about her, are you still the same person she married? Do you still have her time like you did back then? Has it occurred to you that some of these changes you observed in her maybe a reaction to your attitude towards her; a cry for your attention? 

Over time she may have tried to get your attention but didn’t and may have decided that the only way to is change dramatically from the look and attitude you knew to this stranger. If nothing else, at least you are beginning to notice her. 

Most times, couples take each other for granted; perhaps along the line you took her for granted.

Whatever it is, both of you must come out of your self-imposed worlds and think of the children. 

She has to stop hurting herself while you must make the effort to look beyond her present state of mind and appearance to what would become of you less than 10 years old children. 

What excuses are you both going to give the children? Whatever your disappointments are with her, please exercise the patience to make her see reasons with you. 

She may not be able to regain her pre-motherhood looks but with the right encouragement and devotion from you, she could regain the looks and disposition to make you proud.

By removing focus from her appearance to what precisely is her grouse and disappointment with the marriage, you set the pace for your reconciliation as a couple.

She must know you really care about her person and not just has looks.

Finally, always be focused on God in your marriage. 

It would help you not to take a decision you would end up regretting along the road.

Good luck.