My hubby is unwilling to work, collects my salary

With Auntie Agatha, email:gataedo@yahoo.com;agatha.edo@gmail.com:Tel: 08054500626


Dear Agatha,

I am a regular reader of your column. I have this problem and I need your advice. I’ve been married for more than ten years with children. My husband is nice and assists with household chores. I have a good job while he’s a businessman. The problem is, he finds it difficult to attend to his business. While I’ll be busy at work, he’s most times at home sleeping or hanging out with friends. I’ve invested so much in the business trying to make it work but end up with loses due to his absence and the sales boys messing up things. In addition, I’ve been carrying the family responsibilities including that of both our families for almost the whole period we have been married. He knows my salary and would want to decide how it is spent; he usually gets angry even when I buy basic things for myself and the children. He prefers I give him the whole money and then he decides what to buy for us and how the money is spent.

He handled most of our investment decisions and we have lost almost all, I almost do not have any tangible thing to show for years of working. Worst still, he does not appreciate my efforts. This has led to several quarrels and beatings; I’m getting fed up, please advice.

Chika.



Dear Chika,

Marriage is a little bit of everything from the good, the bad and the ugly. It is a mixture of all that life itself has to offer. For anybody to get the good part, that person must be willing to take the bad part of it too.

Also, there is this fact about life that it doesn’t give fairly to everybody. To some people, life is generous and to others a little bit unfair but we must live because it is the essence of life itself.

A lot of times, the tiny things we ignore, the early decisions we fail to take, as well as our inordinate desire to get married at all costs, especially as women, become our doom as the years roll by. Every action in life must first be properly thought out before it is embarked upon.

You started the process of spoon feeding him, including handing him your pay packet; it would take crafty wisdom and prayer to discontinue.

There is no way you can claim ignorance of this trait in your husband from the early days of your dating. You elected to ignore these signals because you thought you could cope and perhaps change him later in life. Unfortunately, your mathematics is turning out to be the reason for your current state of unhappiness.

There is nothing as frustrating as living with a man who isn’t ready to work. But having found yourself in this particular web, arguing or nagging won’t change him or the situation overnight. Neither would your indulging him because the future of your children is interwoven into all that you are investing in that business today. Therefore you have to find a way of either getting him to be responsible or how to redirect your investment for the sake of those children.

But ensure you don’t disrespect him in anyway because he remains your husband despite his shortcomings. Also it is important you don’t unnecessarily provoke him to guard against violence in your home. Once a marriage enters the gear of violence, it is definitely on the path of self destruction.

What you should do immediately is to stop allowing yourself to be frustrated by his attitude. This way you won’t get angry and that would ultimately stop you from nagging. Once you are able to master your anger, he won’t have any reason to dehumanise you at all.

The next step would be for you to think of a new business you can begin on your own, since it is obvious both of you cannot partner businesswise. This would protect your marriage from the attendant anger that comes from what you view as his inability to manage successfully all that you are putting into building the family business. In addition it would help provide you with something for the raining day, especially when you can no longer work as hard as you are doing now.

On the issue of you handing him your monthly pay pocket, it is going to be very difficult because he is used to it. I don’t know whatever agreement you entered into with him or why you decided to be handing him your pay packet; there is the need to face this ghost and deal with it once and for all. Let him know that you are no longer comfortable with the arrangement and give him reasons to back it up. The fact that he is unable to manage the family investment is enough grounds for you to insist on keeping your salary. Because it is a habit you have encouraged for a decade, you may not be able to stop it on your own. You may have to involve one or two family members on his side of the family he respects. The reason is not to ridicule him but for these persons to appreciate your predicament as well as the challenges you are facing in your marriage and with their brother. It is also to eradicate the impression they may already or later have that you are neglecting their brother because you have more money than he does. Make him and the people you would involve in this issue see that it is the only way he can continue to get the best out of you as a woman and wife.

This is the only way you can reduce all the pressures you have taken on in the process of keeping your marriage. You need a chance to breathe and feel like a woman to be able to give your best to your husband, children and marriage. If you don’t immediately drop some of the responsibilities you have taken on, there maybe no marriage to save at the end of the day because you have too much anger piled up inside of you as well as bitterness against anything your husband represents.

This anger and sense of being cheated of your efforts, gains of your labour is blinding you to the good side of this marriage. Even if your husband is actually doing something positive, managing the business to the best of his ability, you will never be able to see it.

Time has therefore come in your marriage for you to go back to the basis - back to that time you agreed to marry him. Something in him must have communicated itself to you to make you agree to spend the rest of your life with him. No matter how bitter or disappointed we get, that reason never goes away, just get buried underneath all our various disappointments. Doubtless, you are very bitter and angry with this man but for you to have stayed with him for a decade means you have what it takes to make it work. Only a trip down memory lane would help you put things in their right perspective. It would help you look at other angles in your marriage, see your own faults too and teach you how to help make your home more manageable.

Your husband alone can’t be responsible for the disappointments in your marriage. You also have your share too. It is only fair you own up to your faults. Over indulgence too is a fault so you cannot escape blame in all these. The fact that you are the one bringing in the money may have made you forget to show appreciation, respect and humility. Check for any red marks in these areas. It would help you a great deal in your battle for happiness in your marriage.

If it is any assurance, you don’t have the patent for this problem in your marriage. What you are going through mirrors what a lot of women are going through in their marriages. There is no marriage without complications or challenges.

Your burden is what you are battling with now. In addition to setting up your own business, devote more time to this business on weekends. Once the boys he put in charge know that you can come in anytime to check the books and sack them if found wanting, they would sit up. It is just a matter of you making more sacrifices for the sake of those children.

I am a firm believer that the best results are through prayers. On your knees, change your husband. God answers and can do all things. Without the help of God, nagging would not change him; it would only make things worse, so why expend your energy and time to something that would not improve the condition of things in your home and marriage?

A little bit of patience, sacrifice as well as Godly wisdom would help you manage this man better.

Good luck.



Re: My husband is using my children for money rituals

Dear Agatha

I am also a passionate reader of your column and I do appreciate your advice to this woman.
I think this confused woman might be having a mental problem. I am a 40-year-old man with full custody of two of my three children after divorce from my ex wife, living in Germany.
With full experience about children, I wonder how a woman believes that her daughter she caught having sex with her own driver was corrupted by her husband. I think this woman needs psychiatric help. She is weak to confront her husband as well as lacks the knowledge to teach her daughter about sex education.

Sending her daughter abroad isn’t the solution. She should learn to teach her 15-year-old daughter about her body. Since she appears weak, she should meet a pastor who can help her put more fire to this burning issue immediately.

How can somebody believe that somebody makes money when a kid is sick and that the locked door is full of juju that brings money? Believing on things like this is a sign of her mental instability which is surely dangerous to the family.


Concerned Reader.