My wife doesn’t believe in me…

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

Dear Agatha
 I wish to commend you on the great job you are doing. I am 30 years of age and in relationship with a lady who is a year older than I am. I met her during my job interview. I got attracted to her when her boss asked her to interview me for the job. I finally got the job and in my second month on the job.
She resigned to go for her youth service. On her first visit to my place she told me about her past. From her story she has suffered several disappointments from her previous relationships and desired to settle down, as time wasn’t on her side.
At first, I was afraid to commit myself into the relationship because I am in my final year in higher institution and not ready financially, but she promised to support me and even told me we don’t need an elaborate wedding.
She later went for her service that year and a month to the completion of her service she got pregnant for me. 
We did our introduction but my mother did not attend because she was not happy with me. After the event and the birth of my child, I apologised to her, she received the new baby and the mother. She took care of them in my sister’s house, who lost her husband few months before the baby was born. I provided financial support from my meagre salary until my wife and child finally moved to my place three months later. 
Our baby recently clocked eight months. I still find it difficult to save because my salary can’t take us till the end of the month.
I asked her to find something to do but she hasn’t been able to find anything. We sometimes argue over this. She finally decided to move to her parents’ house where she believes she can meet her friends and talk to some members of her church. 
Before our introduction, a prophet told me our relationship would be fine as long as I can serve and take care of her. I didn’t take it serious because I believe God has the final say.  I still have a future ahead of me, now with a child in my custody, I am thinking of divorce so I can focus on other things I need to do and as well as build on my financial stable to enable me care for the baby. From the behaviour of my wife, it is obvious she doesn’t understand me at all. What do I do?
Troubled Soul.


Dear Troubled Soul,
Understanding in a marriage isn’t what happens in just one day neither has it got to do with age. It takes a length of time for a couple to achieve the kind of understanding that would stop them from thinking about the immediate. You and your woman are at this crossroad because both of you have failed to understand that a good marriage is a product of tremendous sacrifices.
Both of you must be ready to go the extra mile for the other to be happy.
While you must make the effort to understand her kind of person, her training and culture, she must know that nothing good comes without painful choices. The notion that marriage is a happy ever after journey is all wrong. There can’t ever be a happy ending without that period of planting. What we sow in the beginning of our marital journey is what we reap as the years roll by. If both of you are unable to plant patience and support for each other’s efforts, you may never be able to get that kind of life you both wish to have. Frankly, this hasn’t got so much to do with money at the end of it all, rather it has to do with who you both are and really want from the union.
You must admit that as at the time you both met and agreed to marry, you in particular were unprepared for it, particularly in terms of vision and the finance for it. Your first mistake was to have allowed yourself to be sucked into a situation you were ill prepared for. At the time she told you she would support you, you should have asked her of the kind of assistance she was ready to provide. In marriages, there are various kinds of backings a man or woman can offer the spouse. If the only assistance she promised you was to get married given the fact that she was desperate to be off the shelf, she has done that. At that point, you should have thought of how you would both survive after the wedding ceremony.
If there is anyone to blame, who didn’t properly understand the issues involved, you are. As the man, you should have gone beyond the matter of her help to how you would sustain the marriage. Had you given this marriage thing serious thought from the moment she confided the story of her life, the pregnancy wouldn’t have happened when it did. You would have known that combining your studies, with work and starting a home needed more detailed plannings.
The truth is that you allowed this woman push you into a situation you were ill prepared for. You should have been firmer and more definite about the patterns you want in your life especially as you were still in school and she just finishing her youth service. There is no way your salary would have been enough, given the qualification you presented. Your major mistake was not in being firm at all. Everyman that hopes to be the head of a home must first of all master the act of staying focused with that comes the determination to put his woman in check.
Whatever it is you are trying to correct is coming a little bit late. In the first instance, there is the issue of the baby who will be the one to suffer if any rash decision on your parts comes up now.
For the sake of this baby, you and your wife must sit down to re-draw, reshape and re-plan your lives. To get the desired results, you must forget divorce and begin to act as the man. If she pressured you into a marriage you weren’t prepared for, you owe it to yourself as a man and your child to resist her attempts to make you end this marriage against your will.
That child needs both of you at this delicate stage of life. It is for the sake of this child that you should go the extra mile to ensure things work out between the two of you. Unless there is something you are not saying, there is no way every member of her family would support her decision to come back home.
Since both of you went through the process of traditional marriage, you must know one or two members of her family that would listen to you. Go to these people to explain your challenges with their daughter as well as what led to her packing out of the house. Explain your handicap, including the fears you expressed at the very beginning.
Your coming and explanation would help give them the necessary background information into the whole issue between you and their daughter.
Beyond the issue of her marrying to satisfy her aging biological clock, you must find out from her what her take on marriage is generally. There is no way you can guess from the cover of a book its content. What you have is only an image of this woman who happens to be your wife. You need to dig deeper to find her real substance. Finding out who she really is as well as her thoughts concerning marriage would give you an idea of how to tackle the issue between the two of you.
To act as an incentive, remember the good times you had together. Something good must have occured between the two of you to make that baby happen; at times like this it always helps to go back in time to that special period. It aids resolution of disagreement easier.
There is also the need to get your mother and sister to talk to her.
When discussing with her, do more of the listening to enable you get a clear picture of what is going on in her mind.
You can only talk of divorce when every effort at making things work between the two of you fails.
In addition, you must find ways of introducing friendship into your relationship with her. If both of you have started as friends, you both would have found the equilibrium to exercise more patience for your union to graduate beyond its current challenge. What you both want in your marriage takes years to achieve.
Good luck.