Auntie Agatha , gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
I am a regular reader of your column. I am 26 years of age. I have a problem and I believe you can help me. I married a mummy’s pet kind of husband, who tells his mother everything we discuss and do in the house.
Naturally his mother sees me as an obstacle, even though he pretends about it. Although she doesn’t shout at me, but she has a way of making my life hell on earth in that house. For instance, if my husband has the urge to eat a particular kind of food for that day and I make the attempt to cook what my husband wants, she would come to the kitchen to tell me that that particular food isn’t eaten in that house.
The worst thing is that my husband would come and won’t say anything. Although he is the breadwinner of the family, he cannot stand up to them to defend me. The resultant effect is that I am all on my own, begging them to even like me a little bit. But it seems the harder I try to please them the more determined they are to make my life unbearable in their brother’s house.
I have been begging my husband to relocate at least a litte bit away from the family so that I can enjoy my very young marriage. But he has refused to listen to me. His excuse is that I would soon be back in school, which is six hours drive from home.
Anytime I raise the issue of his family’s treatment of me, he is instant in defending them. His mother is in charge of my less than a year old marriage.
And from the looks of things, it appears this is going to be the pattern of my marriage as my husband in his wisdom decided to build his personal home few inches away from the family house.
My sister-in-law is over 30 years of age. I am dying slowly. Please help me.
Confused Wife.
Dear Confused Wife,
Marriage is a school of endurance, patience, understanding, prayers and wisdom. Like bitter leaf, every new marriage must first go through a process of adjustment before it can become sweet. It is unfortunate that you are starting your marriage this way, but a lot of the issues you raised started long before you got married to him.
Perhaps a combination of inexperience, misconception of what marriage is all about and lack of sincerity on your part are the reasons you are going through this crisis.
For instance, there is no way you wouldn’t have noticed from the very beginning that your man is a mummy’s boy. This is something he couldn’t have hidden from you. Any man close to his mother manifests it wherever he goes. He must, during your courtship days, have done one or two things to make it clear to you that his mother is his final authority. You didn’t complain then because, like most women thought, you could handle the situation and make him forget his closeness to his mother.
The fact that you didn’t complain then, willing to play along, means that if you really put in more efforts into this marriage, you will come to defeat all the battles. The women that have positive stories to tell are those whose patience is very elastic. Even the toughest battles bow at the end of the day to patience.
From this early, accept them for who they are. I am sure you have women like your mother-in-law as well as sister-in-law in your family. If you are able to put up with these women, there is no reason you cannot cope with these women. The same attitude you have adopted in tolerating the excesses of every friend, relations and the negative side of your own mother and sisters should be deployed by you into managing the situation to survive this marriage.
And one way to ensure you remain relevant in the life of your husband is to stop complaining or force him to choose between you and his family. It would be the worst kind of mistake in your life, because his mother and sister were in his life before you. Besides, you will also become a mother-in-law one day and how would you feel if your son suddenly abandons you for his wife?
Life is a circle. What goes around comes around. If you are deep, you are simply acquiring experiences to handle similar issues in future. A lot of efforts go into motherhood and the joy of every mother is to be repaid with care by the child she invested her entire adult life caring for. Whether you like it or not, you will in time to come become jealous of the woman who takes your place in your son’s life. It is an emotion no woman can resist its feeling. The difference is just the way the individual woman values life and its different seasons. While some mothers willingly bow out of the lives of their sons with grace, others simply cannot do it. No matter how painful their treatment of you is, learn to endure it. Overtime, you will defeat the situation as long as you have the right attitude to life.
Your husband’s headship of his home didn’t start overnight. You knew his position from the beginning. This minor fact should have alerted you to the challenges you would be facing from those close to him. It is only natural for them to feel your coming would upset whatever arrangements they have on ground. You two are like two combatants squaring up for a fight. They are suspicious of you, your motives as well as your thoughts towards them just as you are of them.
The position your man occupies in his family demands you act as a mother to them. The role of a mother is that of accute perseverance and protection even when she is under pains and disappointments. To do otherwise is to expose your husband to challenges within his family he should not experience at all.
Though he appears to be more on their side than on yours, don’t get unnecessarily upset about it all. The trick is to device a means outside nagging or complaints to get him to listen to you. You have an advantage they don’t have – you are his wife! Use your intimacy to make him listen to your needs, see how bad you feel at being left at the mercy of his family, especially living in the family house.
For instance, your desire to make him leave the family house could come as wishful desires. During intimacy wish for more privacy to really be together; do certain things like being naked in your private world. Use your knowledge of the things he likes about you to make him listen to those things you are not saying.
Like a carrot before a hare, dangle your femininity before him. This is a form of language women who are wise have used through the ages to get their men to listen to the silent requests of their hearts. Once you are able to get him to move from the family house, you will be able to moderate some of the issues you are complaining about now.
Also learn to pray. There is nothing prayers cannot achieve. Apart from bringing you close to God, it also teaches one the vital steps to take in every situation. Prayers give so much wisdom. It will tell you when silence is golden and when to speak.
Until you leave the house, where you can avoid confrontation, do so. If you can afford it, get a gas cooker to cook his meals in your room, do that. This way you get to cook what you want without having to go to the general kitchen.
This doesn’t mean you cannot cook for the entire family in the general kitchen. Making this arrangement is to ensure your husband gets used to your cooking and person.
It is also important to your survival that you don’t get overly bothered about the reactions of your in-laws. Be polite, do what you can, refuse to be intimidated by them but learn to respect their relationship with your husband. Allow him the freedom to continue to be their breadwinner as long as he can cope with his responsibilities to you.
Good luck.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Too hard for my hubby to let go his ex
With Auntie Agatha,gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com,Tel: 08054500626
Dear Agatha,
I don’t know what else to add to all the prayers people, like me, daily send your way each time we get to read you. Whether you believe it or not you are doing a very wonderful and rare job through your column. It is amazing how you come up with such précised solutions. It is obvious that you are indeed doing what God created you to do, so don’t stop because it is where your breakthrough in life would come too.
I recently discovered that my husband of eight years is still dating his ex-girlfriend who left him to marry one of his colleagues when things were not going on well with him.
I knew they were secondary and university sweethearts. As a matter of fact when he came to me for a relationship a lot of those who knew about their relationship warned against my dating him. They all expressed the fear of the two of us, especially him giving the type of happiness I deserve.
A close friend of his actually expressed doubt at my husband being able to ever trust or love any other woman after what the ex-girlfriend did to him.
Because I loved him from the very beginning I ignored everything and whatever was being said about him. For me, my love was more than enough to see us through.
In fairness to him, he told me all about his ex and how much her leaving left him devastated and without hope in his future. Being from a comfortable family, I was able to use my father’s influence to swing things in his favour.
Although my father didn’t really like the idea because the entire process could be misinterpreted by people as trying to induce a man to marrying his only daughter; he still went out of his way to help because of what I feel for him.
At my insistence, we got married without too much fanfare because I have never been the loud type or one to court for cheap publicity.
I had honestly thought my husband was over his former girlfriend after three children. But you can’t imagine my shock when early this year stories started filtering in that the two of them were back and dating. At first, I refused to believe all the stories but was forced to when my husband became careless.
She has taken to calling him at odd hours, sometimes very late in the night. Last week, we were in the process of making love when her call came. My husband must have recognised she was the one through the ring tone because he abandoned me to answer her call. By the time he finished talking to her, an hour later, I was filled with rage and a deep sense of betrayal.
I would have done something stupid if he didn’t take the wise decision of apologising and pleading with me forgiveness. At this point he didn’t bother to deny it anymore.
He broke down and told me how difficult he is finding it to let go of her despite that both of them are married. He wants me to help him forget her by not fighting him.
The following day, the husband came to my house to plead with my husband right in my presence to let his wife be. According to him, he doesn’t want a broken home on his hands.
Agatha, the situation is very messy. My mother died while giving birth to me, hence the fierce protection of my two elder brothers and father.
They are all aware of what is going on in my home. My family is insisting I pack out of my home with all the children.
Agatha, the problem is that I still love my husband despite everything. Besides, he could be a very good husband when he wants to. What I don’t understand is his passion for this woman, the passion that is making him willing to sacrifice his relationship with God and his family. My mother-in-law and all my husband’s family members think she is using juju on my husband. According to her, she has always questioned the intensity of his love for her as not being normal. They too are begging me not to give up on my husband that this is the time he needs me the most.
As a woman, you can imagine the emotional pains I am going through with what is happening to me. I am so confused because despite my love, I am still human and feeling very bad. Since the woman’s husband came to him he has tried to avoid taking her calls but for how long?
Please help me because I am dying inside. I am also four months pregnant and the doctor is very alarmed at my very high blood pressure.
Ajoke.
Dear Ajoke,
Whatever you do, please put the interest of that baby and your health first. You are thinking of this problem and looking for a way to go round it because you are alive. If anything untoward happens to you or the baby as a result of the emotional stress being generated by the situation in your life, whether your husband is having affair with her or not would cease to be important.
If your husband isn’t putting your health and that of the unborn child into consideration, you owe it to yourself, your children, unborn baby and your family to put your interest first. This is the time in marriage when selfishness takes the front seat for the purpose of protecting a life.
While it could be true he may be under certain evil influences, it may simply be a strong case of two people desperate to be together irrespective of the pains their feelings and desire bring to people around them.
There is no way you can help him if he doesn’t want to be helped. For your help to be meaningful, he has to face the truth about himself and his love for this woman. Beyond the issue of him being married to you or the other woman being married to another man; what is his true feeling for her? Can he ever live a life without her or ever be contented with you in the same way he seems to have found contentment with her?
I agree, fighting him isn’t a solution, not because it would drive him further into his arms but that it won’t make any difference in their affairs. If both of them don’t care about everybody finding out about them, it means the matter is completely out of your hand.
Your husband has to make up his mind very fast about what he wants from life. No marriage is worth losing one’s life for. The emotional trauma you are going through would definitely take its toll on you especially at childbirth.
Do you want your children to go through life without a mother’s love? Despite everything your father did to give you the best, I am sure there were several moments you wished your mother was there for you. Till date I am sure your mother’s place is still very vacant in your mind’s eyes.
Yes, you have a responsibility to fight for your marriage’s survival, but at what cost to you and your children? This is the question you have to put across to your husband. If he is asking you not to fight him, help him overcome his obsession with this lady, what is he too willing to do for the family? How does he intend to help you solve the problem since nothing comes from nothing?
Having blatantly betrayed you, he sincerely lacks any right to ask you for such sacrifices unless he is willing to let go of his passion for that woman, give something back to procure the peace and security of his family. To simply demand you give him of yourself without a concomitant effort on his part to meet you half way isn’t an indication of a man who is sorry as well or willing to protect his home from imminent collapse.
Make him talk about his past with this woman. What is the secret of their passion; her hold over him and if there was an oath between them not to let go. To help him, he has to learn to trust you with all the major as well as the minor details,
You have to have a very clear image of the problem you are confronting. You already know the problem confronting you but for you to know the one you are confronting, he has to arm you with all the ammunition you need.
Insist being honest is the only way you would stay and be happy to help him. If he cannot do without the other woman, let him be honest enough to tell you so you would make the necessary adjustment and plan your next move. He would be doing more harm and injustice by insisting you help him keep a marriage he knows within his heart he has no allegiance to.
The issue is: if he has any respect for you or the sanctity of his marriage to you or the institution generally, no matter what the other woman offers him in terms of excitement, he won’t sleep with her. Not only is he destroying his own marriage but another marriage.
Whether they dated for years is immaterial now. What is important is the fact that they went their different ways to marry two other people out of their own volition. These two don’t have the right to make you and the other man suffer from their inability to make up their minds about their feelings for each other.
Therefore his apologies and desire to have you in life has to be more than skin deep for you to make this all-important sacrifices for him.
But if he is still unable to make up his mind about the other woman, you may have to take to the counsel of your family by leaving for a while to have your baby in a place you will find the emotional stability to survive the rigour of carrying the baby to full term as well as a successful childbirth.
This is a classic case of when extreme measure has to be applied to bring about sanity.
Another dimension, you should look at is focusing on the spiritual angle in your own side of the family. What led to your mother dying at childbirth? Sometimes the rhythms from the past still have the potency to make us dance unconsciously even when we are oblivious of the meaning of its lyrics. Ask your father to explain to you all about your mother, her death and situation before she died. Your marital problem may just be a smoke screen for the real danger ahead of you.
You must, as a matter of urgency, commit your life, relationship, and family to the hands of God. He only can point you at the real problem as well as the directions to go.
Good luck.
Dear Agatha,
I don’t know what else to add to all the prayers people, like me, daily send your way each time we get to read you. Whether you believe it or not you are doing a very wonderful and rare job through your column. It is amazing how you come up with such précised solutions. It is obvious that you are indeed doing what God created you to do, so don’t stop because it is where your breakthrough in life would come too.
I recently discovered that my husband of eight years is still dating his ex-girlfriend who left him to marry one of his colleagues when things were not going on well with him.
I knew they were secondary and university sweethearts. As a matter of fact when he came to me for a relationship a lot of those who knew about their relationship warned against my dating him. They all expressed the fear of the two of us, especially him giving the type of happiness I deserve.
A close friend of his actually expressed doubt at my husband being able to ever trust or love any other woman after what the ex-girlfriend did to him.
Because I loved him from the very beginning I ignored everything and whatever was being said about him. For me, my love was more than enough to see us through.
In fairness to him, he told me all about his ex and how much her leaving left him devastated and without hope in his future. Being from a comfortable family, I was able to use my father’s influence to swing things in his favour.
Although my father didn’t really like the idea because the entire process could be misinterpreted by people as trying to induce a man to marrying his only daughter; he still went out of his way to help because of what I feel for him.
At my insistence, we got married without too much fanfare because I have never been the loud type or one to court for cheap publicity.
I had honestly thought my husband was over his former girlfriend after three children. But you can’t imagine my shock when early this year stories started filtering in that the two of them were back and dating. At first, I refused to believe all the stories but was forced to when my husband became careless.
She has taken to calling him at odd hours, sometimes very late in the night. Last week, we were in the process of making love when her call came. My husband must have recognised she was the one through the ring tone because he abandoned me to answer her call. By the time he finished talking to her, an hour later, I was filled with rage and a deep sense of betrayal.
I would have done something stupid if he didn’t take the wise decision of apologising and pleading with me forgiveness. At this point he didn’t bother to deny it anymore.
He broke down and told me how difficult he is finding it to let go of her despite that both of them are married. He wants me to help him forget her by not fighting him.
The following day, the husband came to my house to plead with my husband right in my presence to let his wife be. According to him, he doesn’t want a broken home on his hands.
Agatha, the situation is very messy. My mother died while giving birth to me, hence the fierce protection of my two elder brothers and father.
They are all aware of what is going on in my home. My family is insisting I pack out of my home with all the children.
Agatha, the problem is that I still love my husband despite everything. Besides, he could be a very good husband when he wants to. What I don’t understand is his passion for this woman, the passion that is making him willing to sacrifice his relationship with God and his family. My mother-in-law and all my husband’s family members think she is using juju on my husband. According to her, she has always questioned the intensity of his love for her as not being normal. They too are begging me not to give up on my husband that this is the time he needs me the most.
As a woman, you can imagine the emotional pains I am going through with what is happening to me. I am so confused because despite my love, I am still human and feeling very bad. Since the woman’s husband came to him he has tried to avoid taking her calls but for how long?
Please help me because I am dying inside. I am also four months pregnant and the doctor is very alarmed at my very high blood pressure.
Ajoke.
Dear Ajoke,
Whatever you do, please put the interest of that baby and your health first. You are thinking of this problem and looking for a way to go round it because you are alive. If anything untoward happens to you or the baby as a result of the emotional stress being generated by the situation in your life, whether your husband is having affair with her or not would cease to be important.
If your husband isn’t putting your health and that of the unborn child into consideration, you owe it to yourself, your children, unborn baby and your family to put your interest first. This is the time in marriage when selfishness takes the front seat for the purpose of protecting a life.
While it could be true he may be under certain evil influences, it may simply be a strong case of two people desperate to be together irrespective of the pains their feelings and desire bring to people around them.
There is no way you can help him if he doesn’t want to be helped. For your help to be meaningful, he has to face the truth about himself and his love for this woman. Beyond the issue of him being married to you or the other woman being married to another man; what is his true feeling for her? Can he ever live a life without her or ever be contented with you in the same way he seems to have found contentment with her?
I agree, fighting him isn’t a solution, not because it would drive him further into his arms but that it won’t make any difference in their affairs. If both of them don’t care about everybody finding out about them, it means the matter is completely out of your hand.
Your husband has to make up his mind very fast about what he wants from life. No marriage is worth losing one’s life for. The emotional trauma you are going through would definitely take its toll on you especially at childbirth.
Do you want your children to go through life without a mother’s love? Despite everything your father did to give you the best, I am sure there were several moments you wished your mother was there for you. Till date I am sure your mother’s place is still very vacant in your mind’s eyes.
Yes, you have a responsibility to fight for your marriage’s survival, but at what cost to you and your children? This is the question you have to put across to your husband. If he is asking you not to fight him, help him overcome his obsession with this lady, what is he too willing to do for the family? How does he intend to help you solve the problem since nothing comes from nothing?
Having blatantly betrayed you, he sincerely lacks any right to ask you for such sacrifices unless he is willing to let go of his passion for that woman, give something back to procure the peace and security of his family. To simply demand you give him of yourself without a concomitant effort on his part to meet you half way isn’t an indication of a man who is sorry as well or willing to protect his home from imminent collapse.
Make him talk about his past with this woman. What is the secret of their passion; her hold over him and if there was an oath between them not to let go. To help him, he has to learn to trust you with all the major as well as the minor details,
You have to have a very clear image of the problem you are confronting. You already know the problem confronting you but for you to know the one you are confronting, he has to arm you with all the ammunition you need.
Insist being honest is the only way you would stay and be happy to help him. If he cannot do without the other woman, let him be honest enough to tell you so you would make the necessary adjustment and plan your next move. He would be doing more harm and injustice by insisting you help him keep a marriage he knows within his heart he has no allegiance to.
The issue is: if he has any respect for you or the sanctity of his marriage to you or the institution generally, no matter what the other woman offers him in terms of excitement, he won’t sleep with her. Not only is he destroying his own marriage but another marriage.
Whether they dated for years is immaterial now. What is important is the fact that they went their different ways to marry two other people out of their own volition. These two don’t have the right to make you and the other man suffer from their inability to make up their minds about their feelings for each other.
Therefore his apologies and desire to have you in life has to be more than skin deep for you to make this all-important sacrifices for him.
But if he is still unable to make up his mind about the other woman, you may have to take to the counsel of your family by leaving for a while to have your baby in a place you will find the emotional stability to survive the rigour of carrying the baby to full term as well as a successful childbirth.
This is a classic case of when extreme measure has to be applied to bring about sanity.
Another dimension, you should look at is focusing on the spiritual angle in your own side of the family. What led to your mother dying at childbirth? Sometimes the rhythms from the past still have the potency to make us dance unconsciously even when we are oblivious of the meaning of its lyrics. Ask your father to explain to you all about your mother, her death and situation before she died. Your marital problem may just be a smoke screen for the real danger ahead of you.
You must, as a matter of urgency, commit your life, relationship, and family to the hands of God. He only can point you at the real problem as well as the directions to go.
Good luck.
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