He won’t let me bring my child home

With Agatha Edo, Email:womaneditor@independentngonline.com,gataedo@yahoo.com or agatha.edo@gmail.com Dear Agatha, Before I married my husband several years ago, I told him about the son I had when I was in school. I didn’t hide anything from my husband including the decision of our two parents that my son stays with his father’s parents to enable me continue with my education. I also told him of my desire to have my son come visit me from time to time. In addition, I made it clear to him that any man that married me must be ready to marry my son as well since he is an integral part of my existence. He agreed to all my conditions before we got married. You can therefore imagine my surprise when my son indicated interest in coming to visit me after three years of marriage and my husband turned him down. He didn’t give any explicit and cogent reason beyond the fact that he wasn’t ready to receive him yet and that when he was, he would let me know. Not wanting to rock the boat of my young marriage, I allowed him have his way. My marriage is almost 10 years old and my son who will be 21 and in his final year at the university still hasn’t been allowed into my home by my husband. Although he visits but he has never slept over in my house because of my husband’s lack of warmth whenever he comes around. It hurts because the boy has to come to the office anytime he wants to see me. Fortunately he understands my helplessness but for how long can I continue to tolerate the situation? If I had hidden the knowledge of the existence of my child from him, I would have understood his reluctance to allow the boy come into his house but this is a man that agreed to my terms and accepted. To make things worse, I didn’t complain about him bringing a child he never told me he had with another woman into my house so why should he stop me from bringing my child into the house? I want to confront him on the issue because I am very hurt and consider his attitude towards me as being very unfair and callous. I also have a right to ask him to take his child out of our house as being suggested by some of my friends but I don’t want to because I cherish my marriage and respect his feelings but he doesn’t respect mine at all. Please help me because I am getting to that point in which I can no longer endure the situation especially as the grandparents of my son are both dead. His father, though is very protective of his son, is married and his wife is yet to have a child. He spends his time more with his friends when he has a mother alive. I can’t bear it anymore. I don’t want him joining bad company as a result of lack of proper attention. My son cannot be made to suffer for the mistake I made as a young girl. I won’t tolerate it anymore. The poor boy has suffered my lack of effective presence for too long. I can’t be alive and my son is homeless. Something will have to give. Please advice me before I make a mistake I might later regret. Why can’t he accept my son the same way I have accepted his daughter? Juliana Dear Juliana, Nobody said anything about life being fair to a woman. The life of a woman is that of many painful choices. There is always a choice to be made for the woman. You cannot fight your husband on account of his attitude towards your son. Don’t forget you made the choice to sleep with the boy’s father without any form of protection and to keep him when you discovered you were pregnant. Nobody forced you into that situation. Whether you realised it back then or not, that decision to keep him changed so many things about your life. Granted your husband made you those promises, they were made under what can be tagged duress. He wanted you at all cost in his life and the only way possible was to promise you the things you asked of him back then. He knew admitting what he really felt about having your son come live with you would make the task of convincing you to marry him more difficult so, he chose the less tedious -making you a promise you wanted to hear. In fairness to him, at the point he made you such promises, you left him with no choice but to agree to your terms since he wanted you so badly in his life. When a man desires something desperately, there is no telling what he would do or say to have his way. To put your marriage on the line because of that promise he made in his desperation to marry you will amount to cutting your nose to spite your face. Thank God your son is responsible; if he has the tendency to associate with the wrong people, he would have done it before now. That he has a relationship with you means he isn’t blaming you; he understands what is going on in your marriage. All you have to do is to continue to support him in everyway possible including renting a place for him close to where you stay so as to keep an eye on his movements. If he is in his final year at the university, he is more than matured enough to handle his affairs. The accommodation is for him to have a place to come to when on holidays or finished from school. Follow this by sitting your husband down for a discussion especially if you haven’t discussed the matter with him. There is always a way out of every situation. Hear his reasons for going back on his promises to allow the boy come live with you. Sometimes, issues aren’t always the way we perceive them to be. Don’t make reference to his child he brought home to you. To do that is to complicate issues between the two of you. Simply demand to know why he doesn’t want your son in his house after almost a decade of marriage. But bear in mind that not every man can handle the thought of another man having had their wife. Deep down, the presence of your child may just remind him about a time in your past he doesn’t want to remember. Besides, the choice before you is not just about your first son alone; think about the other children whose lives will also be affected if you push this issue too hard in your marriage. There is a limit even a good issue can be pushed. Marriage is strong but can be very fragile if given too much burden to carry. Allow this matter be. Your son doesn’t need you as much as he needed you when he was younger. He is no longer a child but a young adult who may not want all the attention you are now showering on him. Besides if you could ignore him all these years, why are you now so bothered about him? Frankly your concern over his welfare is almost 21 years too late. Your husband isn’t so keen on having him because when he met you, the boy was comfortably settled in the life you have arranged for him. If he had been with you from his early age, he would have had no choice but marry you with the child. As it is now, he didn’t meet the child with you. Above all, for the sake of everyone, allow peace reign in your marriage. Very soon your son would begin a family of his own. Good luck.