She is too dirty

Dear Agatha, My wife is the dirtiest woman I have ever met in life. It is so bad, I don’t bother bringing visitors to the home. Despite having pipe-borne water in the house, her kitchen is always littered with used plates, pots, spoons and cups. Sometimes, the pile could be seven days old. The toilets are as black as the dustbin. Imagine a situation where water flows freely in the house and she finds it difficult to flush the toilet. Sometimes, I would have bedbugs creeping out from my clothes in pubic places. To avoid such embarrassments, I took to keeping my clothes in the car. When I tried moving into the visitor’s room, she fought me all the way insisting that we must share a room together. That room has become like a junkyard that I wouldn’t know where to begin even if I insist on converting it into my room. Her personal hygiene too isn’t any better. She smells as she finds it very difficult to properly wash her body. My children are all boys hence can’t do much. As a matter of fact, her dirty habits prompted me to put my children in boarding school. Severally I tried getting house-helps but none of them stayed for more than a month because of the workload as well as her temper and suspicious mind. If she isn’t accusing me of trying to befriend these girls, she would find the smallest excuse to beat and harass them for one imaginary offence or the other. This provoked me, after years of complaining about her attitude and hygiene, to marry another woman. Most times, I stay over at the new woman’s house. Three years ago, I officially paid her dowry and she has a set of twins for me. I am very happy with her. My sons know about her and sometimes come to meet me at her place. She is known to my family and friends. In the last one year, I have stayed less and less with my first wife. I took pains to give you this background to make you appreciate the depth of my problem. My marriage to her is 20 years old. We got married under the native laws and customs of our people. About three weeks ago, she went to my second wife’s house to beat her up; as a matter of fact, one of the children is in the hospital now as I speak. She was hit by an object my first wife threw. I give God the glory that she is recovering from the injury and that it didn’t leave any permanent damage. Since the incident my family members have told her to go. My elder sister, who all the while has kept away from my home and affairs, is leading those who want her out. I am equally fed up of the whole thing. But my second wife is insisting that she would end our marriage if I drive away the first wife. She said, it would be unfair for me to drive her away after all these years. She is very adamant about it. Meanwhile my first wife is not repentant at all. She is threatening to deal with me, my second wife and her children. The church too has suspended me from my elder position because of the issue of having a second wife. It is really the least of my problem but my disappointment with the church leadership is their refusal to even give me a hearing. Their position is either I drive away my second wife or nothing. They want me to keep my first wife at all cost irrespective of everything she has done. A member of the elders’ council said concerning my daughter who is in hospital that my first wife was provoked beyond reason and that the church should overlook that matter. I felt and still feel bad because if that child had died or sustained a permanent injury, the leadership of the church would have also have described her act as extreme provocation. I need your help in this matter. Alfred. Dear Alfred, I am sure the issue of your first wife’s state of hygiene didn’t start after marriage. A woman with the kind of hygiene problem you described would have manifested some of it during your courtship years. It is either you didn’t notice them or that you decided to ignore them thinking you could cope as the years rolled by. Often that not, the silence-acceptance and tolerance of our partner’s short comings at the nascent stage of relationships turn out to be the bane of the union in later years. Today, you are facing so many issues in your marriage because you elected to turn blind eyes to an issue you should have handled with the seriousness it deserved at the early stage of your relationship. Had you done that, a lot of the ugly issues you are today battling with, would never have arisen at all. Given the picture you have painted of her, getting her to change might be difficult. This is because she is long set in her ways to change from who she current is, to what you want her to become. It is like a concrete mixture which once set, is impossible to shape. Her habit has permeated every pores of her body and life. To hope for her to change at this stage of her life is to wait endlessly for something that won’t happen. The only thing that would make her change is personal determination. But because she really doesn’t see anything bad in the habit she has nurtured all her life, she won’t. To her, she is normal; you are the one calling her ways unhygienic. So something has to make her change and that is her love for you. Unfortunately, you both lost it and forgot the reason for your coming together. You got too pre-occupied with her dirty habit; so much so, you got blinded to her good nature. Your inability to properly situate your feelings for her might have made her stubborn and too angry to change as a form of protest. In the process of trying to adjust into each other, you lost each other; bitterness and disappointment crept into your marriage. This has made it impossible for both of you to apply reason and find solutions to the crisis you are currently having in your marriage. Unfortunately, rather than find workable solution, you took another wife thereby complicating an already complex situation. Even though some people may argue that you had no choice but, the truth remains had you desired a workable solution, you could have done, irrespective of the condition of your home. As a man, you could have applied yourself more by getting a young man to come twice in a week to clean up your home since she was having issues with house-girls. The excuse that she insisted on sharing a room with you isn’t tenable. At that point, you should have told her exactly how you felt, how you have had it with bedbugs creeping out of your clothes everyday at work, how embarrassed of your home you were and how difficult you find living in a dumpsite is. These words though would have hurt her, would also have made her think sufficiently as to want to make a change in her attitude and disposition to her home. No woman wants to lose her home to another woman. That would have been sufficient reasons for you to justify your relocation to the guest room; a move you would have used in teaching her what good hygiene is. Although going to your second wife to fight her to the extent of injuring an innocent child isn’t right but you also didn’t behave right by taking another woman as wife. If you have been married to her for 20 years, it means you cannot totally absolve yourself from the mess your home and wife are. To some extent, you are also dirty to have endured staying in a house as dirty as the one you described. Frankly, it shows your weakness as a man. If you had from the very beginning put your feet down, applied yourself as the man of the house, the situation in your home wouldn’t have degenerated to this level. The church can only advise and not insist on how you manage your home. However, the truth remains that as the head of your home, you owe it to yourself to define your happiness. You are the one wearing the shoes hence knows the most painful point. Good enough you married the two women under the native laws and customs of our land. This means you are free to practice polygamy. No matter how much the children from your first marriage love your second wife, they will never be happy if you throw their mother out of your life, which means, a meeting of everyone in the family has to be called to sort things out. Don’t forget she has given you 20 years of her life, whatever her shortcomings maybe. In the worst case scenario, you will lose your position as an elder but negotiate peace in your home. Get the two women and their children together. By now, your first wife must have realized her mistakes. Every woman will react the way she has done if in her shoes; no woman wants a mate. Don’t forget under her pile of dirt and imperfection, is the woman you once loved and cared for. Your angel wife today could turn out to be something else tomorrow. It is only you that can help yourself to be happy. Good luck.