My wife is cantankerous

ear Agatha, I am having issues with my marriage of less than four years. My wife is older than I am by some few months. Whenever we quarrel she insults the living light out of me; that she cannot respect a man who is irresponsible and so on. I alone shoulder the entire responsibility of the family as she is out of job. I provide for the family including placing her on monthly allowance and I still send things to her parents. I don’t drink, smoke or womanise yet she has no regard for me. I am getting fed up and considering divorce. Perhaps a younger woman would be better. Pained man. Dear Pained Man, Every marriage comes with its peculiar cross. Just like Jesus Christ bore his cross alone, every couple has to learn to cope with the challenges in their own bouquet because there is no money back guarantee in a marriage. Inspite off all the pains and emotional drain this marriage is costing you, you must find ways around the issues confronting your home. From experience, divorce isn’t usually a magic potion to troubled marriage. Granted some marriages will never work; there is no marital issue beyond the ability of a determined couple to make it work. The question is, are you prepared to make this marriage work irrespective of the pains you are going through in the hands of your partner? Do you think deep down, your wife is the only problem in your marriage? Have you asked yourself what you contributed to making her this total stranger? Have you considered the fact that her lack of job could be the reason for this change in her person and disposition to you? Did you ever sit her down to ask for her opinion concerning the situation or simply assumed that as long as you were carrying the entire burden of the family, she was happy to let you do it? Has it occurred to you to discuss other possibilities of engaging her time and mind with her? There is no doubting the fact that your decision to play the ideal husband is in good faith but it may not appear right to a woman who before now had some measure of financial independence. There is no amount you give her that would ever be enough for her. Also, the fact that she is locked up in the house without anything to do as against the time she left home everyday could be very challenging. If she is often at home alone, especially if there are no children to engage her time and mind, loneliness could be a factor in all these. Don’t forget money isn’t everything. Doubtless, you have lifted the financial burden from her shoulders, but what about all the other little relief her going out of the house give her? to better appreciate her feelings, try trading places with her for a day and see how it feels like to be forced into a situation you aren’t prepared for and don’t want. One thing is to make up one’s mind not to work another is to find yourself without a job suddenly. Even though she is going about her disappointments and frustration in a very wrong way, wisdom demands that you try to reason with her by providing the right opportunity for both of you to talk about it. Sincerely, it has nothing to do with your age differences unless of course she was desperate to marry you at the time to consider the age difference. Age is only a statistic that has no place whatsoever in the making of a successful home. What is, is how much both of you want this marriage. Once you and your woman are on the same page, there is no situation, no matter how ugly you cannot overcome. Therefore, you must ask her the question of what she thinks of the marriage as well as how much she wants it to succeed. In talking to her, make it clear to her that you have the option of walking away from it all the moment you get to that point of not being able to cope with her rudeness and disrespect to you. This is to make her appreciate the necessity for her to come clean with all the issues bothering her. You need to do this because marriage is about endurance and tolerance. You cannot make it work without having these two qualities since both of you are from different homes, cultures and norms. The idea of the talk is to give you the rear opportunity of looking into her mind’s eyes, focusing on what was and could be. When a woman is as angry as she is, the reason behind her anger would come to the fore. It is this you must find out as it holds the clue to the future and workability of your marriage. It will also help you focus on your own faults. Sometimes we do certain things that appear to others to be good, for selfish reasons. What is your motive for shouldering all these responsibilities? That fact that you don’t do any of the things you pointed out doesn’t absolve you of complicity in the whole mess your marriage currently is. There are many salient habits which are more lethal and inimical to the growth of marriage than the ones you outlined. It could be a bad temper, lack of a proper relationship with one’s partner, unfriendliness, lack of respect by being insensitive to the feelings of the other person, dirty habits and deliberate wickedness. It could also being unnecessarily stubborn, having an opinion that doesn’t leave room for the feelings of the other party can really be frustrating and annoying. Therefore, the talk is intended to take you back to the drawing board; an opportunity for both of you to revalue and revalidate your relationship and vows. This is time to tell yourselves the truth; no matter how bitter. There is no marriage that can survive on falsehood and holding secrets from each other. Clearly, you haven’t been able to inject the right ingredients into your marriage because you both have a lot of outstanding issues and scores to settle within your marriage. For a complete healing, go back to the very beginning; the essence is to find out those things you may have left behind in the cause of every day living. For instance, you must find out why she thinks you are having affairs when from your account, you are above reproach. There must be something you aren’t doing right which is giving her this impression that you are not faithful to her. Are you available to her at all times? Are you her best friend? Do you discuss your thoughts, plans and decisions with her? How much is she a part of your life? Everyday, we leave a bit of ourselves in the paths we take until we forget the reasons we embarked on a journey in the first place. Painfully, marriage is where it happens the most. Couples often than not take each other for granted; in the process, bury the reasons that brought them together in the first place. Can you remember how those first moments were between the two of you? Surely a love more profound than the hatred you now feel for each other once brought you two together and it can still be revived once if there is a will. Believe me, the issue here isn’t because she is some few months older than you. It doesn’t have anything to do with age at all. The truth is if you don’t dig deeper into your marriage to unearth where the problem is coming from, chances are that you will keep experiencing the same challenges in any other relationship you enter into. Divorce is only an option when every attempt at ensuring a marriage remains on track fails. But before you come to that conclusion be painstaking in doing whatever you have to do to bring peace even if she appears unreasonable now. If you cannot do it alone; involve your families and friends as long as the purpose is to ensure the marriage works. Both of you must talk as sincerely as possible while calling on God to help you overcome this situation. It is the only reasonable option you have. Good luck.