Should I leave him?

Dear Agatha, 

May God continue to bless you.
Deep inside me I’m truly fed up with my marriage of more than two years;
without a child to show for it. My husband has changed as he sees nothing good in me. He calls me names most of the time. 

I can no longer share my joy, fears, thoughts and dreams with him without him reading
negative meanings into it. He feels I’m responsible for our childlessness.

Do I tell him to get another woman who will make him happy by giving
him a child that I may probably not be able to give him?
I need your advice please.

Concerned Wife

Dear Concerned Wife,

Why do you want to give up your marriage so easily without a fight? The fact that you are yet to give birth to a child doesn’t make your marriage not worth fighting for.

There is no marriage without its peculiar kind of challenges. What guarantees do you have that the next one would be better than the one you appear so much in haste to pack up?

Beyond the issue of his irritations is the challenge of the pair of you not being able to have a child to show for your two years of staying together. That you both appear hesitant in discussing the issue is the reason your marriage is in quandary.

Unless you make a concerted effort at pulling your marriage out of this abyss, the crisis in your marriage may escalate beyond your control.

Important as children are, they are not the sole reason for the success or otherwise of any marriage. If it were so, many marriages blessed with children won’t be collapsing like packs of cards.

If recent statistics are anything to go by, there are more children from broken homes or crisis prone homes than there are children from really happy homes. This should tell you that a good marriage isn’t based on the presence of children. rather, a happy home is a product of love, loyalty, patience, tolerance, understanding, submissiveness on the part of the woman and large doses of daily prayers to overcome the challenge of two total strangers coming together to build a viable home.

There are so many things you are yet to discover about your husband just as he too has to be patient to understand your nature better.

But if you as the woman isn’t prepared to endure his mood swings; sometimes rude behavior, it simply means you aren’t ready for the rigors of managing a man’s mood and home.

If any woman tells you that her marriage is 100% stress free that person is lying to you. Like a beautiful garden tells the story of a dedicated gardener, a successful marriage tells the story of a couple, especially a woman who is ready to put up with the excesses of a man.

As long as your husband isn’t violent, there is still plenty of room for you to maneuver and get your marriage back on track.

Unlike you, your husband has nothing much to lose if this marriage packs up. As a man, he can easily move on and before you know it, has another woman in his life. But life isn’t so fair and without complications for the woman who has to carry the can of a failed marriage longer than the man.

This is the junction you get in life and examine what you really want from it. Is this marriage totally lacking in potentials? Is your husband absolutely too difficult to talk to? Is it that you no longer love him or he you? Do you think your marriage would have been happier than it is now if you had been able to give him a child? Deep down, is the lack of a child the reason he is no longer happy with you?

Besides, at what point did the problems in your home become so unmanageable?

Also what attempts have you made to discuss the situation between the two of you with him?

Sincerely, this is the time to be very honest with yourself. There is no hiding behind a finger if you want real solutions to your problem.

First you have to be certain you still have true feelings for this man; sufficient to pull your marriage from the downwards slide. If you don’t love him, it would be pointless for both of you to continue whether there is a child or not. Much as a marriage is a journey of severe endurance, it helps to have deep feelings for your spouse. This is what makes the journey hopeful on one hand and you the determination to see it to the end.

This is why you must first ask yourself certain pertinent questions; the kind that will unearth your true feelings for this man and point you at the right direction to go. If your mind is no longer in it, don’t pretend irrespective of the opinion of friends and family members, because it is a burden you will never be able to carry on your own.

But if convinced that you can cope, this is the point you get to in this kind of situation you tell it all.

Often than not, a woman gets all the blame when there is an absence of a child in a marriage. if he is changing towards you, he probably thinks you are the cause of the problem.

As a woman, do you think you are? What kinds of risks did you take as a single lady? How many abortions did you do and where? A lady may go through one abortion and end up being infertile as a result of the incompetence of the person who performed the abortion while, another may go through several and is able to conceive effortlessly.

It is sad that the risks a woman takes with her body as a single woman always wait for her in the future. Is there anything you are hiding from your man; something that could be directly or remotely connected with your inability to get pregnant? You see, it can really be painful if you are fighting a cause you don’t know its genesis. Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel standing by someone who is withholding vital information about his or her circumstances from you?

Give him a good reason to stand by you by telling him all that he needs to know about you. At least he would have the confidence to defend you when his family members come with their pressures or when friends make fun of him.

One thing the truth does, is giving us the confidence to face whatever the situation we find ourselves in. Your husband will stand by the truth you tell him.

Furthermore, have you both been to a doctor? What are the conclusions of the doctor? What did he find out from his examinations of both of you? Who is at fault? If he knows the truth about your past, nothing the doctor says would come to him as a surprise.

And if both of you haven’t visited the doctor, it is time you did together. Don’t premise whatever you are doing on guess work, the fault could be from him. Some couples are perfectly okay medically but simply cannot produce children together. There are also couples that go through a long period of waiting before becoming parents. When it comes to infertility, so many things can go wrong so, it helps to know where to look at for solutions.

The truth is, both of you have to go to see a doctor together. It doesn’t matter who is at fault. Provided both of you are committed to each other, there is no problem without solutions as long as God is put on the driver’s seat.

If there is perfect understanding between the two of you, there is nothing stopping both of you from adopting a child or children. What matters at the end of the day is how much love you both invest on the child(ren).

As a woman, learn to pray for patience and tolerance in whatever you do.

In addition, two years is too short a time for you to be overtly worried about lack of a child. Some couples stay for almost two decades to have a child of their own.

Good luck.