He refuses to help with the house chores

With Auntie Agatha

gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626

Dear Agatha, 

I have been married for a year without a child and my husband is already complaining terribly. He doesn’t give me feeding allowances or take care of his sick father who daily soils his bed.

My husband doesn’t help around the house or with his father. Even when I’m ill, he insists I cook his meals. To think he is a medical doctor beats my imagination.

Worried Wife.

Dear Worried Wife,

The issues manifesting in your marriage have always been there. Just that you never bothered to pay attention to them while you were both dating. There is no way he would change dramatically within a year of your wedding if he never had them in him.

A lot of time, women especially try to sweep fundamental character flaws noticed at the early stages of their relationships or vexing issues under the carpet simply because they want to hold on tightly to their knights in shinning armor forgetting there is a world of difference between relationship and marriage.

During courtship, how many times, did he cook for you or took special care of you when you needed the attention? Can you remember? What was his attitude to his home and surrounding? Can you recall anytime that he has helped you with the cleaning of the house and dishes?

Back then, you didn’t complain or even notice because you have a motive-to edge all the other girls out and become his wife.

There is no way a man who cannot care for his ailing father, who messes up his bed help a woman with domestic work. It isn’t part of him to care even though he read medicine.

There are two kinds of people in the world; those who have a caring and compassionate heart as well as those who function in their chosen profession mechanically.

It would have been a different story if he exhibited compassion for his father in his condition; then it would be that he has it in him to give. He simply cannot give what he doesn’t have at all. Granted, he can be taught to care but it won’t come from you being grouchy and nagging. You will only end up complicating issues between the two of you.

With this kind of man, you must learn to appeal to him nicely with the right smile as well as attitude.

Frankly, if you want this marriage to work, best you quit complaining and focus on how you can help yourself earnestly.

The first thing you have to get right is the willing acceptance of the peculiarities of your husband and marriage. Therefore quit trying to make him into your ideal can of man. Your ideal man is who you have as your husband because if you didn’t think him ideal, you wouldn’t have agreed to marry him in the first place.

Therefore, since you weren’t forced into the union, give yourself some rest of mind by sitting back and asking yourself where you as a woman went wrong. Something in your attitude too is contributing to the problem in your home.

For instance, your insistence he helps with the work load at home, if well properly handled by you, could yield the right result.

You must appreciate this fact, it isn’t a right the husband helps with the housework. If he elects to do it, the woman should regard it as a privilege. There is nothing that has changed in the primeval nature of man. Enhanced education for women doesn’t mean the traditional roles of the genders in the home have changed. The man remains the head of the home – there can never be two captains on a ship.

If you want him to help you, soothing and loving words is the trick to getting him to assist you with the housework. Even at that there are limitations. Often than not, the problem many women have in their marriages are given flesh by the “testimonies” of some women who tell all who care to listen that their husbands wash even their panties.

That another woman is able to get her husband to help with the house chores doesn’t make it automatic for you. In the first place, the women who trained the children are different. If one mother trained her child to care for a woman and another trained hers to be arrogant, except for wisdom and grace of God; the wife of the arrogant man cannot get her husband to do what the other man is doing for his wife.

To understand where your problem is coming from, take a look at the way he relates to his father. If he was brought up by his mother to care, he would be at the side of his father, tending to him and cleaning him. He grew up in a home where the mother was the unpaid servant to everybody. She cleaned after her family.

This is the kind of man, whose upbringing is focused on a woman doing all the house chores, he is.

To help yourself relax sufficiently to conceive, get a paid help who may not necessarily be a live-in- one.

Caring for an invalid can be really challenging as such a person is always in constant need of attention. Pay somebody to take the stress of you at day time. In addition to looking after your father-in-law, the person should clean the house for you; leaving you with the task of cooking his meals and caring for his person.

It will also make it easier for you to relax as you would have transferred the stress of all that you are doing now to the person giving you time to study your husband and plan the success of your marriage.

If things are this bad within a year of your wedding, then you haven’t really devoted time to engaging your marriage in a thorough study.

Ask yourself this important question every woman asks herself from time to time; where do you want your marriage to be in the next decade? This you must constantly compare with your initial picture of the kind of marriage you have always had in mind. It is only then you can bring about a harmonization between the askew one you have and the ideal you have in mind.

Also you must address the real reason for you irritations. Is it because you are yet to get pregnant and your husband is beginning to complain or the fact that you feel his father is a burden to you staying in your house?

Whatever the reasons for your show of temper is, be careful that you don’t end up destroying the fragile foundation your marriage appears to be pegged on.

For some women, conception cannot occur if she isn’t emotionally stable. Therefore try everything within your power to ensure you stay happy and calm to the point of being at ease whenever your husband is around. Let him find once again the traces of the woman he met and married. You cannot be a shrew and expect both of you to be an item. His complains may not be because of your lack of child; as a medical doctor, He knows better than that. He must certainly have another reason for his irritations; ask him instead of assuming it has to do with the lack of baby. Doing so will help you a great deal to clear the air, anger as well as put your marriage back on the right track. If apologizing to him will ensure peace in your home; do so. A wise woman will stop at nothing to bring a smile to the face of her husband. The ego of the average man will not allow him to say sorry.

Above all, ask God for His help to make your marriage work as well as give you the fruit of the womb; one that will stay with you till the end of time.

Good luck.