He beats me even without provocation

Dear Agatha,

I’m at a very important crossroad in my life. My marriage of five years has not been fair to me.

My husband beats me at the slightest opportunity he has. He doesn’t have any respect for me or cares if there is an audience to his bouts of temper.

The issue is, I cannot pinpoint what brings on his tempers. Just about anything can ignite his mood and before I know what is happening, he starts beating me.

He doesn’t care if I’m pregnant or not, sick or healthy. The strange thing is, he becomes very sober and sweet afterwards; begging for my forgiveness.

I have run out of excuses for the many bruises on my body; so much so my colleagues have stopped asking to avoid embarrassing me. 

When I told his mother about the situation in my home, she pleaded with me that it was a family trait; that my father-in-law still beats her. she said, if she didn’t die in the process of being beaten all these years, I too would survive it.

His elder brother I, also got to find out treats his wife the same way and is the reason she has refused to come back to Lagos from Abuja where she worked her transfer to.

When the violence first started, I refused to inform my parents but they eventually got to find out and my mother has been to his family to plead with him not to kill me.

She has also not relented in telling me to come out of the marriage to protect my life. Last year, my siblings came to the house with the intentions of beating me to force me out but, I pleaded with them not to. 

This one that happened three days ago really got me frightened. I don’t know who offended him but he came home in real foul mood and immediately picked quarrel with me for not getting his food ready on time. I didn’t bother to remind him  out of fear, that I was also just coming back from the office. Instead I continued with the task of warming the stew and serving him his food.

I had my back to him when he was talking to me because my son needed my attention with his soiled diaper. It was in the process of taking my son to the bedroom to change his diaper that he pounced on me and almost suffocated me. I don’t know how my four year old daughter did it but, the house girl later told me that she jumped and bit him on his neck which made him to leave me.

That night, I didn’t sleep at home. We slept in the hotel not far from our house. He woke us up the next morning pleading I come back home.

I had no choice but to go back.

Agatha, I don’t know what to do because I’m becoming very much fearful for my life. There is no telling what he can do next.

I find the whole experience painful because I never planned to have a broken home which is why I’m still with him. What baffles me is that his father is a man of God.

Please help me. I don’t know if I should continue to endure this marriage or face the shame of having a broken home. I have always looked on women who have broken homes as failures. I don’t know how to handle it at all.

I’m so confused.

Worried Woman.

Dear Worried Woman,

The choice before you is either to get killed by your husband or live to look after your.

Nobody makes such decision for anyone. The option  to live or die is one an individual makes alone.

You are the one who is being beaten every day and whose life is on the line so, if you are not tired of being at the receiving end of his inexplicable anger always, then continue to manage him and the unpleasant situation in your home.

After all, if your mother-in-law is still standing and enduring the situation in her marriage, you also can.

But more seriously though, is the issue of your children who are daily made to witness violence in their lives. The sad truth is that they too will grow up to become replicas of your husband just as he learnt from his parents.

Is that what you want? Even if you enjoy being beaten by your husband, what about the consequences of all these violence on your children? Have you ever ponder the effect on them?

Yes, your daughter saved your life by jumping on the back of her father to bite him but isn’t that enough alarm  for you to end all these violence by taking steps to shield your children from all these?

The fact that your daughter did that isn’t a good sign or something to applaud her for. Four year olds, don’t go about biting their fathers to protect their mothers. Rather, they go about hugging their fathers and begging to be carried on their shoulders.

This is already a sign that your daughter is sharpening and preparing her tools for her own martial journey. All your children see, are their father beating you, not loving you or showing affection to them. How do you think such children would turn out? Children raised in violent homes cannot give love because they never had it.

Your husband’s behavior isn’t inexplicable like you want to think. The fact is, he is a good copy of his father. He is what his parents made of him.

The only thing he can give you is what his parents gave him; hatred and violence. It is psychological. Love germinates love while hatred gives birth to violence.

The terrible thing about all these is, once these negativities become entrenched in the mind of a person, it takes only the grace of God to erase.

Even if you want to endure the situation, by debriefing your husband through acts of love, whose example will he be following? His father still beats his mother; his elder brother isn’t any different from him.

This is a fundamental thing with his family. For him to change, his father and siblings all have to change too. Do you have the kind of stamina to battle with something so fundamental and tasking which obviously his mother is unable to change?

For now, you need the time and energy to invest on re-defining the impression already building up in the minds of your children about life.

One fact you should never forget is that only the living stays married. if anything should happen to you in the cause of his beating you, your children shall be the greatest losers.

Not only will the memories of their father always beating you never go away from their minds, the knowledge too that he eventually killed you could make them worse than their father.

This is the time to protect yourself and children from the bleak future that is beckoning.

It doesn’t matter whether you are failure where your marriage is concerned but don’t the important thing is not to be a failure as a mother. Today, you are not enjoying your marriage and family because your mother-in-law failed as a mother. If she had the guts to defend the future of her children by admitting her mistake in marrying their father, perhaps your husband could have been a better husband and father.

Your children need you more than your husband. Their future is begging for your intervention to make it better and happier. Even if you are willing to die in your bid not to be mocked by people, is it enough to sink the lives of your children forever?

A mother makes sacrifices for her children; that act of your daughter is a call that it is time you did if you want to enjoy your old age and have children who are passionate about you.

A man who is busy fighting his wife at the slightest excuse will never have time to think of his mother who he sees as the reason for the failure he is.

This is why he keeps beating you because he sees his mother in every woman. Refuse to take the blame for something you had nothing to do with by putting the interest of your children before yours.

Good luck.

Share a problem With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626