He is slave to his children

Dear Agatha,

Three years ago, I got married for the second time after over a decade of living alone. My first husband’s family destroyed our marriage. From the very first day he brought me home, they didn’t like me one bit. As a result, nothing I did met with his or their approval.

He was too much of their son to be a man of his own. The result was the destruction of our marriage of over nine years. Because of the hatred they had towards me, till date, no member of his family has asked after my children.

I have been left alone to care for them. Thank goodness, the worst is over as the children are now in the university and doing very well.

Their father who got married almost immediately I left, I hear isn’t doing so well following the death of his mother.

Having fulfilled my promise to the children to wait for a decade before thinking of remarrying; I got married three years ago to a man I met four years ago.

He too has also had a nasty experience in his own first marriage.

With that, we decided to give matrimony a second chance but in the last couple of months, it has been almost impossible for us to move beyond a particular point because he especially, is engulfed in the memories of his past experiences.

Exceptionally loving and good hearted as he is, he is unable to control his emotions whenever the names of his ex wife is mentioned. He goes bitter and very moody.

This has made me very weary and fearful of the future of our relationship especially as I have been unable to conceive. I know he hates her with a passion but I’m worried that his blinded desire to ensure that his children don’t have anything to do with their mother, could later affect our relationship.

His desire to have them like him more than their mother makes him do anything, including going into debt, to please the children.

The situation is so bad that their mother manipulates the children to make very unreasonable demands from their father.

I fear she could manipulate them to bring her back into the house even though she was the one that ended the marriage to marry another man.

I know my husband won’t deliberately hurt me but my experiences from my first marriage is making me very apprehensive and so unsure of him and me.

As a result I have become so apprehensive and irritable with him and everything around him.

I feel very insecure all of a sudden that I feel like ending this marriage before anything untoward happens that will make him throw me out.

Like I said, he won’t ordinarily but his unreasonable determination to hold on to his children at all cost reminds me of my former mother-in-law whose ambition to hold on to her children too, ended destroying their lives.

I’m scared of same thing happening in my marriage.

Clara.

Dear Clara,

The past isn’t a place we go to stay but a place we visit for help and wisdom to tackle whatever challenges we are having in our present and future.

Only a very unwise person goes into his or her past to stay. You and your husband are doing just that; staying in your past and refusing to let go of all those experiences that cut short your previous attempts at being happy.

Unless you both make the attempt to bury the ruins of a time gone in your lives, the past will hunt you so much you both will never be able to value the reasons you got married to each other or find the will to attempt to make things work.

Yes, there is no doing away with the past but only if it comes with meaningful and helpful lessons. The way you and your husband are going about issues in your marriage, it is apparent to all, that you both didn’t learn anything from your past experiences at all, especially you as the woman.

Every man that loves his children and whose wife left to marry another man would behave like your husband is doing.

You more than any other woman should be able to appreciate this, given your own experiences too especially as it affects your relationship with your children.

Knowing what you are going through bringing these children up on your own, there is no way you would or entertain anyone coming between you and them. You may not want to be like your former mother-in-law but, certain situations would arise that would make you not only bark but bite anyone who attempts taking the attention of the children from you. It is the natural reaction of single parents who have given their all to making their children happy.

Don’t forget that before your emergence on the scene, this man had only his children to hold on to; to give him a reason to continue to live. There is no way he would change overnight without you investing a lot of trust and tolerance into this relationship.

Like you, he too has his fears concerning the future. If the mother of his children could abandon him as well as the children for another man, what assurances have you given him that you are different from her? Sincerely the onus is on you to make him forget his hurt, bruised ego and humiliation at having his wife leave him for another man.

He needs you to appreciate and love him unconditionally. That you are thinking of ending this marriage means he has every reason to be very apprehensive and hold on tighter to his children for comfort.

He brought you into his life for comfort as well as help in giving him a reason to have faith in himself as a man; if after only three years, you are already submitting to the fears of your yesterday to ending it all, then you live him with no choice but to continue with the way he has always been with his children.

You and not your husband is the one swimming mostly in the pool of the past.

After your first experiences, you must by now know that marriage is a journey of compromises. You have to learn to let go of so many things as well as incorporate new ideas for any marriage to grow progressive roots.

Both of you have to sit down to re-examine every issue that has to do with the past with a view of charting the right path for the future you both need so much.

Be warned that you cannot be the complainant, the jury and the judge in this matter. You have to learn to hear his side on every issue that has to do with your marriage else you might not be able to salvage anything from this union.  You have to learn to listen more. Chances are, he is acting this way because of the signal he is getting from your antenna. You have to make him trust you first before you can get him to listen to your observations and suggestions on the training of the children.

No marriage is ever beyond redemption as long as the couple is ready to make amends. You and he are together because you both felt your previous marriages were beyond redemptions. You would be doing yourselves a great injustice if you also allow this one to die due to what you think are problems from your failed attempts to make those early marriages work.

Sincerely, the issues you are having in this marriage isn’t from the past but as a result of your lack of wisdom on how to handle the person of your husband and challenges of your home.

By sitting down with him to discuss, you would be giving yourself and him the chance to air your unhappiness, disappointments, pains and emotional torture both from your past lives and now.

When two people are sincere with themselves, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome. Once you get all these out of the way, you make it possible to have a clear view of your reasons for coming together as well as inherent reason to hold on to what you both have now.

The conversation would make it easy for you to correct and not resent the children, see them as yours and not your rivals for the attention of your husband.

This way, it would make it extremely easy for your husband to entrust them into your care and not worry about how you would react to them.

They are still able to play their mother’s card because you have refused to act as wife, mother and friend in your home. Once the children can trust you to a certain level, you will be surprised at how easy it would be for you to wean them of whatever influence their mother has over them.

As for your husband, he needs assurances and love from you. It affects men differently when a woman walks out on them into the arms of another man especially after marriage.

It makes them feel less than half of the man they are supposed to be.

He married you for love and your maturity. Give him the benefit of those experiences by being loving and supportive by anchoring your marriage on God.

Good luck.