How do I help my parents manage their marriage?

Dear Agatha,

My parents are in their 60s and late 50s respectively but they keep behaving like children. I’m married with three children. My younger sister too has two children while my elder brother has one child. 

Ever since I can remember, my parents have always had issues in their marriage. They never agree on anything. I also cannot remember how many times my mother has left home to stay with her people but the good thing is that they keep coming back together. At one time, they were separated for almost three years but they were able to sort out their differences and we started to live together as a family.

Even with several grandchildren, they still fight. My mother still packs out of her home. Recently, my mother packed out of her home again. Although the matter was settled by one of our uncles; she still lives outside her home.

Sincerely, I don’t know who to blame for the problems in their marriage or say precisely what the main issue is. The issues in their marriage are multidimensional.  The family has lost count of all the issues they fight about, the number of times they have lived apart and have become very used to their way of life.

The issue now is that my siblings and I are also having issues with our own marriages. My elder brother and his wife are having serious issues to the extent his wife has packed out. My younger sister and I are also having issues. As I write, I am staying with my aunty while my sister is putting up with a friend whose husband is abroad. It is this bad.

The funny thing is, none of us can say what the problems are with our spouses just like in the case of our parents.  This is why I want help in helping my parents with their marriage. I have this strong feeling that once their own marital issue is resolved, we their children will be able to enjoy our own homes. I don’t want my children suffering for something they know nothing about.

Agatha, I didn’t plan my life like this. I have always wanted a happy and fulfilled home. 

Also I want to know if you think “there is something fundamentally wrong,” to quote you, with my parents’ marriage. If yes, how can I go about it? My case is very bad as my in-laws are in support of their son taking another wife. They keep saying it to my hearing that if they knew about my parents’ marital  issues, they wouldn’t have allowed their son marry me.

I do feel so ashamed of my parents. Much as I love them, I don’t want either of them coming to my home because they can fight anywhere. Once, when I had my first child, I don’t know what transpired between them on the phone but the next thing I knew was my father coming to my house to fight my mother. Painfully my mother-in-law was in my house that day and witnessed my shame.

Patience.

Dear patience,

Yes, there is something very wrong with your family and if steps are not urgently taken to arrest the situation once and for all, your children and those of your siblings might have disruptions too in their marriages.

Unfortunately, such problems grow larger and more complicated with each successive generation. That is why your effort at locating the source of your parents’ marital problem is absolutely important.

It isn’t normal for a couple of your parents’ age, who are grandparents to go about fighting like newlyweds. By now, your mother, especially should have learnt to handle your father. There is nothing about your father or in his behavior that should surprise or bother her again. She ought to have developed the thickness of skin to ignore him if need be.

Your father too should have mastered the act of living with a woman long ago. He should be the one telling your brother the kind of patience a man requires to co-habit with a woman successfully.

You are all having problems because there is no one to run to among the two of them when you or your siblings have important challenges in your marriages.

However, it isn’t too late to remedy. But you have to go beyond the now to the very beginning of their relationship. It will also help you a great deal to observe the marriages of your aunties and uncles objectively with a view of finding any similarity to the one of your parents. These other ones may not be so obvious as those of your parents but it would help put things in proper perspective if you make it your business to find out the quality of marriages your relatives have.

Don’t skip this process because every problem has a tap root. To begin and end it with only your parents may not achieve the desired result. You must trace the cause of what is fast becoming a foundational problem.

If there is nothing abnormal with the marriages of your uncles and aunties, ask around for information on the marriages of your grandparents and their siblings. This is because the kinds of issues you, your siblings and parents are having don’t happen in emptiness. Something greater than what you see today must have caused it and without you dealing with it at that source of origin, there is little you can do to help your family get out of this problem.

If there is something in your family tree, it would help you focus on the way out of the problems you are all having. For instance, such information would help you know how those that experienced the problem tackled it and why it has come back to affect your family more than the others. In addition you will know where to peg your prayer points as well as steps to take to avoid it reappearing in the lives of any of your descendants.

But, if there is nothing in your genealogy, sit your parents down for a heart to heart discussion. Chances are they brought this problem on themselves through some ill-thought out choice they made. It would be extremely helpful if they open up on the relationships they had before agreeing to spend the rest of their lives together. Probe them deeper to remember any promise they made to anybody regarding marriage which they didn’t keep. Often than not, when promises to innocent persons are broken without reason, the consequences on the one who betrayed the trust has this kind of crippling effects especially if the injured party is unable to find love again.

In anger and frustration, he or she may have placed a curse not only on the guilty party but on his or her generations forever. Helping them go down memory lanes will definitely open up several possibilities on how they came to this point.

Reparation isn’t only physical; there is also a spiritual angle to it.

If either of them is able to remember who was hurt, it is a simple matter of looking for that person to plead for forgiveness. Many a time, some people think once a minister of God performs deliverance, the problem goes away completely; this doesn’t apply in every case. For some problems to totally go away, it requires seeking the person offended and pleading for forgiveness.

Sincerely, this problem appears to belong to this categorization since it is not limited to your parents. If it were, one could say your parents have simply refused to mature beyond the point at which they met and got married but since it is already soiling the marriages of their children, then it is something they did way back in their youths.

Impress the implications of them not telling the truth, on the entire family. To underscore the seriousness and need for them to open their secret cupboards to each other, use your troubled marriages as reasons for them to be very sincere.

Also the whole family has to come together to hold a special prayer session and vigil to seek the face of God. It is also imperative for you all to re-dedicate your homes to the hands of God who only, has the powers to touch the hearts of your spouses and in-laws.

When things become this complicated, it is no longer an issue of who is right or wrong. All of you should go and beg your spouses and move back into your homes because the battle is against all of you having happy homes. Now that you know, ensure it doesn’t become a reality by standing on the promises of God always.

Also, learn to constantly speak goodness and mercy into the lives of your parents.

Good luck.