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As in golf, let’s tee-off with these questions: why do good men marry bad girls? And good girls marry bad men. I asked that question because it is gradually becoming a trend for responsible husbands to be entangled in marriage with insubordinate wives. Okay, we have known for a long time that some husbands can be really irresponsible spouses. It is disheartening when a spouse begins to exhibit mischievous character. The question to ask is: was the mischievous character neglected at the dating stage or did the spouses hide their true nature and later pulled off the glove after signing the dotted lines?
When responsible brothers, sisters, friends, colleagues and good hearted men and women talk about painful encounters in marriage, one wonders how such people found their way into gentle hearts.
It is terrible when a man falls in love and marries a lady, at times without the consent of his family, makes every effort to please her and she then turns around to make his life hell on earth.
Consider this case: Joe and Clara met at a child dedication ceremony.
She looked quite elegant and responsible. Joe made the move, it clicked and after three years of close relationship, both walked down the aisle. As they settled down in marriage, Clara expressed interest in attaining higher education and her husband gave his consent and sponsored her until she got a Master’s degree. Joe felt it was a bright idea since he was strong in business with little education.
Interestingly, Clara gave birth gave to three adorable children alongside her academic pursuit.
With degrees in her firm grip, Clara began to change very fast in her attitude to her husband. Hubby tried to find out what he was not getting right in their relationship, often discussing with her into the wee hours. All his entreaties fell on deaf ears. It was after graduation that Clara realised she made a wrong choice in marriage.
She would have preferred to marry a university graduate. For instance, her husband’s grammar was incoherent and his dressing shabby. She took every opportunity to remind the man of his inadequacy. She even told her girl group that she descended low by marrying a fat illiterate.
At every slight disagreement, she would pour horrible insults on the man and his family, calling him a failure, ne’er-to-do-well and irresponsible. She created frivolities by herself and it became a challenge for their gentle relationship. Joe could not understand how the wine of his marriage was fast turning sour. As things got worse, the couple eventually separated. Joe wanted his children to remain under their joint parental control. He converted his one-storey building into flats and lived upstairs while Clara resided downstairs.
This allowed the children easy access to both parents at will while both lived a discrete life.
Before their separation, Joe was very proud of his educated wife. He vowed that his family would never experience want and lived up to his responsibility. He shielded her from his family’s pressure, and presented her as respected wife. Right from day one, he bought a car for her and ensured that was always elegantly turned out, such that she became the cynosure of all eyes at events. The couple lived in a well furnished apartment. Even her family was well taken off by her husband, who also treated her nicely and carried her like eggs. You want to ask, what went wrong?
If just for academic exercise, Joe was not a champion in the “other room” but yet he was able to score three beautiful goals, shouldn’t that be enough reason to make Clara count herself a blessed woman and behave well, focus on his love and other good qualities?
Let’s be honest, many women are also in messy, unpalatable marital relationships. Take, for instance, good girls who had a triangular lifestyle while in school. Their life revolved around their hostel, lecture halls and the church. They were not wayward, but simple decent girls, who did not frolic with married men (Aristos), who often come to hunt for girls on campus. These sisters kept themselves for the groom-to-be; they were not carried away by the wind of campus freedom.
Unfortunately, some of them end up marrying men who turn out to be the biblical swine that the Lord warned about, which should not be given meat as it would trample it under the foot. One recalls the painful account of a schoolmate, who all knew as a very good girl. Her pastor husband abandoned her with their two children, to hook up with a strange woman who was older, eccentric and a divorcee. It beats the imagination that what should ordinarily have been a bizarre case caught the fancy of her husband.
Unexpectedly, one begins to wonder what is going on in the society. How a hoary woman would lock her providing husband out and change the keys to their home. It took the intervention of the police for the man to pick some of his belongings and leave the home. The woman feels comfortable with her children in the same home without her husband for months.
Why are good people saddled with such relationships on both sides of the aisle? With so many embittered hearts across the border. Should it be so? Why are two hearts no longer beating together as one? Is the biblical passage, “the two shall become one,” no longer true? A responsible woman would just be shattered by a man in the name of marriage, likewise a good man?
There is no present challenge that is being experienced now one cannot find in the Book of Life as a case study. Is it fornication and adultery, stealing, lying, bearing false witness against another or is it rebelling.
In these perilous times, the onus lies on all parents to rediscover their responsibility for training their children, both boys and girls, on the rudiments of good marital relationship. It is not a duty for one parent to train a child. It is a collective responsibility for the society including relatives, neighbours, friends, schools, churches and the general community. Truth be told, signs of bad behaviour are often picked up early, but some families fail to do the needful. They pretend and cover up only for such rebellious children to be pushed out to other families in the name of marriage where they feel comfortable to cause uproar.
Dear parents, kindly inculcate good character in children, and fill them with foreign values sheepishly copied from films. We must retain the virtue of our true African value system.
The rapid erosion of the age-long values that built and sustained good marital relationships is the reason husbands kill wives, just as wives also murder their husbands.
All hope is not lost. Good men and women who are saddled with non-compliant spouses, can still refresh the wine of their marital relationship by appreciating the good qualities in the spouse. Try hard to rediscover that thing about your spouse that once sparked your interest and made you dew-eyed and go weak in the knee. Make yourself a happy spouse again. Life is too short to be wasted on bitterness.
