Dear Agatha
Please help me out of this problem I am experiencing with my husband of eight months.
When we were dating it wasn’t so much of a problem to me. But, since we got married, it has become a major issue in our marriage which could lead to its collapse if care is not taken.
I am forced to ask for your help because attempts to resolve the issue on my own are putting my marriage under severe pressure, as my husband has stubbornly refused to see things from my perspective.
He thinks I am making a mountain out of an ant hill.
Agatha, even when I am in the car with him, he insists on buying things himself in the market. He goes to the market himself to get whatever we need at home. Even when I tell him what I need as a woman in my kitchen, he buys what he wants.
I have tried to explain to him that he should allow me run that department of our marriage, that it is my duty to go to the market and manage my kitchen, but he refuses.
Even when I use my money to buy food items when we run out of certain items, he complains that they are expensive even when the ones he buys are more expensive.
Even if I don’t like the quality of the things he buys, I have to use them because I don’t have a choice to buy what I want. It is all so frustrating as he appears so set in this habit of his.
I tried getting his best friend to talk to him, rather than achieve the result I want, he took it as an offence. So, I have learnt to allow him be, but it isn’t good for our marriage at all.
I truly am tired of it all, the constant arguments about this.
I don’t know if he is stingy or just being himself but I was brought up with the knowledge that men provide their wives with house-keeping money and that it is the responsibility of the woman to go to the market and buy stuff for her kitchen.
Much as I love my husband, this is a situation that I know deep within me I cannot cope with. I grew up with a father who didn’t bother himself with my mother’s kitchen.
I’m so confused. Please help me before I do something I will forever regret.
Alexandra.
Dear Alexandra
First and foremost, don’t try to pattern your marriage after that of your parents, or else you will end up getting hurt, disillusioned and extremely bitter at the choices you made in marrying your husband.
Even though they are your parents, you are an individual in your own right, hence subject to your own choices.
In addition, your husband is different from your father. Like you, he has his reasons for doing things his own way. His upbringing and yours are clearly different.
So trying to cast him in the same mould as your father would further create disaffection between the two of you.
Besides, every marriage comes with its set of problems. Ask your parents, they would tell you that they are still struggling with some issues, too, despite the number of years they have lived together.
Challenges will always come and go in marriages but it depends on the willingness and ability of the couple to manage such situations effectively.
Also the attitude we develop towards a problem, more often than not, influences how we handle the issue, which is another reason you have to rid yourself of all the negative thoughts you are having about your marriage and husband.
Like our faces, our challenges are different and their magnitude is how we define them. This is why one partner will overlook the shortcomings of the other, by focusing on the good aspects of the marriage, and another will cave in at the sight of a trouble.
As long as you are determined to make this marriage work at all costs, there is nothing much to what is happening in your home.
The simple solution is to develop the right attitude to your husband’s habit. If it makes him happy going to the market, why not relax and save yourself the stress of managing meager housekeeping money?
Obviously he enjoys what most men won’t do, even if offered all the money in the world. So, what is your problem? As long as there is food on your table, let him do all the buying.
As for those things you want in your kitchen that he isn’t buying; those you can go and get on your own, not only to satisfy your own craving for those things but to give you the feel of the market scene you apparently wish for desperately.
As long as you understand each other, there is no reason for you to feel bad. You are fortunate; he is just buying and not measuring the food items out for you.
If some women can cope with men who daily instruct them on the measure of food to cook for the family, without collapsing their marriages, then you have no reason not to succeed in yours.
To achieve a good marriage requires a lot of tolerance, sacrifice, patience, wisdom and compromises. The question is: How does his going to market affect the quality of your marriage or your relationship with him for that matter?
Really, there is no law preventing a man from shopping for his family. It actually saves the woman a lot of complaints about house-keeping allowances not being enough, especially when the man expects the woman to become a magician by cooking him meals his money cannot buy.
Honestly, if you shift ground and look at the positive side of all this, you won’t have any need to feel so bad anymore.
Also, your presentation of the issue maybe one reason your husband appears adamant. If you are demanding it as your right and using the example of your parents as yardstick, you may not go far.
In fact, that may further make him very recalcitrant on the matter. So pretend it doesn’t bother you at all by changing your approach.
When next he does the shopping, compliment him for his effort by telling him you are fortunate to have him for a husband.
Even when you feel he has been cheated in the market, keep your thoughts to yourself and instead focus on the act and not the thoughts you think he has of going to the market himself.
If this is the price you have to pay for peace in your home, please do it. The naked truth is, another woman would jump at the opportunity of having her husband go to the market himself to save herself the headache of haggling endlessly in the market.
You and I know that the money for housekeeping is never enough. Most women supplement what they get from their husbands. You don’t have that worry as it is.
Unlike most of us who have to find ways to augment, all you have to worry about is simply to cook the meals and report to him when the stock is depleting.
Also, a time would come in his life when he would get tired and too embarrassed to be doing the shopping. Until that time, relax and enjoy this privilege while it lasts.
Since you didn’t complain that he is denying you of anything, it means he isn’t stingy; just a man who happens to enjoy shopping just like some men enjoy cooking.
Focus more on his good points and stop worrying on the one thing you don’t like about him. Frankly, there is nothing to what you are complaining of. It will become something of an issue if you refuse to let it be.
Perish this from your thought, to enable you concentrate on knowing the angel inside your husband, so as to reap the goodness God planted in your marriage.
Good luck.
