By Yetunde Arebi
Hi,
Today, we conclude our expose with our respondents. Feel free to chip in your views on this or any other issue with us via the addresses above.
Bisi, (61), retired Teacher says education and change in lifestyle are a major factor:
The husbands were the heads of their homes and bringing home the money and wherewithal to take care of the family. The women engaged more in businesses and generally relied on their men to take care of them. In our own time, things were a bit different because we had more women who were getting educated and going into the work places and were competing with the men in terms of take home packages. Women who were succeeding in their businesses which is not ordinary trading anymore, but sophisticated businesses which were the domain of men before. It was back then that the devil crept into the homes. Women began to see themselves as equal to men.
Women no longer want to play the natural God ordained role for women, everybody wants to be out there competing with each other. That is why we are all suffering the repercussion. The home is suffering, the children are suffering, the marriage will surely crumble.
Nobody is willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary for seamless relationships and marriages. Ego, pride and self centeredness are destroying many marriages today. Once these traits are established, there will be lies or half truths, there will be cheating and distrust. If they continue to live that way, there will be resentment and unhappiness in the relationship. The only other possibility is for the couple to go their separate ways”.
Augustina, (46) Fashion Designer and Deacon says the world is no longer normal:“I think the major reason for many things that have gone bad in the society today is the internet. Relationship is a major target of the internet. Many things we never heard of in the past, we are seeing and hearing now.
Those things we used to only read about from foreign lands are now happening here. Everybody wants to do things differently now. Cheating is the easiest thing for both men and women now. You can carry on with other partners for many months and years without your original partner knowing. And when they find out, even you will have some people to support you that it is now a normal thing. If you cannot stay in it like that, you are free to go. Even the world is not normal again, so, divorce rate is going up. The rate of everything bad is going up”.
Julie, (32), Cosmetologist, reiterates the importance in the role of parents in a personal experience:“I want to speak from a personal point of view. This is one that happened in my family. My brother’s wife’s parents, the mother in particular came to my brother’s house to help her daughter to pack her things from her matrimonial home. I have been hearing about things like that but never thought it could happen to someone I know. It was not that the couple were fighting or there was a serious problem between them that could not be resolved.
But these people came to remove their daughter’s things from a marriage that was not up to two years. The reason was that my brother was cheating on their daughter and the wife’s family said they will not tolerate it. The interesting thing was that the girl that my brother was said to be cheating with was well known to their daughter.
They were rivals before my brother chose to marry her because she got pregnant and her parents insisted that she would not have the child out of wedlock. My mother too supported them, that it was the best thing to do. And this other lady was the first we all knew as his girlfriend, which this wife also knew. Unfortunately, after the lavish three days wedding that my brother did with this girl, she was still not satisfied, but was monitoring this other lady who did not even come to meet her in her house.
We did not say that what my brother was doing with the other lady was good, but it was not as if his wife was ignorant of the relationship, but she thought she was smarter. So, she started telling her parents all sorts of lies that my brother will leave her at home and go for weekends with the girl.
Her mother is the controller of their house. Anything she says is final, her husband cannot control her because we heard that she is richer than her husband. Maybe the daughter thought that it is normal for a woman to be controlling the husband like what they do in their family. So, when she realised it would not be possible, she could not cope.
Her mother started making trouble that we were giving her too much stress, when nobody was even going to their house. One day, she took her baby and went to her parents’ house for almost a month, everybody in the family kept calling but she refused. Her mother insisted that my brother must bring my parents to come and beg them and that only then, will she return. So, my brother said she could be staying there as our family will not come and beg, because nobody drove her out.
Some weeks later, her mother came with her and a pickup van to pack her things.
So, what I am saying is that some parents are the cause of the problem. Leave your children alone to solve their problems in their marriage. Another thing is that, many single ladies know that their partner is not for them, they just want to marry the guy by force. If the foundation is bad, don’t do it. It is like a house that has no solid foundation and you want to start building on it. It will collapse”.
Hmmm! Do have a wonderful weekend!!!
