He sent me away because of his mother, should I give him another chance?

updated: Thursday 19-02-2009

Dear readers,
It was a tug-of-war between our writer this week and her mother-in-law while her marriage lasted. Now, she has carved a niche for herself and her children, but mummy’s boy is back. What can she do? Please read and advise her.
Thanks, Monica Taiwo.

Dear Taiwo,
I am a native of Omu-Aran in Kwara State and that is the place I met my husband, Tayo, when I was at the University of Ilorin.

There was a day Tayo came to my school with his friends from the University of Ibadan. Through chatting with his colleagues, I got to know him and we became friends. Though I had someone I was dating then, my mother stood against our relationship. This is because his religion is different from mine. And you know mothers, all my excuses to convince my mum were not successful.

Despite this, I kept on dating him (Akin) and the love between us remained strong.

But it got to a stage that the relationship became boring to me. I couldn't even tell what happened then, but I just called it quits with Akin. All his pleas fell on deaf ears and my only excuse then was that I couldn't marry against my parents’ wish.

I continued my education without any man in my life until the man from UI (Tayo) came and proposed to me. Initially, I rejected his offer, but later, I accepted.

Since we were both in the same level in our schools, we went for our service at the same time. It was after we finished our service that I introduced Tayo to my mother. She was very happy since we were both Christians. She welcomed him as her own son and she advised us to be tolerant of each other.

Things went on well with our relationship until when Tayo took me home to meet his mother. In fact, I never expected what I met being the first time of seeing his mother. The way she behaved almost sent me away.

When we first came in, she just greeted me casually and I thought afterall, she did not know me yet. But what surprised me most was that when Tayo introduced me as his wife-to-be, she just said “you are welcome” and she went inside. Tayo saw how I felt, but he told me he and his mother were having a conflict. I told him that did not mean I should be addressed like that.

This action made me to stop going to the place again since Tayo’s father had died a long time ago and there was no one else to meet at home except his mother. I was scared of what she would do again if I went to her.

After Tayo and I got jobs, we started preparing for our wedding, but we first had our introduction. On our introduction day, Mama came with members of their family. Honestly, no one would believe it was the same Mama that I visited who behaved strangely sometime ago.

We had our wedding ceremony and it was successful. A year after our wedding, I gave birth to a baby boy and it was during this period I got to know the true colour of my mother-in-law.

When Mama came to nurse our baby, she treated me well for the first eight days, but when all our visitors had gone, the battle started. I had the baby through cesarian section and you know I needed some time to regain my strength.

In spite of that, I would prepare the breakfast for the whole family, wash the baby’s clothes and other stuffs.

Those ones were not stressful anyway. But what about lunch time? I prepared food for Mama, my husband and myself everyday.

Mama did not even bother about my health as she won’t help me with any household chores. She was not that old; she was just 53 then. What she only did was to bathe the baby.

It got to a stage that I was not feeling well at all, I had to tell Tayo to allow my mother to come. He said no as this could cause conflict between the two mothers. He pleaded with me and promised to help with some chores. But whenever Tayo wanted to help me, Mama would stop him from doing so and would even go to the extent of saying I had charmed him.

Things went on like that until Mama left. Immediately she left, things came back to normal and there was peace in our home. There was no more nagging and my husband was really helpful and more loving.

Exactly two years after, I was pregnant with our second baby. Actually between those two years, mama visited us but didn’t stay. Both of us didn’t get to see each other until I came back from the office.

And when I came back, I prepared lunch and dinner as appropriate, made myself busy and avoided confronting Mama as much as possible.

Immediately my mother-in-law heard about my pregnancy, she came and stayed with us for two weeks. Those two weeks were like hell for me. Not that she troubled me, but her mere presence scared me. She stayed indoors most of the time and when she came out, she would look directly at my protuding stomach and smile. I did not count all her behaviour as serious. Instead, I tried to ignore her and her strange behaviour.

Exactly the time that I should put to bed, I did and gave birth to a set of twins, one girl and one boy. I was really happy. When I was discharged, I called my husband and told him that my mother would be in the best position to come and stay with us to help since his mother came when we had our first child. He agreed.

When Mama heard of this, she went beserk, called me unprintable names and even went as far as saying that I had actually charmed her son and that all the juju that I used on him would be destroyed. My mother, on hearing all Mama said, advised me that she wouldn’t mind staying back and that I should allow Mama to help. At first, I refused but much later, I agreed.

It was tougher this time and I did not even bother to please mama again. I did what I could and when she complained, I did not mind. It was not that I was not good but Mama is the type of mother-in-law one would never pray to have.

Though I had little conflicts with Mama this time, I never allowed that to disturb my peace. After all, I had adapted to it. She complained to my husband always but what he did was to plead with her on my behalf.

Two months later, Mama left and I thanked God she did. Nine days after Mama left, we slept and we woke up one morning and discovered that one of the twins (Kehinde) had died. It was like a dream on this day because there was no problem before we slept the previous night.

Two weeks after, Mama came to sympathise with us and she left immediately.

Life went on like this and three years later, I got pregnant again. When my pregnancy was about eight months old, my husband started to behave strangely. In fact, there were some things he did that I hardly believed that he could do to me. Anything I did then just didn’t please him. I started wondering about this strange behaviour of his and I decided to call him, ask him where I had gone wrong. The day I explained to him, he did not give me any attention, he just asked me what was strange about his behaviour. I took it calmly and started praying about this.

A month later, I was delivered of a baby girl safely. This time, I wanted my mother to come and stay but because of how my mother-in-law behaved, my mother told me to let my mother-in-law come just to maintain peace in my home.

When Mama came, she noticed that there was conflict between my husband and I. And anytime my husband and I were arguing on an issue, Mama would blame me. She spent two months with us and left for her place.

Two weeks after Mama left, she came back again and started staying with us permanently. There was a day she brought out her picture, I never knew Mama came with her picture. When my husband came, I let him know about the issue. He said “that does not mean, after all, she is my mother.” When I heard this, it was like a dream.

So, the next morning after my husband had left for work, I took Mama's picture away and put it somewhere else.

I was in the living room when Mama came and noticed what I did.

She went straight to where her picture was and tried to place it where she had put it. I confronted her and started shouting at her that she should leave my house and go back to wherever she came from. To my surprise, she slapped me.

This became serious to the extent that our neighbours came to settle the quarrel. When my husband came, it was another story he heard from Mama. My attempt to let him hear my own part of the story was unsuccessful.

I left my husband’s house that day with my three children. My husband sent me packing. I went to stay with a friend and later, I got an accommodation on my own. I wouldn’t have gone to the extent of getting a house to stay in but my husband refused to listen to anybody’s pleas on my behalf.

Something happened after a year and some months after we had separated. I heard that Mama had stroke and it was a serious case. Months after, she died.

After her death, Tayo has been coming to beg me. He sent many of his friends to beg me so that I could come back to him. But I have decided to stay alone and take good care of my children.

Please, advise me, should I relocate just to avoid him or should I tell him frankly to leave us alone? After all, he sent us away and I know what I faced during the early stage of my staying alone.

Yetunde, Lagos

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