Dear Dr. Bill,
My wife and I have been married for 20 years and we have 3 great kids. Our marriage has never been perfect but I’d say we have done well together. That is until recently. My wife has a child from a previous relationship who she put up for adoption when the little girl was a baby. That was ancient history and not an issue in our lives until this daughter recently re-entered our lives. The daughter is now a single mom of two and sought out her birth mom, my wife. My wife was hesitant at first but is now thrilled to be in this daughter’s life. Over the past several months, she has been at her unemployed daughter’s beckon call and has spent more time and money with her and her kids than our own. She even wants our kids and me to welcome the daughter and kids into our family and treat them like long lost relatives. I’m having a lot of trouble not being resentful of my wife’s excessive attention to her daughter at the expense of our family. I understand her need to be in her daughter’s life but I did not sign up for this extra family and all its responsibilities. Help!
Dear Burdened Husband,
It makes sense to me that you are frustrated. You’ve built a pretty good life and all of a sudden, out of left field, comes a challenge no one expected. As I try to imagine your situation, I think the biggest problem is that you didn’t have a choice in the matter and therefore you resent what has happened. It is normal for you to feel the way you do and I’ll bet your wife has made many a judgment error as she tries to compensate for the guilt she may feel. But Resentment is like an anti-compassion drug. Absorb enough of it and it can entirely block your normal compassionate self.
Imagine this. Your Pastor calls and says a young mom with two kids, recently abandoned by her abusive husband, needs help. One of the kids needs an operation and this family is going to need a lot of support. The Pastor knows you to be a family who has helped people in the past and asks you to consider being this family’s primary sponsor for the next six months. You discuss it with your wife and family and decide you are called to help them. Over the next six months, your family pitches in, in a dramatic way, to help. Its takes much more time and resources than you expected but you make a difference in this young family’s life. How does it feel? It feels good doesn’t it!
Why then can you imagine feeling good in one case of helping a stranger and not in helping your wife’s daughter? Because in the imaginary case you had a choice. It was not forced upon you. And now you have another choice. Let your understandable resentment continue to build and you may drive your wife farther away. You may have a right to be upset, but I would hate to see your family torn apart by this. You didn’t get to choose this new family, and I’d be frustrated too, but you did choose your wife and she comes “for better or worse” including this family.
I am pretty sure that loving your wife now means finding a way to embrace her daughter. Pray for the strength to let go of the way it happened and join your wife rather than battle her. I believe that once you do that, you will be able to negotiate a way to meet your wife’s needs and yours. It is counter-intuitive, but the more you fight this, the more entrenched your wife will become. She will feel abandoned and misunderstood and more intent upon helping her daughter.
I believe you are about to engage in sacrificial love and when you do, your situation will become better than you could have imagined.
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2 comments:
I, too, understand the frustration associated with "having no choice" in certain matters. You feel alone, misunderstood, and taken for granted, like YOU DON'T MATTER. All quite natural.
But natural isn't always good and "ancient history" always seems to touch the present, whether in large or small ways. In the case of "struggle for this husband", the touch has been more like a "shove", one that was much harder than anticipated.
Now while I don't the history of the wife's daughter, erring on the side of the daugher's children is the loving course of action. Jesus has asked us to take care of the widows and orphans. Are these children not orphans? You may never see the fruits of the sacrifice required of you in this time, but you may rest in knowing that what you do for them has an eternal value.
So where do we go to find what we need to love sacrificially? We place our need and ourselves at the foot of Jesus' cross, asking for the srength, Grace, courage, and resolve to love with abandon. The same resolve that Jesus had when he crawled on to the cross meant for us. In that place, He WILL reach down and pour out the right measures for our need, though it may be far less than what we think we need. And so Jesus moves us, as the Psalmist says, "from strength to strength."
But this is much easier said than done, Satan rages a great battle against us for our mind and soul. So I pray that God meets this (and all) struggling husband(s) at the point of his (our) need with strength and peace, comfort blessing, and a love that flows like a river that come only from knowing His Son who saves us from ourselves.
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