Do You Know When You Are Truly in Love?

Mrs. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter and her husband Jay-Z.

Do You Know When You Are Truly in Love?

A man, John, meets a beautiful lady, Anita! So what?

Well, as short as it looks, a big novel can be written from this sentence. It can explode into various plots, many of which you are familiar with. However, one thing we don’t seem to understand well is the point at which the man falls in love with the lady. At what point can they say they are in love?

Very often, what we flaunt as love is merely sexual passion and desire tinged with obsession. And often times after a session of sex, you could have one party, “Oh, I thought I was in love.” With ‘love’ gone so soon, John and Anita will now be avoiding each other.

Signs of love

Love is a complicated word, not quite easy to define. Rather, people find comfort in the attributes or signs of love. According to experts, when you are in love you are likely to do the following:

• You think and talk about each other constantly. When you’re apart, you’re dissecting the last conversation, both in your head and to family and friends.
• You’re smitten. Work, friends, family and hobbies take a backseat to your newfound partner.
• You’re a communication addict, constantly awaiting his next call, text or e-mail.
• You find no faults. Your mate seems perfect through the blurred goggles of love. All the habits that would annoy you in anyone else seem cool in your lover.
• You feel her pain. The idea of your love feeling pain makes your heart hurt.
• Your conversations never cease. Talking to your partner is effortless because you have so much in common.

It is not all about sex
Note that there is no mention of sex in these signs of love. The kinds of love we find around seem to be driven by sex and money. But experts say that while the desire for sex is important to people in love, the craving for emotional union takes precedence.
A study found that 64 percent of people in love (the same percentage for both sexes) disagreed with the statement, “Sex is the most important part of my relationship with [my partner].”

It is safe then to say that love is not lust or some crazy infatuation. To anchor the subject safely to enable people to know convincingly when they are in love, scientists have now taken keen interest in the subject.

Researchers have found that an in-love brain looks very different from one experiencing mere lust, and it’s also unlike a brain of someone in a long-term, committed relationship. Studies have revealed that the brain’s “in love” phase is a unique and well-defined period of time, and there are telltale signs that you’re in it. Below are some of the many research findings:

Like Me, Like You: Liking is different from love, but is often a prerequisite for falling in love. In a cross-cultural study, researchers showed that a critical factor recognized as directly preceding falling in love is reciprocal liking, when you both clearly like each other.

Missing each other: In many ways, how much you miss a person reflects how interdependent your lives have become. If you are questioning whether you love someone, perhaps consider how much you miss him or her when you’re apart. A study shows that how much people miss each other tends to correspond with how committed they feel to the relationship.

Addition: Love changes the brain. In early-stage relationships, that euphoria that people feel appears as heightened neural activity in areas of the brain linked to the reward system, and in areas associated with the pursuit of rewards. There’s even some hint of activity in the area of the brain linked to obsessive thinking, which is a classic experience when people are falling in love. As a relationship progresses into a long-term partnership, thinking about the partner activates the reward centers as well as brain areas implicated in attachment, but less so obsessive thinking.

Sense of Self: When people fall in love, their whole sense of self changes. They take on new traits and characteristics, growing in the diversity of their self-concept through the influence of their new relationship partner. In other words, the you before falling in love is different from the you after falling in love. Maybe you feel the difference, maybe others notice it, but the things you care about, your habits, how you spend you time—and or all of this is subject to the (hopefully positive) influence of a new romantic partner.

Jealousy: A certain amount of jealousy is actually healthy, not toxic. From an evolutionary perspective, jealousy is an adaptation that helps relationships stay intact by making its members sensitive to potential threats. People who are jealous tend to be more committed to relationships.

What Science didn’t say
For what kind of love are these signs applicable? It, of course, can’t be erotic love. The love we all desire, which I preach, is mature love. It is sometimes known as Pragma: actions backed up with commitment.
This develops over a period of time and involves actively practicing goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding.

Love As Hardest Addiction To Quit

Love as hardest addiction to quit
Stanton Peele is a psychologist who has changed the addiction field. He has pioneered, among other things, the idea that addiction occurs with a range of experiences, and recognition of natural recovery from addiction.

From investigation, Stenton has listed seven hardest addictions to quit. And do you know something? Love is the worst! People I have shared the list with were like, ha, love? Then, in a quick rationalization, some asked, is it love for one’s kids?

But Stanton really meant love for a spouse. Joseph, my colleague in the office, affirms it is true. Married for decades, he said, “Yes, I am addicted to my wife.” I had long noticed that. Anytime his wife travels overseas on assignment, which she does often, he feels miserable and confesses he is missing his wife. Some other respondents cited the example of husbands and wives who die soon after their beloved spouses pass.

Love addiction is said to be a human behaviour in which people become addicted to the feeling of being in love. Love addicts can take on many different behaviours. Love addiction is common; however, most love addicts do not realize they are addicted to love. We will look at this in detail later; for now let’s look at Stenton’s list in reverse order of difficulty.

I have not forgotten that in the Nigerian setting we may have to add greed for money to the list. That should be next week.

Cocaine: Cocaine is associated with certain lifestyles – at one time (if not now) people in the financial industry and entertainment fields – and more often younger people. Studying long-term users of cocaine, Ronald Siegel found most moderated, controlled, or quit their use over time. Patricia Erickson and Bruce Alexander surveyed the research and found that fewer than 10 percent of cocaine addicts continued their addictions for substantial periods. After cocaine use peaked in the 1980s, most middle-class users quit (although use in inner cities continued some time longer).

Alcohol: Alcohol is the addiction most written about, both in scientific literature and as recounted in personal memoirs. Alcoholics treatment experts claim alcoholism is inescapable without treatment. But epidemiological research does not find this is true.

Valium: In general, drugs used for pacifying purposes (which are usually depressants), taken regularly over long periods of time, are hard to quit. This holds for sedatives, sleeping pills, barbiturates, and tranquilizers. Several best-sellers have been written about the difficulty in quitting Valium (benzodiazepine tranquilizers): Barbara Gordon’s I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can and Betty Ford’s The Times of My Life. A prominent New York City newscaster, Jim Jensen, recounted in People how he readily quit cocaine but couldn’t get off Valium: “Valium withdrawal soon plunged him into a massive depression that left him unable to eat or sleep. It took two more months in two hospitals for him to regain his mental and physical health.”

Heroin: Powerful analgesics, taken regularly, are difficult for many (but not most) people to quit. After all, most of us have had intravenous supplies of narcotics in the hospital, followed by prescriptions for powerful analgesics when we went home.

Cigarettes: In ratings by cocaine and alcohol addicts, smoking is regularly cited as the more difficult drug to quit, generally on par with or more difficult than heroin. Nonetheless, more than 40 million living Americans have quit smoking. While impressive, this still only represents about half of all of those ever addicted to cigarettes – although a higher percentage of those in higher socioeconomic groups have quit.

Fast Foods: Fattening or comfort foods, which deprive more Americans of life years than any other substance, are inextricably integrated with our own lives. Although overweight is disapproved and regularly lectured against, it still doesn’t have the stigma of drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, so that hidden (and not so hidden) food addictions are more readily tolerated. That gastric bypass surgery is growing so rapidly shows that this is the substance addiction people find hardest to quit, even those for whom it causes serious, life-threatening health conditions. In fact, we will never resolve our massive food addictions in the United States, but we hope to come up with medical cures to prevent their negative effects, as if we would succeed by simply deciding to let smokers continue to smoke noncancerous cigarettes.

Love: Ah, love is the hardest addiction to quit. It certainly causes more murders and suicides than any other addiction. And if you think people miss smoking, consider what people are like when they break up with long-time lovers or get divorced – even when they hate their spouses! (See the response to this post, “My divorce has left me . . .”). On the other hand, we read frequently about people who totally sacrificed their lives to a lover who betrayed them or otherwise destroyed their psyches, yet who still didn’t quit the relationship – what is the answer, after all, when an abuse victim is asked why they simply don’t leave an abusive spouse? “Because I love him, and can’t live without him.” I regularly counsel spouses of substance abusers about this

Yes, Love is Addictive

Yes, love is addictive
Yes, love is addictive. And it is not caused by juju or some pastor’s chants. Natural love is a very strong emotion that provides good feelings. We all like to be loved and do fall in love. The feeling could even be intoxicating, intoxicating enough to turn one’s world upside down.
It is natural to want this euphoric feeling to last forever. But for every good thing, there is the possibility for an addiction.

The initial feeling of love is particularly wonderful. We want it to last forever, but it doesn’t. That wonderful initial feeling of new love doesn’t (and can’t) last forever. In healthy long-term relationships, the initial love gradually transforms into a more mature love – one that is perhaps less intoxicating and euphoric, but ultimately much more fulfilling and stable.

When love grows this much into maturity, the two become so dependent on each other that any disruption to the love equation leaves sad emotional tales. One dies, the other becomes miserable and follows soon after. We could say in such situations that the two have become addicted to love (for each other).

The dangerous addiction
I am not about to write a Nollywood script here. Experts have long discovered that there are people who are addicted to that initial high of love. That intoxicating feeling felt when one falls in love initially. That early taste of a chewing gum in the mouth! So what happens when that initial sweetness of love or chewing gum wears off. That is where we are going. And it is good to know because many people don’t seem to know why the keep on hoping from one relationship to another.

The initial high
For those who like only the initial high of love, or addicted to it, the loss of that initial euphoria is akin to the crash that drug addicts feel when their drug of choice wears off. They crave the “high” and begin the search for another fix. Love addicts are no different, which is why they often go from one relationship to the next once the initial high wears off.

Although the idea of being addicted to love or relationships may be new to most people, relationship experts have been aware of the pattern for decades. Experts say, when people develop an addiction to something – whether it’s drugs, alcohol, a medication, smoking, gambling, sex, or love – they have come to rely on it just to function normally, it is difficult for them to get through the day without it.

Love addicts
Love addicts are scared of intimacy and the vulnerability that goes with it. Instead, they are seeking the “feeling” – the intoxicating high or infatuation that accompanies a new relationship.

Experts say love addicts are driven by low self-esteem, a fear of abandonment, and deep, unmet emotional needs. They look to each new love object to give them a sense of security, belonging, identity, validation, worthiness, and purpose. They believe the new love object can take away all their pain, make them feel whole and happy, and love them unconditionally.

When the love object pulls away or threatens to pull away, disapproves of, or disagrees with the love addict, the love addict experiences strong negative feelings.

The love addict may become manipulative, abusive, overly agreeable – whatever it takes – in a desperate attempt to regain approval or keep the relationship together. Sadly, these very behaviors often end up destroying the relationship – causing the loss and rejection that the love addict fears.

A journalist’s experience
Broadcaster and journalist Clare Catford has written a book about her love addiction. “I now realise that I’ve been addictive from a very early age. I had all the ‘normal’ obsessions with pop stars, then I developed huge crushes on boys and obsessed about them constantly. When I had a boyfriend, the relationship dominated my life. I would spend hours trying on 10 different outfits, and I wouldn’t eat for several days so that I would be ‘thin enough’.
“I married young because I believed love would take the pain away. I thought he was the solution to all my problems, the person who would rescue me from myself.
‘I would check the computer 20 times a day. I craved emails the same way that a drug addict craves heroin’

“After my divorce, I had to be in relationships. I needed them as if they were oxygen. I met one boyfriend in a pub, and became dependent on him.

The cycle of self-destruction continued for eight years
“Then I met a man via email. The relationship became intense, fun and erotic. He told me about the lack of sex in his marriage, and I told him about the chaos of my own relationships. The idea of having sex with him didn’t interest me as much as the fantasy of the relationship. Knowing that he was attracted to me and needed me made me feel powerful and good about myself.
“I was on a high. But like all addictive highs, it didn’t last.”

Cougars (Sugar Mummies) and Toy Boys

Photo Credit: Community Journal.

Cougars (Sugar Mummies) and Toy Boys
Although the details are changing with the times in some places, the practice of an older woman seeking sexual relationships with much younger men has been on for ages.

We call them Sugar Mummies here but their popular name world-wide is Cougars. Sounds curious because cougars are originally mountain lions, panthers, puma, of North and South America.

Origin
The use of the name for women is thought to have originated in Western Canada and first appeared in print on the Canadian dating website – Cougardate.com. It is also said to have “originated in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a put-down for older women who would go to bars and go home with whoever was left at the end of the night.”

Whatever the origin, today, the “cougar” concept is widely used, and the practice itself is on the rise in Nigeria in the advent of an era of big, independent girls.

I take liberty of the nature of cougar-toy boy relationship, to suggest a new name. Conquerors! In most of these cases, the woman is richer and more powerful than the man, much so that she reduces the man to a “Yes, Ma” man. It is an inverse of the normal relationship, where the man is the head. Toy Boys dare not challenge their conquerors or cougars in the bed room, where they are hired to operate mostly or outside, where they are not supposed to be seen. Whatever they are in the relationship to do, the order is “just do it to my satisfaction.” Well, it would appear that top on the list of these demands is a “thorough shakedown” as Funke puts it. If you sample cougars, that is the primary motivation.

Photo Credit: Black History Month 2014.

In a recent survey of 100 self-proclaimed cougars in UK, more than 90% of them said they want to date younger guys who are romantic, chivalrous and, best of all, relatively free of the emotional baggage from the past. 52% of the cougars in the study were in their 40s and their ideal guy is aged 24-27. 45% were ‘lifestyle cougars’ who have dated more than five younger men. About a third of them said they will never go back to dating men their own age. And only 5% of women polled plan to ever return to seeing men their own age. A number of over-40 women are happily redefining the rules and roles of cougar dating.

What cougars want
Studies have shown that cougars are mostly divorcees; heart-broken women; the rich and famous, who have become too powerful to be under the control of men; and those who feel dissatisfied in their matrimonial beds; or bored housewives.

Sex therapist Julia Cole, a relationship counselor, says: ‘If a woman has been through a painful break-up then it’s quite possible that her confidence and self-esteem will be boosted by going out with someone younger and livelier. Getting the attention of someone you think you’d never attract again is a marvelous feeling.’

She goes on, ‘often when a woman takes a younger lover it’s a bit of a ‘shoulder shrug’. She’s saying: ‘I’m not going to stay with this boy, I’m just going to have a good time and get out there because I’m bored.’

The shakedown theory: ‘A woman reaches her sexual peak at around 35-40. And from a physiological point of view, an older woman and a younger man could be a good match. He can give her the repeated stimulation that she needs; he is keen to learn and she’s happy to pass on her experience.’

Toy boys’ eyes are elsewhere
Such relationships are more likely to fail. It is an inescapable fact. No matter how he enjoys the cougar, he has it at the back of his mind that he must marry – a younger woman he truly love and not for the money. So while he enjoys the cougar, his eyes are on the exit door, and his mind on his fiancée.

Secondly, no matter how younger they may be in relationships, men hate to be controlled by their women – the inverse of our traditional man-woman relationship. So what they do is to endure the “commanding women” to make their loot and get out. As some Tom Boys are reported to have said, no matter how experienced cougars are in bed, they are only tokunbos, not as good as under-30s. Curves matter, one of them said.

Worse, cougars are very jealous women. They won’t provide the money and comfort for the toy boy and later have him getting down with some poor, filthy girls. Conflict!

The eventual break-up of such relationships is predictable because as time goes on the differences in maturity become magnified, and the boy gets wiser. Reality strikes!

What the cougars suffer
It is mostly a hidden relationship. For those who try to take their toy boys out shopping, etc, the assistants think they are the Mum.
The love they get from the toy boys is fake – driven by money.
Fear of losing the boy, and the pain of sharing him.
Worst of all, it is risky business with fast toy boys.

For both cougars and toy boys, this is a relationship that is usually as short as it is risky.

The Attraction of Prostitutes

The prostitute attraction

Most married men cheat. Some even do so with impunity. That is no news in Nigeria and many parts of the world. Sayo, a guy I know, is not bothered by the fact that the women he cheats with are not dedicated to him. He is not fazed by last week’s argument that most of these “available women” he also calls “free electrons” have multiple men and could as well be described as prostitutes.

“If you are not going to marry a woman, why must you worry about her other men?” he rationalizes.
True, most of the so called available women keep other guys for various reasons, notably money. But of course, there are professional prostitutes. Occasionally, they fall in love with some of their customers but that is rare. Like Alix Tichelman in last week’s piece, money is their language and they tell you the charge upfront. That is the case under review now. Why do married men go that far?

Latest on Tichelman-Hayes Case

Photo Credit: Information Nigeria.

Tichelman, the professional prostitute, charged in connection with the death of a Google executive, Timothy Hayes has been labeled a “wounded bird” by her attorney, who said she had no reason to hurt him.
Speaking to reporters outside the trial in which Alix Tichelman is charged with manslaughter, prostitution, destroying evidence and transporting a controlled substance, her attorney Larry Biggam said that the 26-year-old had no reason to kill Forrest Hayes, given how much money he was paying her.
But the defence team says that the two had taken part in “mutual consensual drug usage” during a sexual encounter that had been instigated by Hayes.

The simple reasons for patronizing prostitutes are similar to reasons why men cheat on their wives
Loss of attractiveness: Passion is mostly driven by imagination and fantasy, while familiarity tends to kill them. From years of living with a partner you tend to know so much about her that there is little to fire the imagination or excitement you would get from outside. Clearly, obvious reasons for sexual avoidance are hostility and lack of physical attractiveness because of poor personal hygiene, body weight, and failure to dress in a manner which one’s partner prefers.

Boredom: The man is bored, overworked, or otherwise put-upon (in his mind), and feels deserving of something special that is just for him – something like viewing porn, or having affairs.

Insecurity: Deep down, he feels that his too old, too fat, too thin, too poor, too stupid, or too whatever to be desirable. He uses flirtation, porn, and extramarital sex as a way to feel better about himself, to reassure himself that he is still desirable, worthwhile, and “good enough.”

Damaged: Perhaps he is acting out early trauma experiences, such as physical abuse, neglect, or sexual abuse. His formative wounds have left him unable or unwilling to fully commit himself to one other person. He may also seek sexual intensity outside his relationship as a way to self-medicate (escape from) his emotional and psychological pain.

Special case of powerful men:
According to experts, “Powerful men engaged in intensely stressful jobs need to have their emotional lives in balance. While functioning at a very high level intellectually, a sense of invulnerability combined with poor self-care and constant pressure to perform can leave them emotionally vulnerable to undermining the very things they have worked so hard to achieve.”
Hayes, was a top Google Executive, with the company’s high-profile X division responsible for experimental “moonshot” projects such as Google Glass and driverless cars.

Dr. Ellis, a noted psychologist and sexologist, adds another dimension. He says “a surprisingly large number of men, I have found in my clinical experience, fail miserably in their marital relationships, largely because of their ignorance and prudery in regard to how to satisfy their wives sexually.

Such men are frequently impotent or sexually below par because, consciously or unconsciously, they subscribe to self-defeating sex notions which sabotage their powers and potentialities. Out of shame, they avoid having marital relations and resort to prostitutes with whom, because they pay, they are not ashamed to be poor lovers.”

There they go
While these reasons push the man out, there are specialized women waiting to attract them. They come under various guises – dressed to kill and experts in suggestive body language.

Also they are experts in sex, and could do anything the man wants to satisfy him, including things a man may not be able to do with his wife at home. In this age of extreme this, extreme that, it is said that there is also extreme sex.

Operating under the cover of what the people call the 11th Commandment – though shall not be caught – many men for the reasons cited above, do not want extramarital affairs that could lead to long relationships they may be caught involved in.

Some men also cite cases of unceasing demands by their extramarital partners as reason they prefer pros, where in most cases, the only payment is for the agreed session only.

But this is risky business. As matured men, who try to manage their homes well to keep to their wives, say all the pro cares about is your money and not a hoot about your person. As they also say aides dey town o!

Managing Monsters-in-law

Managing Monsters-in-law

Very delicate balancing! When you have to share your partner (wife or husband) with your in-laws, or when they irritate you so much that the resultant aggression affects your partner, that is what you need. Delicate balancing! It is like the bile sitting right in the delicious liver; you handle both with care. For, as the verdict of experts and our elders go, “if you love and plan on sticking with your spouse, then you’re also stuck with your in-laws.”

And if there are children in the family, you are perhaps more handicapped. So how does one handle an intruding father or mother-in-law? Right from the onset, many wives rule out the miracle of getting their mothers-in-laws (MILs) to like them. They only try to endure them, working on their husbands to get them on their side. Not easy though. Blood is thicker than water, but they try because it is the best option.

According to the parenting website Netmums, one in four daughters-in-law (DIL) despise their mother-in-law (MIL), finding her “controlling.” The site’s poll of about 2,000 women found that the DILs’ resentment stemmed from the MIL thinking that she was the authority on parenting and parenting skills.

Complaints included being made to feel not good enough for their partner, or that the MIL was rude or bitchy. Over one-third described their MIL as “judgmental” or “interfering.”

Nearly one-quarter of poll participants described their relationship with their MIL as “bad” or “terrible.” One in 10 moves were reported as an attempt to get farther away from a MIL. In some cases, the stress of the in-law situation led to marital collapse.

For husbands, who are the heads of their families, and who desire to run their homes, the challenge is MILs is equally huge. The MILs believe their daughters should be treated the way they as mothers would. They desire their daughters to give them regular reports or consult them on key decisions. In cases where the wives are emotionally or spiritually dependent on their mothers, their homes are literarily run from outside. And when the husbands resist, there are sparks of fire everywhere in the home.

In all in-law cases, what I will call the Apter principle applies: “When two people decide to marry, each makes a pledge that the other will be the most important person in their life. And so we expect that our partner will be on our side when the going gets rough. Couples may fight between themselves, over big things and small, but we expect a partner to stick up for us when someone else threatens us, criticizes us, makes us feel bad.”
Terri Apter is the expert from who I borrowed the term, ‘domestic intelligence’.

Applying this principle, it is expected under normal circumstances that:

A family should realize their in-laws are different people with different ways and views.
They should separate their own relationship from their in-laws. According to an expert, “They (should) remember that no matter how complicated or difficult their in-laws may be, they are not married to them.” So when in-laws are being especially difficult to deal with, healthy couples make an extra effort to be kind to their partner.
This other strategy is my favourite. Couples should set clear boundaries with their in-laws. They’re able to have open conversations with their spouse about their needs and create a plan that both of them agrees with, Hansen, an expert said.
However, this doesn’t always work. There appears to be no silver bullet for in-law crisis, but Dr. Phil offers some good perpectives for all couples. Dr. Phil McGraw is perhaps the most well-known mental health professional in the world. He provides the most comprehensive forum on mental health issues in the history of television. For 11 years, Dr. McGraw has used the Dr. Phil platform to make psychology accessible and understandable to the general public by addressing important personal and social issues.
Dr. Phil says:
“There can be no divided loyalties. When you get married and start your own family, that’s where your primary loyalty needs to be.
“If a wife has a problem with her mother-in-law, it’s the husband who needs to step in and help fix it. Likewise, if a husband doesn’t see eye-to-eye with his in-laws, his wife needs to step in. The person with the primary relationship (the son or daughter, not the in-law) needs to be the messenger.

“Try not to criticize your spouse for his/her relationship with his/her parents. It may only lead to more clinginess or complications.

“You need to love your parents, and have a rich and active relationship with them, but any time that you turn away from your partner to resolve a relationship issue, that’s a bad thing. If you have a problem in the marriage, you need to resolve it in the marriage.

“Keep in mind that your parents only know what you tell them. If you go to them every time you’re angry, and frustrated and having problems in your marriage, they hear that, but they don’t hear when you make up.”

Domestic Intelligence and the Monsters-In-Law

Domestic Intelligence and the Monsters-In-Law

The name “monster in-law” is an ingenious depiction of the harm in-laws, or some of them, cause marriages. Many people also know this joke: “Take my in-law, please!” But “Domestic Intelligence” is an amazing coinage for understanding and managing the intrusion of in-laws in the marriages of their children, credit to Dr. Terri Apter.

The subject becomes more interesting for its analogy to the actual meaning of Domestic Intelligence. According to the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms of the US Department of Defense, it is Intelligence relating to activities or conditions within the United States that threaten internal security and that might require the employment of troops; and intelligence relating to activities of individuals or agencies potentially or actually dangerous to the security of the Department of Defense.

In contemporary Nigeria, we should be talking about the activities and conditions that threaten internal security and efforts of security operatives such as the DSS to save us from the evil ones. By extension, some spouses are quick to add that they even have the Boko Haram experience.

Many marriages are constantly under attack of in-laws, leaving homes in a state of, to say the least, confusion. One marriage I know is under serious threat of dissolution because of the mother-in-law’s meddling in the affairs of her daughter’s marriage. She exerts so much control over her daughter’s decisions in running the home are made by Mama. The man had thought initially that Mama was trying to be nice and helpful, only to realize later that he was indeed married to two women – mother and daughter. Daughter physically present at home, but remotely controlled from elsewhere.

To the horror of the husband, his in-law’s control, which could rightly have resulted from the single mother’s intense love for the livewire, joy and breadwinner of the family, had also been remotely secured spiritually. The effect of her losing her daughter to the marriage has made Mama to go to any length to keep the link alive. Now the marriage is suffering but the man still loves his wife, and he is also going the extra mile to get her eyes unveiled to see the reality of her situation. In fact, he thinks the wife is in some kind of bondage.

Domestic Intelligence! We all need it to keep our marriages because the menace of in-laws never stops. As observes Diane Barth, a US-based psychotherapist, teacher, and author, unfortunately everyone suffers in these situations. In most cases there are at least three, and often more, sides to any in-law problem, but for a variety of reasons it is hard for any of the participants to step outside of their own point of view and try to understand what might be going on for any of the other participants.

The above example is only one of the many cases marriage counselors have to deal with. In another interesting example by Diane, Mama loved her daughter-in-law, but ended up hating her, and becoming their Boko Haram. “..….There was Shirley, who adored her son’s girlfriend and was thrilled that they were getting married. “I thought of her as a second daughter,” she said. “So I was really hurt when she wouldn’t let me participate in any of the wedding plans. Everything changed after that.” Shirley was not only hurt that her daughter-in-law had excluded her from the preparations, but also that her son had not stood up for her. But when we discussed the possibility that there were other perspectives, she could not imagine any. Only her hurt feelings were accessible to her. At the moment, she felt like an innocent victim.”

These examples are not meant to over-generalise the issue. There are very decent in-laws, always eager to support the marriage of their kids and tolerant enough to allow them to learn the ropes. But most surveys show the preponderance of in-law interference.

Surprisingly, the issue is very simple in domestic intelligence. As Apter explains it, “When two people decide to marry, each makes a pledge that the other will be the most important person in their life.”You’re the one” and “You come first” are common phrases that seal this promise. And so we expect that our partner will be on our side when the going gets rough.
“Couples may fight between themselves, over big things and small, but we expect a partner to stick up for us when someone else threatens us, criticizes us, makes us feel bad.”

That is two becoming one, as they describe the marriage fusion. Problem is that, it doesn’t seem to be the case. But as they say, “If you plan on sticking with your spouse, then you’re also stuck with your in-laws.”

We will look at the reasons in-laws intrude in marriages in the continuation of this discussion, but you may keep this reason in your left hand: When children go into marriage to start lives of their own, it is often a time of deep sorrow for parents, especially mothers. Their role immediately changes from that of being active protector, guardian and mentor to a detached onlooker, sought only when needed. It could be painful!

Recommended reading: Marriage Issues vs. Mother-in-Law Issues: Tips on How to Know the Difference by Deanna Brann, Ph.D. on the Huffington Post.