Hello,

I got married to my college sweetheart after an eight-year relationship. We have just moved in, though nothing is formalised yet. He hasn't been lucky with jobs, but I've worked for the same company we started in together. He left afterwards because of a scandal in his finance department. I believe he was involved in the fraud that caused him and others to resign to avoid arrests, but he has never accepted it.

Either the incident spoilt his CV, or he just stopped trying. I've financed his startups but they never pick up. I've also caught him cheating with female staff in those businesses, so I stopped supporting them. Now he's been jobless for over three years, and what worries me is his increasing bitterness and irritable attitude toward me over petty things. He's been aggressive with me several times now. We have one child and I'm reluctant to add another one. What should I do?

Read: 'Help! My husband and I are drifting apart. Am I too harsh?'

It is possible to assist a man so much by paying most of the bills and even assisting him with money, only for him to treat you with contempt. The reason is that he resents the fact that he needs you. Being with you reminds him of the things he can't do for himself. He needs your encouragement, emotional stability, your belief in him, and your labour.

Instead of being grateful for your help, he starts punishing you for witnessing his dependency. Gratitude feels like guilt to those who live in denial. For them to say thank you, they must acknowledge their situation and your sacrifice. That's what they're not prepared to do. Every time you step in and save the situation, it reminds him that without you he'd fall apart.

Every bill he couldn't cover but you did, every problem he ran away from but you fixed, every time he was stranded and you rescued him. All these scream one truth his ego cannot handle: That you're not the weaker one. He is. That's why such men often turn aggressive or controlling, indulge in serial cheating, or scam you of your money in an attempt to transfer your strength to himself.

When his leadership cannot convince you, he makes sure his character confuses you. He criticises you to discourage you. He withdraws emotionally to humble you. He teams up with those who hate you among family and friends to oppose you. He becomes internal opposition in your life not because you're uncontrollable or cannot submit, but because you've become the foundation he was meant to be, the leader and provider he failed to be, and the source of family security he failed to be.

Some men are too insecure to handle your growth, and when you do it without them they feel emasculated. You don't need someone who mistakes love for rule. Your greatest strength will be turned into your greatest weakness and you'll be framed as difficult or impossible to govern just because you're progressive and consistent.

Every month and year you stay makes him more dependent on you. And the more he needs you, the more he resents you. In short, if you continue providing a lifestyle for a man that he can't provide for himself, especially when he's already showing hostility and insecurities, you're endangering your safety. Insecurity is hardly ever static. It grows in tandem with what triggers it.

If someone is already behaving paranoid about you when he's also a beneficiary of your growth, beware. Beyond a certain point, stakes will become higher and character erosion could follow. You're never safe beside a person who is getting worse while you're getting better. And just for the record, we need to state where you went wrong. You dated wrong. You chose a partner at the wrong time and dragged the relationship across too long a time, which compromised the selection process.

When relationships drag for long, they stop being a selection process and become an emotional attachment instead. The idea of a college sweetheart sounds romantic and is even popular in our culture. But the problem with dating in college is that you're below the age of psychological maturation of 25. That's when the frontal brain finishes developing. Before then, people's personalities haven't formed and their true nature is yet to arrive.

To choose a husband or wife at such a time is a blind guess. You get into it knowing you're still young but thinking you'll “grow together” and understand each other before you're mature enough for marriage. You assume that the passage of time will make you align. Fundamental misalignment, however, is not solved by time. In your case, for example, your mindset and energy were very different from his. You're disciplined and driven at your work.

You are growth-oriented while he's more settled and comfortable. You are polar opposites and these differences were buried under the innocence of youth during college days. In short, you're fundamentally misaligned and you should quit this entanglement immediately. You should settle on co-parenting and restart your life afresh. This wasn't so much a marriage as it was an expensive lesson for you. You're right in being reluctant to add a child as it would just plunge you deeper into the quagmire. It is easier to start afresh with one child than two.

Also, since you're also cohabiting and nothing official yet, it is easier to dissolve by quitting without the need for a divorce process. There is hope for rebuilding a new life, but only if you act fast. You're probably still young, around 30 or thereabout. Many people only marry correctly after expensive lessons and you've learned yours. Good luck.

Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.