Dear Gramps,

My wife and I have been married for 3 years and are on the verge of divorce. We have only been together for half of that time. My wife (who is Chinese) returned home to give birth to our son, there she stayed for over a year.

They returned about 6 months ago (herself & my son) but after about 4 months here she returned home with my son.

Since then most of the times we talked on the phone have been fights & she has decided against my will to leave my son in China (with her family).

After realizing that I was powerless to do anything but accept I did. But the fights have only grown in frequency & viciousness. Now my wife no longer trusts me, and I don’t trust her.

She hates my family because they have not been as much help to us as her own family. She hates me because I have not submitted to her culture.

At the moment we are not talking at all, and the only thing that is going through my mind is divorce (we were not married in the temple). I love her but I am afraid that the next argument is only a sentence away, and that she will leave me.

She is so easily offended, and being from a totally different culture with a different language has made things even more difficult.

I don’t know what to do, should I risk love or finish it now.

Jamie, from Ireland

Dear Jamie,

First let me tell you that ending a marriage relationship by divorce should only be considered as a last option. Whether you have been sealed to one another in the temple or not, the relationship between husband and wife is a very sacred relationship, commanded by God, and essential for the complete fulfilment of man’s greatest potential.

There are undoubtedly serious difficulties in your marriage relationship, which are made more acute by your inter-cultural association; but there is no doubt that it would be possible to iron out any difficulties and find a way to accommodate, respect and love each other again.

If you really desire to be at one with one another and to share again the love that you once felt, there are a few principles that would be well worth considering.

1) No doubt each of you have done or said things that have been offensive to the other party, resulting in apparently serious animosity.

2) You can only control your own behavior, your own words and your own thoughts. You cannot control those attributes in anyone else.

3) Maintaining or regaining a loving relationship will take considerable sacrifice of other values that have been instrumental in developing the rift that has occurred.

4) A decision must be made on what you want the most–a loving home with the potential for an eternal union, or whatever things or activities that are of such value to you that it has caused the animosity of your wife.

If indeed you are serious about regaining your former relationship, in spite of how you feel about how wrong your partner has been, never try to justify your own position or demonstrate how wrong your partner has been.

If you could understand what your wife’s values really are and why she feels as she does, and then support those values and feelings, she would come to realize that you love her more than the differences  that are important to you, and would likely be happy to enter into a renewed trusting relationship.

You undoubtedly want her to accept your culture and she wants you to accept her culture. By maintaining those differences your marriage is very likely doomed. If you were to accept her culture, try to understand it, try to accommodate to it, she would come to believe that you want to save your marriage.

Do you speak Chinese? Perhaps not. If you don’t speak Chinese, I wonder how she would feel if you tried to learn it. Many westerners are afraid of the Oriental languages because they appear so “foreign” and are assumed to be very difficult to learn. This is not so with Chinese. Chinese is a very easy language to learn to speak. It is easier for an English speaking person to learn to speak Chinese than it is, for instance, to learn to speak Spanish. (Writing Chinese, of course, is a very different matter, since it is pictographic rather than phonetic). I wonder how your wife would respond if she were to learn, somewhat after the fact, that you were taking a college course in Chinese?

Next, you have been fighting over the phone so much that you are no longer speaking to each other. If you could swallow your pride, and your own personal interests, the next time you communicate, just be agreeable. Refuse to argue! Accept what she would like! Agree with her! Tell her that you love her! Tell her that you want to save your marriage! Tell her that you are sorry for all the difficulty and sadness that you have caused her to endure!

Now there is no doubt that she has caused the same feelings in you that you have caused in her. However, if you demand that she do all the changing rather than you, your marriage is doomed. If you can accept the responsibility for any difficulties that exist between the two of you, whether of not you feel that you are in the right, and do what you can to correct any differences, you can save your marriage. It just boils down to this: do want to be “right” and lose your family, or are you man enough and with enough humility to accept the blame for everything and demonstrate to your wife nothing but loving kindness, and by so doing save your family?

Gramps