What happens when your wife becomes a diva?

Brats are not born. They are made. Some parents churn them out like the bad advice you get in a bar, and they grow up to be ‘special’ adults who make very frustrating partners.

It used to take a village to raise a child. There was always someone around to set a child straight when parents were too caught up to spot emerging bad behaviour.

That social system was shattered by urbanisation, and the extended village family has been replaced by the house-help, with the television (or the Internet for the ‘new gen’) stepping in as a surrogate parent.

It does seem ironical that many well-intentioned parents end up creating monsters. A child so spoilt, they ought to be declared rotten.

For instance, a simple girl from the village grows up with an acute sense of entitlement, guided by the need to be noticed all the time.

HANKER

When the attention is not forthcoming, she employs manipulation tactics, summed up as melodrama, to ensure she gets the attention she hankers for by all means necessary.

We cannot expect children to self-reflect and see their flaws. That is supposed to be the role of adults, but not in these liberal times of precious children who can do no wrong.

The consequence of this pampering culture is a child transitions into adulthood with the inability to distinguish between reality and fiction.

It can be quite dramatic when it manifests in a marriage. The able husband who generates a tidy sum of money starts to notice his wife’s increasing sense of dissatisfaction.

SPREES

The pattern is particularly predictable when the man is a generous provider. The spouse falls into a bingeing lifetime of sprees.

Excitement over spending usually afflicts those who stumble onto newfound wealth. They keep getting more and more stuff. But all that accumulation rarely delivers anything more than temporary gratification.

When that gets old, the dissatisfaction is turned to the spouse, who shoulders the blame for his wife’s lack of fulfillment. She starts to get petty, looking for problems and subjecting the man to ridiculous loyalty standards.

Before you know it, every female associate becomes a suspect, and the man is labeled guilty until proven innocent. The relationship starts to swing between speculation and denial.

Many men accept the blame in the beginning, because they are often guilty of some transgression in the past, which keeps recurring as evidence of dishonesty. But as the years wear on, they come to realise they created a diva living in suspended reality.

The diva blows hot and cold, often resorting to melodrama to attract attention. Anything you say could tick her off, and her husband adopts a survival stance that involves minimising opportunities for conflict.

TENSION

The first casualty is their sex life, with lovemaking being withheld as punishment. The excitement dies, and the man begins to spend more time outdoors under the guise of business, which only heightens the tension at home.

The stakes can get higher when there is a child involved. The little one is often the only glue that keeps a warring couple together.

Typically, the child is used as a pawn, and the man lives with the constant threat of being separated from his children if he does not fall in line.

One day, after years of nagging, the man snaps, takes back his freedom to think and walks, but all we ever get to hear is about, “that lying cheating bastard, who doesn’t want to support his family”.