Okay! I can’t think of a real-life scenario that’s suitable enough for useful commenting, so I’m going to post a hypothetical one.
El is a very compassionate and benevolent person. Since young, he has always had affection for the poor. He would donate his lunch to a poor classmate, savings to a charitable cause and time to do community service work. This character of his followed him into adulthood. He is now married, has 3 young children and lives a simple life. He works as a teacher and continues his cheerful giving in a home for the aged. He volunteers his time on the weekends and gives a part of his salary to the home. His wife Anna is a full-time nurse.
Recently, Anna conceived her fourth child. She is contemplating giving up her full time job to take care of the children. She knows that without her source of income the family would be on a very tight budget. Therefore, she decided to bring the matter up to El and seek his opinion. Last night after putting the children to sleep, Anna broke the news of her pregnancy to El and her thoughts about becoming a full-time housewife. El was elated by the former news and gave his support regarding the latter. She was pleased that he was very understanding.
However, El also realized that they may not have enough income to support the family especially now that they have just bought a new HDB flat. As they talked through the matter, Anna suggested that El give up his volunteer work at the home and save the portion of his salary for household needs instead. El replied that he could not do that because the home was also running on less than minimal manpower and financial resources and could barely support itself. El suggested they tighten their budget, and sell the car they already owned instead.
Anna wasn’t too happy at this point because she felt that El wasn’t prioritizing his family right. She had had a bad day and without thinking, blurted out that El was always too caught up in all his ‘charitable’ works and didn’t spend enough time with the family. That made El incensed and he accused Anna of being selfish. A heated argument soon ensued.
Max, their eldest son, awoke at a noise and came over to his parents’ room to determine the commotion. Just when he entered, he saw his father slap his mother and storm out of the house. He started crying uncontrollably. El went to the home for the aged where he spent the night while Anna was left to try and console the crying Max.
Today is a Saturday morning and neither Anna nor El has to go to work. However, neither do they have the desire to see each other. El is lost and goes to seek the advice of one of the residents of the home who is known to be a wise gentleman. Anna calls up her best friend and tells her what happened.
Choose between being the wise gentleman or Anna’s best friend, how would you present your advice? Examine the feelings of each party and suggest a course of action for them.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI feels that the only thing Anna can do is to compromise to a certain extent, probably by lowering her expectations. She should tries to understand the reason why El enjoys helping out at the home so much. I would advise her to be supportive of El helping out at the home and to request for El to spend at least 1 of the weekends with the family. She must have felt upset with El as she has given up so much for the family but El doesn’t seem to appreciate. After all, she had already given up her job and devotes her life to the family. The fact that El starts to get physical with her just makes things worse.
As for El, I think that for 2 people to start a family requires commitment from both parties. Priorities must be set clearly. I would advise him that, before he helps others, he should first ensure that his immediate family fulfill at least the basic needs. Having 4 children in Singapore isn’t easy. Maybe he can help out at the home physically for the time being and starts to donate again when his family’s income is more stable. He can also bring his family along to visit the home and hopefully his wife can understand why he enjoys helping out there so much. El probably felt disappointed as after so long his wife doesn’t seems to know him. She doesn’t seem to understand his reasons for helping out at the home. El must be feeling guilty and useless as on his part as the breadwinner of the family, he couldn’t earn more money for his loved ones and to help the home. Guilty cause he slap his wife and to make things worse, his son saw it. I would advise him to go home and apologise to his wife since he hit her and this is wrong. His son is crying back home and his wife is pregnant and feeling down. Running away wouldn’t help solve anything.
A marriage is a union of 2 persons and it’s up to both parties to make it work. I am sure if he sit down and talk to his wife nicely, compromise and explain his stand, they should be able to work out something.
xoxo,
Student A
I think that's fantastic answer Andy! Thanks for sharing =)
ReplyDeleteHi Benedict, this is a well-described, textbook scenario of a conflict between a couple, and I must salute your effort in providing your readers with a very good description of the main characters involved in the scenario.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your classmates' resolutions to the problem above.
Thank you for sharing!