Alcoholism Is the Worst Enemy of a Happy Marriage - Essay Example

Ken the Drunkard Peace and happiness are very vital aspects of a happy and long lasting marriage and alcoholism is the worst enemy of a happy marriage. Ken is married to Maggie and they now have two kids and stay in Florida. One night, Ken came home past midnight while drunk. He tried to knock the door but nobody opened. Maggie together with the kids were fast asleep since the family normally slept latest by half past nine in order for them to be able to wake up early for the kids to go to school and Maggie and her husband to go to work. Maggie has been married to Ken for ten years and their two kids are now eight and six years old. At the time the two met, Ken never used to drink in fact they met in a church function. Maggie had gone to pay a visit to her aunt in Brooklyn. It happened that on her first Sunday at the place, she and her cousins went to church when Ken happened to be worshipping. Ken took notice of Maggie when she and her cousins entered the church. After the church service, Ken approached Maggie and they exchanged contacts. They became friends for quite sometime and Maggie would go and visit him. As time went by, they became lovers an affair which led to their marriage five years later. By then Ken was an engineer in a certain firm where he worked for eight years and afterwards got retrenched. Consequently, he turned to drinking in trying to cope with the situation. Ken would go drinking and would go home as early as nine but on one particular night, he was late. After knocking the door for sometime and no one opening, he decided to sleep on the veranda. Fortunately, Ken used to snore while asleep and thus at some point, Maggie woke up and realized her husband had not come home yet. She went to the living room, turned on the lights and on looking at the watch it was three in the morning. Shortly after, she heard some sounds emerging from the door. At first, she was afraid and decided to peep through the window since the front side of the house was lit up by the security light. Surprisingly, she saw her husband lying down just at the door. She opened the door and woke him up. After waking up, Ken started shouting at Maggie telling her what a non-caring wife she was and that she refused to open the door for him despite the fact that the house was his. Maggie tried explaining to him that she did not hear his knock but he could not listen. Ken’s voice was so loud that, the kids woke up. When the kids showed up at the living room, Ken went ahead and started telling the kids how useless their mother was and that he was going to chase them away from his house together with their mother. There and then, Ken told Maggie that, he did not care what time it was but she and the kids should pack their things and leave the house. Maggie in response told him that neither she nor the kids were going anywhere. At that time, their voices were so loud and the kids were crying aloud which woke up their neighbours who started streaming in the compound one by one to know what the matter was. Ken kept on repeating to Maggie to leave the house before he did something crazy but Maggie could not listen. At some point, he pushed her through the front door only for her to fall on the rough surface of the veranda where she secured some knee and arm bruises. The neighbours were now increasing in number and Ken viewed it as some sort of interruption to his family affairs. What followed next was a very terrifying scene to Maggie, the kids and the neighbours. Ken who happened to be at the door of the house entered inside and came out with a gun. He started chasing everybody in the compound shouting that Maggie should leave his house and the neighbours should leave his compound. Some of the male neighbours tried their best to take hold of Ken but their efforts where all in vain since Ken was too strong and they were still afraid of the weapon. At first, Ken fired in the air to scare away the crowd. A philosopher once said that, when a person is terrified or exposed to a frightening situation or a thing such as a gun, he or she gets so confused and is not in a position to think right (Hewstone and Stroebe 486). For instance, when the neighbours came and saw the situation at hand especially when Ken was holding a gun they could have called the police but they were all very terrified to think of such a thing. When Ken fired in the air, Maggie was scared but she decided to stay behind for the sake of the kids who by the time were really crying and so sacred by their father’s actions. The situation took a worse direction when Ken decided the only way to make Maggie understand how serious he was to shoot her. Ken threatened Maggie at first but she took it as a joke. It was then that he took a shot at her which fortunately scratched her shoulder when running for refuge in the neighbourhood. The bullet inflicted a serious wound on Maggie’s shoulder which was seriously bleeding. At that instance, Ken woke up to what seemed like a bad nightmare but it was a real happening; he had injured his wife. He dropped the gun down and walked towards where Maggie was lying down, took hold of her and screamed for help from the neighbours. It took sometime before any of neighbours responded since they were still very scared of what had transpired and thought that Ken would harm them as well. What started as a mere domestic quarrel took a different turn and became a criminal act. All of a sudden, Ken was filled with sympathy for his wife and just realized the extent of damage his drinking habit had caused to his marriage, family and destroyed the respect his neighbours had for him. The situation intensified and one of the neighbours called the police. The police came after a short while. On their arrival, they asked a few questions to Maggie who was receiving first aid from one of the neighbours as well as one of the neighbours who was at the scene right from the start. They later took the gun that Ken used, arrested him and left for the police station. Maggie was taken to the hospital while the kids stayed with one of the neighbours. Maggie was later discharged from hospital and took her kids from the neighbourhood. As for Ken, he was sentenced to a one year imprisonment for his act. Work Cited Hewstone, Miles and Wolfgang Stroebe. Introduction to social psychology : a European perspective. Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Read More