If you want to be a good father, be a good husband
By: María Esther Roblero
Piero Ferruci’s latest book, “What our children teach us” has been translated into 11 languages. He says that “It has taken me time, but finally I’ve realized that the relationship with my children goes through my relationship with my wife. I cannot have a good relationship with them if my relationship with her is not good”.
Ferruci’s clinical experience has shown him that “each human being is the result of the relationship between two individuals: its father and its mother, and this relationship lives inside ourselves like a beautiful harmony or like a painful laceration. The relationship between our parents –says Ferruci- makes us what we are. And this is also true in times of dormitory family, single parents, artificial fecundity, genetic manipulation, foster wombs, spermatozoid banks… A child feels with all its being the relationship between his parents, regardless of what it is, it feels it in himself. If it is a poisoned relationship, poison will flow through his body. If it is not a harmonious environment, he will grow in dissonance. If it is full of anxieties and insecurities, his future will also be uncertain”.
So, the conclusion seems to be clear: if you want to be a good father, be a good husband. If you want to be a good mother, be a great partner for your husband. This seems to be simple, but in practice it is not. Why? Ferruci answers in first person with great humbleness:
"I have sometimes forgotten this reality. I have trusted too much. Knowing that our relationship is going well, I’ve left it there”. The relationship left at its own luck, annoyances and recriminations soon show up.
When the couple reacts on time and recovers the beauty of their love, children are the first to notice it. And he tells his own experience after a time in which, obsessed in writing his books, he started to wake up at 5 am and complained for the noise and interruptions:
“I started to feel depressed, something was wrong. I finally understood what I already knew but did not want to admit. The order of my priorities was wrong. I decided to give back to Vivien, my wife, a husband who would not be sleepy all day. Then something subtle and surprising occurred. The relationship between Emilio and Vivien improved. It was not a bad relationship but there was something that I did not like. Emilio was often rude with her and talked to me as if Vivien did not exist, ignoring her as the worst hardened male chauvinist. I understood it later on: Emilio showed me what was my attitude towards Vivien… It was me who turned her into a shadow. Fortunately, I realized it on time”.
How can we constantly keep and improve a marriage relationship? This Italian author is a great romantic and thinks that the love source for the couple lies in the memory of the best moments lived.
“Unlike what many think, I believe that the fact of falling in love is the most authentic moment of the relationship between two people; it is when they see that all possibilities are opened before them; when they touch the essence and beauty of love… Before my eyes I see our most glorious moments: the first ride together, the decision we took to marry a September evening, Vivien who comes to get me at the airport a rainy day, the concert during Emilio’s pregnancy…
All that is the origin, the source; where everything is all right and perfect. Its positive to get back, once in a while, to the origin and drink from that fountain of pure water.”
