(egbemode3@gmail.com)
How many times have you thought about calling it quits with your marriage, a thousand and one times?
There is usually that season in marriage when a woman feels like everything and everybody is against her. It is that season when she doubts herself and how and why she married the man she married. The sight of her husband leaves her cold and unmoved or even burning with hatred when all along she had dreamt of happily ever after.
She keeps wondering how and when love flew out of the window and coldness or indif-ference took residence. She adds all the things she has, all the things she should have, subtracts one from the other, and the minuses outweigh the pluses. And where does all this leave her, ready to pack her bags and say good-bye before she loses her sanity.
If vou haven’t experienced it yet, you just might soon. It’s a phenomenon, but thankfully a passing one.
When that horrible feeling of failure and depression comes. don’t throw up your hands and let your marriage go. Don’t ever, I repeat ever, believe yours is the worst marriage ever contracted. Don’t even think your children are the worst or consider putting cyanide in your womanizing husband’s soup. You see, things are often not as bad as they look. While it may have been drummed into your ears (until you’re almost deaf) that marriage is not a bed of roses, it’s also not a bed of thorns. All you need to do when things look down and grey is to look on the sunny side of life.Don’t act reckless and abandon your kids and home. So many women are out there envying you and ready to move in the moment you move out
Oh yes, you have tried, compromised, swallowed your pride and even sacrificed your career to make things work. But what do you have? Nothing worth having! Things look so bad but I tell you there’s an extent to which they can look bad. It gets to a stage they simply have to start looking good Think about that and smile. If you quit now.what will be your gain after all the pains and sacrifices and compromises you’ve alreadv made?
Oh, you should hear other women tell their tales of woes and you would hold a Thanksgiving service for what you have. And there you were thinking they had the worst marriage. Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect marriage . You just must know how to make the best of the materials you have and be happy. That’s all. Don’t compare your marriage unfavourably with others because those women you are enyying are probably also wishing they were in your shoes.
In the words of Biola, a secretary who has been married for five years. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m worse off than when l had no man at all.I wanted a man of my own who would love me as passionately as l love him. who will respect me and spend time with me and the kids. But I ended with a cold selfish son of a bitch who doesn’t mind screwing around on me. If only he will be discreet with his indiscretion. His only pasion is his career not me, the mother of his children,the devoted wife: I don’t even run a close second, or even a third. We don’t even make love anymore, just an obligatory “wham-bam and thank-you-ma’am show once in month .”
How about that? You thought just because your husband forgets your birthdays and doesn’t send you flowers on valentine days and tickle you pink; he’s the worst of Adam’s descendants, right? You are wrong, dead wrong or can’t you see? Indeed, even Biola’s marriage is better than a million others.
Perhaps, you think all those young wives who do their shopping strictly in highbrow, dollar- and-pounds-sterling-only stores are having the time of their lives. You do not know where their shoes pinch. Do not assume they are balling while you are suffering. Some of them have swollen and half-blind eyes behind those designer glasses.
The French or Swiss lace you are swooning over may be nothing but reparation for the beating she got last week for daring him when he came home late. Never mind dazzling latest Range Rover or the diamond studded wristwatch, she has her own headaches. At least, your husband has not impregnated the maid and threatened to make her a second wife.
Hear this one -she quit her career to be a full-time devoted wife and mother. The man inherited old money and doubled it with modern wheeling dealing. She figured money wouldn’t be a problem. All she has to do is spend and live it up like rich men’s wives. She figured it all wrong.
For one, her husband is one miserable miser who wants an account of every kobo she spends, from cooking gas to sanitary towel. She wanted her own house and another for her mother in the village, summer abroad but every year her husband told her she should forget them all.
“I don’t have a money-growing tree behind the house, do I? Who do you think you married anyway, Central Bank itself?” He would bellow each time she asked for anything.
What does that make him, a big great fat zero! So when next you think of packing up your marriage because you think you deserve a better deal,think again.There are actually worse marriages down your street.
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Re- The gang-up again first wives
I agree with you 100%
That is why I reply when men say:
Man no be wood!, I say: Woman too no be plastic! Men should stop being delusional. It is only our mothers that were retired with ignominy and yet remained loyal and faithful, even in retirement. My mother was the first wife. It didn’t take a year before the second wife came in. The game continued until they were four at home with known uncountable mistresses outside. Yet my mother remained faithful and even assisted in raising some of her step children. She was an Apostle of Ebenezer Obey’s marriage philosophy in the 70s that “Awa Okunrin le laya mefa, ko buru
Okunrin kansoso l’Oba Oluwa yan fun Obinrin.”
Not anymore today. The moment the woman notices that her man is no longer faithful, many of them reciprocate by also having a side cock. The only difference is that they are MORE CLEVER in covering their tracks!
-Olatunde M, Ikoyi
