45 Years On.

You get into a relationship with a man in your prime years. Soon it turns into something serious. You date and get married, say “I do” because you truly do. You are barely 18. You love him. You would like to spend the rest of your life with him. You are accepting him at his best and will keep him at his worst. You mean it when you promise to be with him for richer and for poorer. In sickness and in health.

You do.

Mr. & Mrs. Murrey

You start your life together. You fit into your new role as a wife pretty fast since you have your first child (a son) the following year. You are there for your young family. You are happy. He works. You are a housewife, which is work too. Immense work. You endeavour to take care of him, your home and your child. And the children keep coming. One after the other. Eight of them, they come. Some pregnancies are easy breezy. Others are a challenge. But you bear them all like the champ you are. With each birth come unsurpassed emotions of love. With each child, you experience elation that knows no bounds. You want more children, but the eighth pregnancy proves challenging. You realize that you have stretched your luck. Eight is ok. Eight is enough. You love the eight.

You take care of all of them. You change napkins more times than you care to count – diapers are not a word that exists in your vocabulary. You run after the children to contain them. You scold those who show signs of straying from your teachings. You crack the whip on your wayward brood more times than you can count. You love them all. You adore them even more.

Soon they start school and have to go to the city to get the good education that their father wants for them. You have to stay in the village and run your home. It kills you to be away from your children. You tough it out all the same. You do a spectacular job. A big beautiful house is constructed under your watch. It rises from the ground to tower intimidatingly at the other huts in your neighbourhood.

You tough out a lot more for your marriage to stand. You are taken for granted. You feel unappreciated. You remind yourself how it felt to be loved. You wonder whether he has forgotten how it was between the two of you. You wonder if he thinks about you. If he still loves you the same way he did when he married you.

You keep the faith.

He loves you. In his own imperfect way. He shows it. He takes you to travel around the world with him. You traverse the globe to countries you only saw in the map during your Geography lessons.

Years come and pass by. Retirement beckons. He comes home to you and you now spend every waking minute together. The children are all grown up. They are out there charting their own paths in life. They visit sometimes, but it’s only you and him now.

Then it hits you. You’ve been together for eons. During these years, you have argued. You surely have laughed. You have cried and made merry. Through the good times and the bad. Better, worse. Health, sickness. Births, deaths. Weddings, divorce. Success, failure. Bounty, scarcity.

It’s been a long stretch. So long that you don’t know where his life ends and where yours begins anymore. You are at this point entirely, completely, confusingly one. Your dreams, ideals, values collided so much over the years to eventually merge into one.

You understand his every need. You know his deepest secrets.  His strengths, his weaknesses. You know what he’s feeling because you have studied his mannerisms to perfection.  You know why he is quiet and withdrawn some days and why he bubbles with excitement on other days.

You look at him and wonder how you managed to stay together for all these years to remain standing. You wonder to what you owe this miracle where you have called him husband for so long, while he calls you wife.

You marvel at how you worked through marital problems and made a conscious decision to stay together at the end of it all. How you honored your leap of faith that resulted in you saying “I do” even without knowing what you were ‘doing’.

You wonder how your marriage stood the test of time.

Most of all, you wonder if he still remembers how it felt to fall in love with you for the first time. How it felt when he led you to the altar to declare to the world and to God that you were his chosen one, his wife.

Then he gathers his children together on the 3^rd of August, 2014. He makes it known to them that today is a special day. He explains that it is special because it is the same day he married a beautiful girl 45 years ago. A very beautiful girl, he calls you. He remembers. This brings tears to your eyes.

He remembers!

45 years on, you still do. It’s you and him now till the end of time.

To my parents! To 45 years of marriage! To many more!

How to 'Ex-Terminate' a looming affair

So you have done the disappearing act perfectly well and think that a relationship you wanted out of is dead and buried. Eons later, you bump into each other. She is still single, ready to mingle and dying to settle down; desperate for a relationship that will lead to marriage. She tried Pastor Chris Ojigbani’s renowned seminar, she once applied to The Daily’s lonely hearts column, and when that failed, she further went out on a limb with facebook’s ‘divas for something-or-the-other’ only for it all to fall flat on her face. But in an uber lucky twist of fate, just when she was about to give up and purchase a clowder of cats to keep her company in old age…Voila!

Like a gift from the high heavens, here you stand! The only problem is, once she was out of the picture you moved on, played the field and even convinced some nice girl to marry you. Your ring is in full view for her to see but she won’t accept that what you had is kaput. She refuses to acknowledge the fact that you married your gentle, down-to-earth sweetheart. Her? She might ask. Of all the people, you married HER? (Picture her sneering and scanning her from head to toe)

With that look, battle lines will be drawn. Her mission - to get ‘her’ man back come hell or high waters. So she will make sure you bump into each other again. And again. And again. She will casually ask to share drinks (or food) with you one evening - for old times’ sake of course. During which time she will endeavor to awaken memories of your dating years. Reminders will pop up on how the two of you were so in love. How everyone expected you to spend the rest of your lives together. How she cooked mouth-watering Chapatis for you (Is it just twitter or are men seriously obsessed with Chapatis?!)

She will dress to kill; her dress will be cut to accentuate her curves with her cleavage peeping at you mockingly and the hem falling just above her knee, and threatening to go further up. When it comes to looking good, gentlemen, EVERY woman can put up a good show. The fact that we all know what men like makes it easy; The voluptuous behind a la J-Lo, the well endowed rack a la Pamela Anderson, the long legs a la Tina Turner, ergo the hip enhancements, the skin lightening creams (and injections), the weaves, the push-up bras…It is laughable how women manage to ‘manipulate’ men.

Suffice to say, she will bring her A game to the table and she will dare you to resist all that, your marriage be damned!

Let’s face it, most men don't have it in them to fight off an overzealous Ex. Granted, fighting temptations is not one of men’s strong points. However, for the few men who know what a ring on their finger means, you will be glad to know that you can actually lose a clingy woman without enrolling in cat and mouse games, or pulling a Harry Houdini. You can thank me later.

1. Talk fondly about your wife (Your kids too if any) She cooks for you, she rocks your world, she is a great mother, etcetera. Even if she burns every meal she cooks and goes to bed in her ‘sengenge ni ng’ombe’ tee. For better or worse, remember?
2. Show off your family's pictures if you carry some in your wallet. And please carry those pictures like you do your ID. Your family is your identity after all, innit?
3. Don’t initiate anything. A hug. A kiss. A meet up. A phone call. ANYTHING. Why do you think a woman gets mad when you call yourself her boyfriend yet you don’t bother to call? It’s because we know that when you don’t call, you are not interested.
4. If you bump into her at your ‘local’, refrain from buying her drinks or any treats whatsoever. If you do so you will inadvertently turn your coincidental meeting into an impromptu date.
5. Suggest hooking her up with some nice guy you know. Then go ahead and do it! Meaning what you say will help to avoid giving her mixed signals.
6. Don’t share your marital problems with her. That is the weak link she is after and as soon as she finds it, She. Will. Milk. It. Dry.
7. Understand your weakness with the female anatomy and keep your distance. If she manages to get you all alone, all confused, all vulnerable and all in her spell, then your goose is cooked.
8. If for some reason you need to call her about something; maybe to pass your heartfelt condolences for the loss of a relative, a cat, dog, job, whatnot (I can’t think of any other valid reasons), then don’t call at night. Calls made at night have a personal tag to it and you don’t want to go personal. This means that Texting, (need I say sexting?), Chatting, are all absolute no-nos!
9. No you can’t be friends! Not if she is still hang up on you, you can’t! You will call it ‘friendship’ for so long until she starts staying up late, staring at the ceiling above her big California King bed, asking herself “What if…”
10. Cut the cord. Sever links with her. A relationship needs care to grow. Neglect it, and it wilts away. You want to let it die.

Try the above and you will irritate the hell out of her. She will be so bored of your marriage-wife-children-commitment-family yada yada that if you are lucky, she might start avoiding you.

Unless of course you don’t really want to lose her entirely. Would you prefer to keep her as a side dish maybe? A scrumptious chips funga for your dry spells? No harm in stringing her along, is there? Her much needed ego-massage comes in handy when the missus gives you grief, ey? Every man sure needs one of those, right? Yeah? Really? SHAME ON YOU for even daring to nod your head! 

Surviving Men

Next time you see a bride standing at the altar in a wedding gown and exchanging vows with a man, promising to stand by him no matter what, you should applaud that woman. Seriously. Get on your feet and applaud her because she will be undertaking a rough path full of hardships.

Not to say that the men have it easy. All I am saying is that before you go around making silly statements like ‘women are hard to manage’, (refer to my previous blog) take a minute and walk a mile in our pinching shoes, will you? Some (few) men already know this; others have never really stopped to think about it, while others believe that we are only doing what is our job to do and we should therefore shut up and strive to do it well. I will ignore the last cluster since I am in a good mood today and I don’t want anything to change that.

You know the way a woman carries a pregnancy to term while ensuring that the baby she is carrying is well nourished, safe and healthy? Now imagine having another baby who has no ‘due date’, meaning the difficulties you face while ‘carrying’ it are indefinite with no end in sight. Imagine having to provide ‘nourishment’ with no guarantee of its full growth and safety. The latter ‘baby’ is who we like to call a ‘Man’

The only two differences between a foetus and a man are that one is a ‘parasite’ inside a woman, while the other one is outside her; one grows and develops while the other has stunted growth.

The emotional roller coaster that a woman goes through when she pees on a stick during a pregnancy test, and when she walks down the aisle and stretches out her finger to accept a wedding ring are somewhat the same. She thinks, will I be a good mother (wife), will this pregnancy (marriage) go smoothly? Do I have the strength to see it through? Am I ready for this?

If she chooses to have the child or accept the ring (tomato, tomay-i-to) then her life is not hers anymore. It becomes all about the child (man) because she has to make changes to accommodate this person comfortably in her life. The food she used to love eating cannot be kept down anymore as she ends up puking it all out, thanks to morning sickness; she has to change her circle of friends, thanks to the society’s perception of her new status. Her outfits become restrictive and she has to buy new ones, thanks to a bulging tummy; her decisions are equally restricted as she has to consult and maybe even forgo some of the things she would have loved to pursue, thanks to a demanding husband. As if that is not enough she will have to adapt to a new family who, just like a protruding belly, are not easy to carry around.

Just like a growing foetus might abort with no warning and due to no fault of the woman, a marriage may come to an abrupt end leaving her wondering when the rain started beating her. It may end simply because a man prefers another woman who is more fun or slimmer, taller, sexier, prettier - the excuses are in milliards.

Instead of thinking how hard it is to ‘manage’ your woman, think of all the sacrifices she is making and how hard she is trying to make things work. When men get married, their search for a mate is obviously over and therefore, mission accomplished. Case closed. End of story. Their main agenda for a chick they are interested in is ‘kumuingiza box’ as they call it. Once a chick ‘ameingia box’ what other challenge is left for them? To make the relationship work? What is that? This might as well be Greek to him. That automatically becomes the woman’s responsibility

Well, just as there are so many pains in pregnancy; fatigue, heartburn and gas, there are also those fuzzy kicks, overwhelming emotions of pride and joy to get us through a pregnancy. Just as there are all the disappointments in marriage in the form of ‘chips funga’, lies, betrayal and disloyalty, there are also special moments of pride, joy and happiness to make us survive men.

So even though men are absolute idiots most of the time, there are a few times every woman looks at their man and sees the reason why she has stuck with him through it all. These moments should not be few and far between. Very few men understand that in order for a marriage to work, he has to keep chasing the same woman even after she says ‘I do”.