YINKA looked breath-taking in her flowing white gown. Her ebony-black skin shone like ivory. Her eyes were bright and captivating. As she slowly walked past with the grace of a stallion, she flashed a smile at known and unknown faces that had come from far and near to make the day a memorable one for her and her beau.
She walked on and looked until her eyes rested on Chukwuemeka, her prince charming and lover of four years, who in a few minutes would be pronounced her husband. She heaved a sigh of relief like a champion; her happiness was real, her joy knew no bounds.
Minutes later, she would be heard chorusing after the preacher, ‘I do take you Chukwuemeka, to be my lawfully wedding husband, to love and to cherish, forsaking all other men, in sickness and in health for better for worse, till death do us part’. Once the rites and the ceremonies have been performed, both embarked on a journey to the moon in search of honey thereafter, or is it much later? The reality of the eternal commitment made to each other sets in. So what happens afterwards? For most women, coping with the realities of marital life is highly challenging. Women are like babies who never want their candies taken away from them. By nature, they are sentimental and often times demand of their husbands’ undivided love and attention, round the clock. And when this is not forthcoming in their estimated proportion, they feel shortchanged and sometimes look for trouble even when it is unfounded.
Needless to say that most women find it hard to brace up to the changes that may occur in the man they married and subsequently in their homes. It is not an exaggeration to say the man you married is different from the husband you are living with. It is understandable that during courtship, the parties involved often hide their true colours. Some manners are consciously hidden during this period. However, such manners and behaviours start manifesting once the couple start living together. Women, who later gets to know that their husbands are the type who always ‘hang around with the boys’ become insecure. Such women become suspicious of every move the man makes. Women like this, draw erroneous conclusions and mostly believe that their husbands are engaged in illicit affairs.
Sadly, women like this go through their husband’s private stuff to see if they can get any incriminating evidence to confirm their suspicion and fears. The husband’s shirts and trousers are thoroughly searched for traces of lipsticks or any piece of paper with a lady’s address. For such a home, verbal and physical violence becomes the order of day.
A couple I once knew were always fighting over one thing or the other. Most of the time, concerned neighbours had to rush down to their flat to put out the fire. Interestingly, not one of these neighbours was able to get past the door, the reason being that the (couple) have the habit of throwing away the keys before every fight. Amazingly, the fight took a new turn one day, as the woman charged out of the house, headed for the husband’s car and broke the wind-screen. The husband, in a bid to retaliate broke into pieces the wife’s kitchen wares. The wife, on seeing this went for her husband’s clothing and tore them into shreds with a scissors. The husband went for the wife’s clothing’s and set them on fire!
If you think the scenario above is absurd, ponder over what happened to a close friend, (she will kill me if she gets to read this) who felt that her husband was cheating on her and broke their television set in anger. She did not stop there, she took the husband’s thirty thousand (N30,000) which he initially kept in her custody and tore them up in shreds, just to get back at the man! On the other hand, women who do not have violent tendencies react by developing a low self-esteem.
Such women see themselves as nothing but a mere article of no commercial worth. They suffer from inferiority complex, and become bitter and withdrawn. These tendencies are majorly found in women whose husbands are highly into night-clubbing, keeping late nights or womanizing. Nevertheless wives who discover after they tie the knots, that their husbands are family men at heart, displaying deeper affection for their extended family, begin to get unnecessarily jealous. To such women, members of the husband’s family are seen as competitors for affections and attention, such women may act irrationally and may go as far as putting restrictions on the number of family members that are ‘allowed@ to visit and same even demand prior notification even before the man’s mother can visit.
In Africa, such behaviours are not only disrespectful but insulting to traditional values. Needless to say that it is just a matter of time before such a woman is thrown out and another brought into replace her. It will be erroneous for any African woman to get proudly possessive of her husband so much so that she starts keeping his family at bay. For in Africa, especially in the Igbo culture, it is believed that when a woman marries a man, invariably, she marries his extended family.
One of the mistakes some women make is that they fail to see marriage as it really is. By the virtue of their academic qualifications and dispositions, they have a hypothetical picture of marriage of existing or isolating themselves totally from the man’s family. They tend to forget all too easily that an African will always be an African regardless of his intellectual acumen.
For some couples, living as a couple may not be any of the above. It could be that the man snores heavily while sleeping or exhibits other bad habits like not flushing the toilet after use or will never hang his clothes properly but likes throwing them around.
It could be that, he is the type that will never lend a helping hand in the kitchen or help with the kids, stock-piling his dirty clothes always and expecting his wife to do the washing all the time. He may be the type that never says ‘sorry’ when he is wrong or thank you when you have done something that warrants him saying so. He may never choose the colour of his clothes right in sprite of your numerous protests, or maybe he is never at home on weekends which happen to be his free days.
The truth is, marriage is not a bed of roses. There are ups and downs and one cannot expect that two different people from different backgrounds, different ways of life, will not have frictions and character clashes here and there.
Courting an individual is not the same thing as living with the person all the days of your life. One is bound to notice some mannerisms that were not there before. The reason is because people change as the years go by; new ideas are adopted, while the old ones are discarded consciously and unconsciously. One should not think that marriage is an illusion when one starts noticing changes in one’s spouse.
Any arrangement or plan to address any unfavourable changes in one of the parties concerned should always be open. One thing is certain in marriage, the man or woman you married may have changed, but the friend you have in him or her will never change.
As a woman never loses the friendship you have in your husband, no matter what it could be, the only anchor you can hold on to in stormy times.