Intimate Affairs: Dear Husband

By Funke Egbemode

Have you been wondering why things are not the way they used to be between you and your wife? Is she giving you cold shoulders instead of warmth? Hugging her pillows instead of you? Ah, you should worry. Do you have more one-word answers from her instead of full sensible sentences? She spends more time on the phone talking to people than you, her husband. She spends more time on Netflix, African Magic and Zee World than she does with you. She sits with the children in their room while you also watch football or play video games in another part of the house? Then, she waits for you to sleep off before crawling into bed. Trouble is brewing. A storm is gathering and you should worry.

You are steadily, totally becoming your wife’s flat mate. You are losing her. She has simply stopped arguing with you. She agrees with everything you decide, instead of trying to state her points or correct your errors or mistakes. You are in trouble and you know it. She is leaving you while living with you. Your relationship is now on silent mode, and trust me, if you value that marriage, you will swallow your ego, eat your pride and roll up your sleeves to repair⁹ what’s left of your home.

Let’s look at some little foxes that trouble homes and marriages quietly, smoothly, silently until everything is all done and gone. Let us be frank, there are old fashioned wives, raised by traditional mothers who deal with bad husbands and bad marriages without raising their voices. Today, we will not focus on their old-school ways. No. Today is about the type of husbands who push their women and marriage into the silent mode.

The Mean Landlord
This is the husband who bullies and threatens his wife with quit notice at every turn. Here are some of his favorite refrains;

“I’ll soon send you back to your parents. “

“Keep talking to me like that and you will be needing another accommodation soon”.

“In my house? Do you want me to kick you out”?

“If you close from work late tomorrow, don’t come back here.”

There are husbands who stop at just the threats. But there are those who go all the way. These are the ones who lock their wives out, throw their wives belongings in the rain at every opportunity, after every quarrel.

If you, dear husband, treat your wife like this, any number of things can happen to you, and believe me, the silent treatment is the least of them. Remember, not all wives are brought up to nicely stay on their lane in a bad marriage.

The Unprotective Lover.
This one wants to be called “Lord” but can’t protect his clan and family. He just doesn’t know that being called husband goes beyond whisking out your whip and giving your woman the best time in-between the sheets. He’s clueless when it comes to shielding his wife from the elements, and I don’t mean the rain, wind and sun.

Bro, your mother loves you to bits and this is the first time she’s sharing you with another woman, your wife, that is. She will lovingly want to continue to protect her son, because that is what she has always done. It’s part of her job description. She will lovingly try to elbow your beautiful wife out of the way, even out of her kitchen. She may even want to continue to shop for you, pick your ties and sit with you for hours after work. She does not hate your wife, she is just being Mummy. But your wife is the Lady of the Manor, this new manor. Not your mum, not your sisters. Nicely, gently tell your family that your wife is the First Lady. Do not allow her in-laws to frustrate her, talk down on her, make her feel like an alien in her own space. Be the crown that you ought to be. Don’t let her withdraw into her shell. Don’t let her re-channel her love into her job or business. Don’t let her stop being the girl you married. You won’t like the other version of your wife. Protect the version you married, please.

The Financial Bully
This one starves his wife and family of comfort, just to prove that he’s the boss and breadwinner. Every quarrel has financial implications. Heard of a man who went to lock up his wife’s shop and shut down her business because she was beginning to do well and could pick her bills herself. The guy felt he was losing his grip on her. So he shut her business. After all, he set it up. The financial bully if offended meted out such punishment as going to work with the keys of all the cars in the house. His wife must jump “okada” and “Keke NAPEP”. That’s her punishment for being rude, for talking back, not getting dinner ready on time or allowing the house-help to make his soup.

The “Pagan’ Husband
This one leaves all things spiritual to his wife. All he wants to do is make money and provide comfort for his family. He believes money answers all things. Good guy. Good provider. He’s lucky if his wife is “spiritual” and always around to raise the children the right and godly way. But if the wife is like him, the children are left to societal vagaries and peer pressure. Then he just wakes up one day and finds out that the child he named ‘Samuel’ is now an Atheist. The one he named Kabir has 10 piercings, wears lipstick and hides to eat and smoke during Ramadan. This husband is simply unavailable and his comeuppance, his amen junction is usually very traumatic later in life. Because he throws money at his problems, his wife and children tend to seek comfort far from him, many times in places and people he’d never touch with any kind of pole.

There are many things a man should know before going into marriage. There are many things fathers should teach their sons, little things mothers must impress on their boys. Though they may look little, however, they are lessons that must be leant because they can make or mar the best of marriages and good intentions.

For instance, the financial bully most likely will find out that his wife, after years of frustration, has built four flats somewhere and has a secret business. The mean landlord may one day kick his wife out and find out she does not come begging with her friends and family. She just moves out and moves on.

So which of these groups do you belong? Which of these sins are you guilty of?

Funke Egbemode can be reached on [email protected]