By Oreva Godwin
Oreva
I spoke with a friend of mine last week and he told me of a mutual friend who relocated with him and he was still single and I said “Okay.” He urged me to make things work between us and I said “No, we are not compatible. I can’t date him, let alone marry him.” He urged me to teach him to be right for me and I told him “I’m not his therapist. Let him go look for a wife who will be his therapist. I need a partner and not a patient/client.”
You may refer to me as a feminist, but I can never be your typical African woman. Most African women are groomed to be therapists to their partners. Our mothers passed their own daunting experiences to us. They taught us, not only to follow their pattern, but to prepare us to be brave enough to follow their footsteps. Our mothers didn’t train us to break the cycle, but to continue it. We are groomed to tolerate and endure, forgetting partnership is meant to be enjoyed and to learn from each other.
We are groomed to serve our colonial masters who are the men. When will women have peace and relax and enjoy this union called marriage? How long will my gender try so hard to turn every red flag to green flag?
Then the church came into the picture. Telling both gender that we are all therapists. You don’t need to have the certificate for it. You are told that the Holy Spirit which lives in us would do the teaching. But it’s another plot to tolerate and endure a sad reality.
I asked myself, why do we keep overlooking the red flags? Is it because of frustration of life? Is it because time is going? Is it because we want to prove a point to the society or our exes? Many people claim to have been deceived into marriage? Don’t tell me it’s love either. Love is not blind. We chose to be blind.
Today, we shall review two aspects that people tend to overlook and refuse to really talk about: Hygiene and romance.
A lot of people have zero hygiene habits. Some people live like pigs. It’s sad to hear that people can live days without bathing, just because they have no place to go. Some brush only when they are going out and can stay days without brushing while staying at home. No, they are not mad. They are very normal. There are also those who don’t flush the toilet after use.
Romance. How can a man not kiss his wife before coitus? No kissing. No foreplay; just straight to the assignment. As a woman you don’t know how to please your man. You don’t know how to kiss. You can’t moan like a lady and some don’t even moan at all. They are more like logs of wood. Who are these people?
A woman did trend online recently for complaining about her husband’s lack of romance. She said her husband does not kiss her. He just comes, opens her legs and have coitus. She also complained that her husband could stay a week without bathing and it’s killing her.
Even when she tells him to bathe before sex, he refuses and tells her bluntly that he won’t. If she can’t have coitus without him bathing, then she should forget it. From her face, one could see that she was controlling herself from crying. And people were busy laughing, including the so called husband. I don’t see that man changing anytime soon.
I once met a very funny and open minded woman in her early 70s. She was quite exposed and open for an African woman. She gave her honest advice about marriage when she learnt I am single. She advised me not to mind people who say good sex doesn’t matter in marriage. This is her story.
“I was 23 years old when I met my husband. No courtship, no friendship, just straight to marriage. My family did findings about his family. They did a background check and it came out positive. So we got married. I was not a virgin when I met my husband. I had had sex with my first and only true love. My husband was my second. But sex with my husband was so different and painful. He doesn’t kiss or romance. He simply came to me, opened my legs and penetrate.”
“My husband is huge down there and I’m always dry because of zero romance. I got pregnant and went to visit my mother. I opened up to my mom about my sexual life and my mom told me that’s how my father was, that I should endure it. I was frustrated and hated the fact that I couldn’t enjoy sex like I used to with my ex.
“I was a whole different woman back then. I was different, too different for my generation. I wished I was born in your generation. I travelled back to Lagos and that night my husband came as usual, but I held him and kissed him and led his hand to my privates and he flinched”, she said.”
Our dear Mama disclosed what her husband said to her still haunts her till date. He told her: “I tried to overlook the fact that you were not a virgin when I married you, but now this? Did I marry a whore?”
“I was in shame. I just laid on the bed, watched him dress up and leave the bedroom. He broke me, I was no longer that bold and audacious girl anymore. I suddenly felt dirty and unworthy. That’s how I caged my true self and listened to my mother’s advice to endure it all. But deep down I regretted the marriage. I was living in the shadows”, she revealed.
She continued: “They say sex doesn’t matter in marriage, but oh, they lied. Maybe if I was a virgin before I married my husband, I wouldn’t have known how wrong the lovemaking was. But now I am a widow at age 72. Is it now I want to go enjoy good sex? I’m too old for that. So my daughter, don’t accept a boring sex partner”, she concluded.
John had a distant relationship with Mercy and they rarely saw each other. When they did, they spent three days together. He finally proposed and they wedded. That’s when they realised they didn’t know each other as they thought.
Now everybody is relaxed showing their real selves. Their real selves that made them resent each other.
John had a habit of not flushing the toilet when he uses it. He also scatters the room. To Mercy’s dismay, she constantly gets to the restroom to see the toilet not flushed after use. She constantly had to scream her voice out.
But Mercy had hers also. Whenever she was on her flow, she did not properly dispose of the sanitary pads. Sometimes, she leaves it lying in the sink and this got John angry. He claimed that as a traditional man, he shouldn’t see such.
This made marriage unbearable for husband and wife. They had other differences, but these were the most unbearable differences. Mercy learnt to dispose of her sanitary pads properly as she should, just so she could have peace. But John? Never, Mercy was disgusted.
Sometimes, she would rush to the bathroom to freshen up for a hot sexual moment. Once she saw the used restroom and the foul smell coming out of it, her mood would die off. She would simply flush the restroom and get in bed frustrated.
Mercy said her husband started irritating her. She had to open up to her mom, who told her to teach him how to flush after use. But she was livid, “Am I to tell a 36 years old man how to flush the toilet after use?”
The irritation for Mercy became very exhausting as she had clean up their daughter’s poop and also that of her husband. She wished there was a spare room to move into so she visit her husband’s room when they wanted to make love or have a conversation. She was tired of being his therapist.
A lady similarly shared a story online of her husband who could go three days without brushing. She was pregnant and her husband was seriously irritating her. He had yellow tint on his teeth and that irritated her more. His breath was extremely bad. Changing boxers daily for our dear husband was an issue, even when she buys dozens of them for him. The lady was terribly irritated by her husband’s foul habits.
I was however shocked to the marrow when I saw comments of men justifying the husband’s poor hygiene. They claimed that the man was busy thinking of how to make money, and she was complaining about hygiene?. One said he had been indoors for two weeks and had not bathed more than three times. He couldn’t remember when last he brushed either. Reason because he didn’t need to. He was home. He said the lady should deal with it, just like his own wife was coping with him.
Another suggested, she should be romantic about the situation. He advised that when he is in the restroom, she should pick her husband’s toothbrush and put a paste on it, pet him and put it to his mouth and that overtime he would remember to be brushing.
This got me worried. Are these men mentally normal or simply dirty? Should we blame the poor hygiene on parents? For couples having problems, the vital question to ask is whether they courted before marriage. How can you date someone who stays the whole day without bathing? How can you have sex with such a person?
How long do you think you can deal with such a partner? Are we not tired of being therapists? Why do we believe it’s our responsibility to change a red flag to a green flag?
It’s time we admitted that some people are beyond redemption. It’s time we choose peace and happiness. Embrace it. Don’t be too used to the pain and absence of peace to the point that it becomes so normal. Don’t let peace and happiness be foreign to you.
Some red flags will always remain a red flag. It can never change to a green flag. What you can’t endure while courting, will become worse in marriage. Know who you are committing to. Spend quality time with your lover to know them better. A few days together is not ideal. Stop being a therapist. It’s not your job to change an adult.
You are not a rehab centre. Neither are you a savior. You are definitely not a therapist. People should know what they are getting themselves into.
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