What If?

I do not think that anyone walks into a relationship already envisaging the end of it. Unfortunately, sometimes the relationship does come to an end and you would have dated several potential suitors before you reach your last bus stop…

What do you do when you feel it in the very centre of your being that your relationship is dangerously close to its expiry date?
Do you close your eyes to the obvious truth or suddenly become a believer, hoping against hope that God will intervene miraculously and save your marriage/ relationship?
What I have noticed about the Nigerian society regarding relationships is the tenacity and the fighting spirit; this refusal to let go. You begin to blame in-laws, young girls outside, bad friends of your spouse who are influencing them negatively… The excuse that your religion does not permit divorce is always there too; and the list goes on.
While this is very admirable, sometimes it is just the simple fact that you are badly suited to each other.
It is very possible that it is this determination to keep the relationship/ marriage going that will rescue whatever love you have left between you.
However, sometimes we have to be willing to let go. It is not admittance to failure; it is just an acknowledgement that this one time, you chose wrongly. And that is life really; you win some, you loose some.
The major issue is the fear that once you let one go, the likelihood of getting another is slim. This is when the “what-ifs” begin to plague your mind until you have reduced yourself to your lowest terms. This is when you remember that age is not on your side and you already have one kid and your body is not as youthful as it once was. I call this reducing yourself to your lowest terms because you only think of yourself as a means to another’s end; a baby’s mother, someone’s husband or wife, etc. You might want to begin to think of relationships as something that should make you happy first and foremost, that edifies your soul, which puts a song in your heart.
At the end of the day, it just might be that your partner will love you even more for having the courage to let go; you can then give each other individual chances at happiness. What’s more, if the relationship produced kids, your children get to grow up in a more loving environment instead of experiencing the constant bickering or bad blood that exists between you two.

No one can tell you what is best for you. You will need to look inside yourself and make that decision from within. For a moment, forget society, and mothers and in-laws and what everyone else expects that you will do. This one time, do it for you.

Experience.

Don’t you just hate it when you tell someone your story and then you get told a story worse than yours…people just don’t want to lend credibility to your experiences. Then you get told that oh, it has happened to someone else and that person’s experience was a lot worse than yours; you had better not complain.
I listened to this younger woman tell an older woman about her husband’s indiscretions, and the older woman told her, oh it’s nothing oh. So he only cheated eh? You did not thank your God that he did not bring the concubine into the house to live or worse still, father an illegitimate child? In my own case, he went on and fathered three children outside wedlock and I could do nothing about it…blah blah blah
And somehow, it makes it sound as if society has condoned the man’s wrongdoing, simply because he’s not the first African man to have done it. As if there is safety in numbers.
My own question is, does it make it any easier to bear? An experience is still your own experience; you will make what you will out of it; you either cope better or you find it harder to bear compared to others.
It will not stop me from feeling like I’m the first girl to have her heart broken; it will not stop my impatience when I am stuck in situations I cannot help; it will not make me feel bad for voicing out my frustrations when there are others even more frustrated than I am. That all women go through labour pain does not mean it is not painful everytime... abi?
In Miss Spark’s words: No matter what you say about love, I’ll keep coming back for more, put my hand in the fire…sooner or later I’ll get what I am asking for. It does not matter that another has tried and found it impossible to find.

An ounce of experience is better than a pound of advice.

...On Ingrained Customs (Part I)

I am having a really hard time. Even getting my thoughts on paper is difficult. Normally I tend to dissociate myself from my writing and try to sound as balanced as possible…if I’ve learnt nothing else in law school, I’ve learnt that clarity of thought is key. Argue both sides…
This one time, I have to write from my gut because i cannot tell it any other way.
I had a very interesting conversation with a few men, ranging from the men in my family to some professionals; medical doctors and lawyers to be precise; and the recurring theme was African men, monogamy and a woman’s role in the Nigerian society. the over-riding emotion was fear and a sense of hopelessness;


First of all, I was being told that if I did not exhibit womanly traits like wanting to cook, clean, fuss over and take care of able-bodied men, I had a fundamental flaw as a woman that spelled doom for my future. No man would touch me with a long pole. lol
Then, there was the other side, a bunch of married men, offering a sort of more exciting future as a mistress. They went on to tell me that, as a mistress one is only there for the fun times and to show the man a good time; the wife is there to perform all the other harder duties of bearing and rearing children, cooking and cleaning until she is blue in the face. The other plus was that there would be no baby- making, or inlaw- related wahala involved; you get to keep your figure!The funny part was the man’s averment that African men were never born monogamous and that the whole idea was a Western creation.
My problem was that none of them sounded like a choice- a woman still remained an accessory.
And this is what I have a problem with. what happens when you cannot fit into any of these moulds?

Change...

Complaint 1: There’s nothing I hate more than not being taken seriously.
“To understand other people, you must first realise they are other people and not another you.”For most females, this is a bitter pill to swallow. Hell, for me I know it is. That is why we engage in the very futile endeavour of trying to change our partners or mould them into what we want. This is why we complain about our feelings not being taken into consideration.Men do things that only they understand. They do not get why females feel the need to discuss emotions, feelings and all that mushy stuff. They do not get why we like to gossip and talk about other people’s relationships. They do not get why we are pre-menstrual. They do not get why we get upset when they do not remember birthdays, special events and all the kind of dates that women think are important. At first, I thought this was a generalisation; but it is so true- men are just not bothered about ish like that. Personally, I think they are just lazy when it comes to being “emotionally vocal”; yet they would argue about the most irrelevant ish- like football! Men really are from Mars.They say the first rule of love is to listen. When we argue, do we ever stop to hear the other person out or try to understand why they behave the way that they do? Maybe it is God-ordained that they behave that way; because try as you may, you will never be able to change him or make him suit your preferences- unless you want to become a nag/ boss lady. Then there’s the other small matter of actually liking what you’ve turned him into; because after all, was it not his quiet nature/ listening ear you fell in love with?Maybe women should take a leaf out of their books and learn to listen more. I also think men need to make more of an effort with communication, because we will never be able to get inside their heads unless they let us in by talking, communicating, and responding. We all know communication is the life- force of a relationship.Men ought to know there is nothing more erotic & turn-on-ish than connecting with a female you care about intellectually, mentally, verbally…falling in love with each other’s minds/ thought processes is hard to compete with; there will always be sexier women/ buffer men- but only one person on earth who thinks the way that he/ she does.