Myth #2: It Takes Two (Fair Is Fair!)

"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant."
- John Updike

Not everyone will marry. That's a fact we must learn to live with.

If you are one person with a rather acute sense of fairness and equality, the institution of marriage might just not be for you; unless you are prepared to chuck some of those ideals out the windows. Marriage, by its very nature is steeped in inequalities. In fact, that's what makes marriage unique.

A marriage is not a partnership, it is a union.

That is why the very idea of a pre-nuptial agreement totally negates the idea of marriage. Unless of course its a business arrangement.

Someone once defined a marriage as like the relationship between a statue and a pigeon. The pigeon perches on the statue and shits on it and what not; the statue does not seem to complain -at least not openly. If you are in a marriage, on some days you are the pigeon, on some other days you are the statue. Live with it.

It is not possible for two people to love each other equally, one must love the other more -at different times in the life of the relationship. Whatever the reasons for getting married, of necessity, one must need the other more.

A clergyman friend of mine once told me this: It does not take two people to make a marriage work, success in marriage depends on the 'Power of One'. At any point in a successful marriage, one person is giving more, doing more, being more for both of them but because of the deliberate opacity of marriage, people on the outside do not usually see this.

Examples abound of this for me and I believe you have a few examples of your own too.

My friend Chinedu works in telecoms with an annual salary of about N4m, his wife Amarachi works in a bank with take home close to N3m per annum. They are from similar family backgrounds, children of retired civil servants. They have two beautiful children.

Nedu and I have been friends like forever; our families are like 5 and 6. I know that he pays the rent, the children's school fees and other fees around the house including feeding money. His siblings go to public schools - his kid sister is in LASU while the brother is in secondary school. Nedu pays their fees too because his parents are retired.

Sometime in 2006, Nedu's mum had to queue in the sun at LASUTH, Ikeja in order to get the free eye surgery for cataract removal sponsored by the government of Bola Tinubu, she also got a free pair of glasses. I know these because I drove her there.

Amara's brother is in Covenant University and she pays the fees. Her two sisters are in private secondary schools. Sometime last year, her employers sponsored a vacation for the famly in the UK. She went with her Dad and the children. Her Dad actually went for a comprehensive medical check-up in London and was treated for some minor ailments while there. Amara paid for it.

For some time, I used to think that the marriage was not fair to my friend. Until one day it hit me, Nedu had never complained to me! For as long he was happy in his marriage whatever the configuration, it was not any of my business.

Marriage is an eternal work-in-progress, a perpetual balancing act.

Marriages fail when one person decides that its not worth it anymore.

Happy Married Life!

“My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.”
-Rodney Dangerfield

I was at a recently married friend's place over the weekend and they were obviously still in their post-honeymoon daze. Everywhere in the house was littered with photographs, cards and gifts -opened and unopened. Since most of the gifts were wall-clocks anyway, the couple decided to stop opening until probably later.

I also noticed so many cards, many wishing them a happy married life.

How would you describe a Happy Married Life? Is there really anything like a happy married life?

Or is it as my good friend Abadingo said, that the words 'happy' and 'married' cannot exist in the same sentence? You are either happy or you are married. They are mutually exclusive.

I told about an uncle who recently celebrated his fortieth wedding anniversary. I went to see him during the week. I looked at their wedding picture again, he was a young man of 23, recently graduated from university and just got a job. She was a wide eyed, very pregnant woman of 20, recently qualified as a teacher.

I couldn't help but ask him if he had thought about what they would be doing in forty years time. He did not. Remember that this was in the middle of the Nigerian Civil war. They were afraid but they lived everyday as it came.

So I asked him: Has he had a happy married life?

He answered emphatically in the affirmative. I wonder can he be for real?

What do you think?

Why Do Women Have Sex?

Simple question, right?

Wrong.

Even in a study conducted by women on women, it still comes out that no one but NO ONE can understand women.

In the online survey of 1,000 women aged from 18 to 87 by Meston and Buss, as reported by Deborah Kotz in the USNews, you would have expected to get simple straight forward answers like for procreation, or for pleasure but the number one reason women have sex is ... wait for it ...... because they are attracted to their partners!

What has attraction got to do with anything? Hey, what do I know, I'm just a man abi? Lower down the list were reasons connected with love and emotional bonding.

There were other reasons too:
- to bring them closer to God. Really?!
- to get back at partners who weren't faithful by having sex with someone else.
- Competition 'Gotcha' sex: who gets him first!
- to get another notch on their belt, which we typically think of as something men do.
- to get rid of their virginity. O m'eziokwu!
- Sympathy sex" because they felt sorry for their mate. The poor guy will NEVER hear the last of it.
- Economic Exchange sex to land a job or promotion or to get money or drugs. OK.OK.OK.

But you will not believe that after all these confessions and enlightening revelations, the authors still arrived at some very strange conclusions like
" .... we see that men are still more likely to engage in uncommitted sex, like one-night stands .. "
"... more women still make the connection between love and sex..."
"... men are definitely more willing to have sex because of physical attraction ...". W-h-h-a-a-a-a-a-t?!!!

Anyway, was it not a woman who said that men are dogs because they sleep around. As if they sleep with goats.

And this lie that women make the connection between love and sex should stop o. If this were so, why do men fall in love with prostitutes? Hello, Pretty Woman!