The Many Rules

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The thing called marriage is the toughest institution on earth and I know why I say so. It is filled with a lot of intrigues and uncertainties and nobody knows the exact formula for marriage. Courtship is definitely a different ball game and some people definitely change after marriage. Some people said that using the word ‘control’ in marriage in my last post was not right, some said they prefer the word lead but the truth is that women are naturally very controlling and when they are not given that privilege, they are unhappy and the home is not a happy one.

No woman wants to live with a man who is controlling because a controlling man is worse than a controlling woman and I have a few strange tales to buttress that point. A friend called after my last post and we had a long discussion about this control thing and the story of her neighbour who was married to a controlling man came up. This man would dictate to his wife how to do every single thing; he sometimes stopped her from going to work just because he could. He said where she could and could not go and would also make her change her clothes if he felt other men would look at her. He also talked down on her anywhere without any bit of caution.

Controlling men are in most cases abusive physically and emotionally which may not be the case with a controlling woman; back to the story of the lady who was at that time a branch manager in one of the foremost banks in Nigeria, all their friends knew that the man was very controlling and maybe abusive but nobody knew the extent to which he wanted to exert control on his wife. Then one certain night Nke my friend heard someone banging on her gate and when she went out to check, she heard this lady’s voice and realized immediately that she was in distress.

She quickly opened her gate without thinking twice if she was also going to be at risk only to see a stark-naked woman standing in front of her home. She pulled her in, again without thinking of her own husband who was somewhere in the house and was surely going to come after her to see that everything was okay outside. As she led her hurriedly into the house, they both bumped into her husband who ran away very quickly like he was fleeing from the devil; that was a funny moment because he tripped on the staircase. lol!

When Nke got her all covered up in her own night wears, this lady began to narrate her ordeal; she ran away after her husband tried to rape her again and she could take it no more. She opened up to the fact that her husband rapes her all the time even in front of their children. He had raped her once in front of her own younger sister and would say he had the right to have sex with his wife, whenever, however, and wherever. That night she could not endure it anymore and when she got a chance she ran for her life.

She told Nke that she had slept inside her official car a lot of times just so she would prevent her sick husband from violating her. She would pack her clothes, toothbrush, and other essentials before he got to her and then slept in the car. In the morning, she would brush and change right there in the car then drive to work without taking a bath. This could be the story of a lot of women but they choose to die in silence because of this thing called Marriage.

Another lady will never eat in public because her husband has forbidden her to do so. When I heard this, I thought that her husband wanted her to be a certain kind of posh, you know the sort of lady that never eats in public because of a Victorian kind of training. At parties, she would serve her husband if it was a buffet and only have a drink while seated next to him watching as he descends on all sorts of delicacies. The reason for this shocked me to the bones and I am yet to recover; he says that she chews like a goat and so would not have her disgrace him public. Hahahahaha!

The bank manager has escaped with her children from her controlling and abusive husband and lives a better life without him in another country. Now, is the situation of the second lady a good reason to leave her marriage? And by the way, not eating in public is one of the many rules that she must adhere to.