The Iyalode

No you didn’t!

The world is like a complex board of game, with a goal to constantly seek balance; but as long as life exists, there will always be imperfection and thus the continued quest for balance.

For any form of relationship that requires one person to be constantly ‘holed up’ with another person (marriage, siblings etc), there will always be tension and periods of misunderstanding.

I recently saw a clip where a woman said “marriage starts at the point where you look at your partner and wonder what exactly you found attractive in him that made you marry him”. How true.

Interestingly, no matter how much truth is put out there about marriage, the cycle continues…every young couple lost in love and with a certainty that their union would be different. I’ve heard this too many times, and have had a comeback story for as many times as I heard it.

While there are many problems that can be attributed to tough marriages, communication tops the list.

For some reason, communication starts to break down once people get too comfortable with each other, the exact opposite of what should be.

There is also a sense of entitlement that the ‘certificate of ownership’ gives to couples unconsciously that make them behave (or react to a behaviour) in ways they normally wouldn’t.

And for every relationship experiencing a breakdown, there is always a cause and effect; an action and a reaction. Unfortunately if the cycle is left unattended for too long, it becomes difficult to trace things back to where the problem actually did originate from: the action or the reaction.

For instance, a man addresses his wife rudely and she felt offended but did not address it. Rather, she storms off to enjoy a day out with friends (an event that actually could have been planned before the rouse with her husband), returns home too tired to cook. The husband, believing he is obligated to be waited on by his wife (even though he spent the entire day at home) gets pissed off and refuses to sleep in the same bed as his wife. Next morning, he storms out of the house without speaking to his wife; returns late at night and refuses to eat the meal the wife prepared. The wife feeling insulted, picks up the plate angrily and dumps in the sink. She notices the husband had gone to the room (claiming dominance of the room for the night), and finds a reason to doze off on the couch. And the cycle continues for a few days until they get tired of it or some other circumstance makes them actually start talking to each other again- without facing the root of the grudge.

A mistake then tends to happen: people believe that these issues go away and that they just find a way to reconnect back with each other. But there will always be another disconnect, and when that happens, the mind will relate the current issue to the old issue that never got resolved. And it’s why during a mediation, it is common to have a person make reference to incidences that the spouse has absolutely no clue about.

And it all boils down to communication, or lack thereof.

Imagine if the woman had addressed the fact that her husband was rude to her?

Imagine if the husband had expressed his displeasure that the wife stayed out too long? Or that he simply fixed himself a meal?

For every relationship, especially marriage (with exception of forced marriages), your spouse is most likely not evil (save for extreme cases where they actually did commit evil acts).

When you asked her to marry you (or when you accepted to be his wife), there was something magical…there was a connect…there was a reason why you felt you could actually spend the rest of a lifetime with this person. What went wrong?

In most cases, if the problem of communication can be fixed at an early stage, marriages can actually be enjoyed. It is however not as simple as it is stated. For some reason in life, the little things are the most important things; and these almost always turn out to be the most complex of things.

Especially in Africa, men do a poor job listening to women and women eventually find a ‘safe place’ of not bothering to explain things anymore. Rather, women find solace in discussing their issues with fellow women, who GET IT, with little effort. And then we have men going around with assumptions of what’s going on with their wives. Why assume when access to the raw data is right beside you?

Also unfortunate is the fact that our men are built to ‘lock up’; It is generally believed that men who let out their feelings are considered weaklings. While it is true that it will require years of reprogramming, men should gradually begin to accept the absolute truth that they are also humans, humans with emotions.

A man who has built a ‘fantasy’ about himself in the mind of his wife will find it difficult to make the woman understand when he is experiencing ‘downtimes’ (emotionally, financially etc). And it gets us right back to communication.

In conclusion, you didn’t marry a bitch; you both just got comfortably busy with other things outside of yourselves. Listen/ open up more; with an open mind (not with see finish syndrome); and if it’s not too late, find your way back to the beginning!

Understandably, the issues surrounding relationship meltdown go beyond a single topic. Communication is simply one of the major problems. Watch out for more articles from what I have learnt in relationships I've experienced (siblings, friendships etc), and lessons learnt from relationships around me.
Hope you found this a good read. Please leave a comment.