It’s been quite a while and man did I miss blogging! I usually like it when I get the drive to write, lest I indulge and perhaps bore you to death with meaningless gibberish. I was having a few thoughts to myself a while back and realised many people, myself included ended up starting a family with just cues of what is expected of a woman and a man. No one taught us how to live with another human being and have your own little beings, offering answers to every situation and case studies of how it works.
Bridal showers and marital counseling do prepare you, but do they entirely?
Bridal showers do help a great lot except when everyone gives you’re their own experiences and expect you will take their testimonies…forgetting that we don’t all marry similar characters or end up in similar situations in marriage. We all go through challenges and none is ever quite the same as the other. While one couple will battle with childbirth or the lack of it, another will face childlessness and discrimination. While one battles with lack of employment, the next couple will have one spouse not cooperative in budgets and spending and will end up stuck in rut holes earning so much and heading nowhere. We all have unique things that make our marriages unique; we also have those things that make us similar in humanity. Those are what I intend to engage you with today.
When your man Helps Around
When a union is made, we all think we can now have all the fun we had to sneak around to do, and perhaps we do, except we now can’t run from the mess we usually left behind. Deep down a man’s mind he knows he doesn’t need to call the laundry lady anymore or keep burning his fingers putting a meal together. They will smile when you ask for help and they will secretly pray you get yourself organized in time because one day they will not. You may think you are lucky that your man does house chores, only, see how they act when male friends visit… they hop onto the band wagon of being ‘True African Men’ who wouldn’t be caught dead doing a woman’s job. Lets appreciate when they help…trust me our fathers didn’t teach them to wear petticoats or tie lessos when we need help. This is a lesson we are now teaching our sons.
When Women expect too much
Let me promise to tell what goes on in a man’s mind…I am still cracking mine’s head up because he wont make it any easy for me. What I have learnt however is they can only genuinely do what they have watched their father’s do. You will notice that most men who are barely there for their children in a home, chasing them off into their bedrooms to keep out their noise had their own fathers do the same to them. Most men who hit their wives only learnt this from..Erm…the best? A family built on mutual respect, love and care for each other will hardly build up children with a stranger character. A child who grows up watching his father protect his mother from harm will never lay a finger on his own. A man who’s sisters’ taught him to help around the house will never find it hard to get down and dirty helping his wife. Women need to understand the kind of men they get involved with before they commit to them. This will help them get a light image of what to expect from them.
I remember pushing my husband to wake up at night to help me with the baby, back in 2009 when we had our first. It was so easy for my friends’ husbands and they made me think mine fell short if he wouldn’t. This turned out to be frustrating for him, keeping awake most nights and having to work the following day! When I realised I could take more than he could, handle the baby better and multitask easier than he could, I stopped pushing him and worked around myself. He somehow managed to get into my schedule, giving me an hour or two each evening to take a nap while he played with the baby. I realised he offered more when I didn’t ask because he really wanted to be part of our child’s development, only not under duress! There’s more; so much more examples I could give but time does limit and we have so much to catch up with.
The Two-Week-Wait
Trying for a baby? Here are my experience of the two week wait of my last pregnancy on the next post sooner than this one did!. Lots of TMIs on this one but I promise to make it fun!
