They say death and taxes are the only certain things in life. But if you are married, you will know another certainty of life: your wife will one day say something that will make you flip.
Last week, Carol, in one of her routine outbursts said something that ranks as the most obscene, unkind, terrible thing a woman can say to a fellow human being, let alone, her husband. It is not her pregnancy, or anything terrible thing that you did to provoke it. It was a careless remark, that nearly earned her a terrible beating only that beating a woman is no longer on the cards as a disciplinary measure.
The statement was so full of contempt, it cannot be published. You have not been talking for a week, as you wait for her apology. It doesn’t look like it is forthcoming. So, the silent treatment from you will last as long as she is too proud to say she’s sorry. Saying sorry will not change things, the damage has been done. It is permanent, probably the first nail in the coffin of your relationship.
When was the last time you chose ‘you’?You decide to call your boy Tom for advice, and he laughs it off like it is not consequential.
“Man, you can’t be offended by something a woman says in anger,” he tells you when you meet for a drink.
“I do everything right, especially after that counsellor debacle. Now why would she insult me like that!”
“What did she say exactly?” Tom asks.
“That I’m extravagant and I will never make any investment, that my friends will always do well, because they are focused...” How she said it too, matters, “you don’t have ambition, you think having a car and living in an expensive apartment is an achievement?”
“That sounds bad,” Tom quipped. “But why?”
“I think it is the money that I owe her. She gave me a small loan a while ago that I have not repaid. She thinks I should have paid were it not for the fact that I spend too much on BS.”
“Man, don’t ever borrow money from a woman, not even your wife,” Tom says, in a tone that Aristotle would have used.
“I have learnt that the hard way,” you confess.
Tom tells you about the time he didn’t have the job and how his wife’s attitude changed.
“It took a while. But those six or seven months, man, she was so impatient, any slight mistake earned me a tongue-lashing like I had strangled a baby...”
And on comparing notes, virtually all your friends have had the problem. All of those you called confessed that it was a miracle they’re together after the wife told them something, usually in the lines that they will never amount to much.
Isn’t it scary? That your wife can have the cheek to say something that kills your morale permanently. But you remember what your grandfather told you before he died.
“Don’t get too familiar with women, they will never respect you. Even your wife.”
Is that the reason men of a certain generation limited their contact with their wives to the absolute necessarily times - like when discussing which schools to attend - and spent the rest of the time in the bar?
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