Why modern relationships are so complex (Photo: iStock)

Relationship dynamics are as intricately woven, possibly more complex than the scientific confusion explaining the blood clotting process. Picture this; thromboplastin is an enzyme largely resident in the platelets.

Its primary function is to convert prothrombin to thrombin in the clotting process to stop bleeding.

In some contexts, the same enzyme is called thrombokinase and is said to be present in the brain and lungs. Whatever it does there, we cannot tell because those two organs rarely heal if they bleed.

Now, back to relationships today. Understanding the clotting process described in the paragraph above is more accessible than the complexities of modern relationships.

Whether accurate or not, the thought of Steve Harvey’s wife entertaining his bodyguard and chef is already scary enough.

IS IT ATTENTION?

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Because Steve defines affluence, we are left imagining what his wife would look for in staff on his payroll.

Is it attention, is it sex, is it validation or simply the kick a woman gets from challenging the norms? The last time I checked, Harvey is a man who oozes wisdom and authority regarding relationship advice, and we take his advice very seriously in these streets.

We have also read books he has authored and are religiously implementing the values learnt in our homes to anchor our relationships. Then, boom, his own woman is out hunting!

Closer home in Nairobi, a woman whose husband works abroad and cares for her has entertained a young man for two years. Being the sugar mummy, she lavishes the man with gifts and money frequently to make him stay on the job. I guess stably married women hate the emotions of handling exits and sieving recruits. 

At some point, the man passed his appraisal so highly that Madam rewarded him with an improved benefit structure, including an apartment in a decent neighbourhood. The excellent woman funds all this using her husband’s money while assuring him each evening via virtual calls that she and their son miss him terribly. 

DRUNK AND EXCITED

This next one is even closer. Drunk and excited and a staff reunion party, an acquaintance regaled us with a complex story of how his side dish is his wife’s best friend. Their shops sit side by side at a local market. The side dish is married, too, and the two men know each other.

They operate in the same business set-up, even lending money to each other when times are lean. The storyteller has evidence that his clandestine has since frozen any acts of intimacy at home because she wants to be only loyal to the external service provider and not the husband. 

Elsewhere, a married man, with holy papers signed before a PAG church in the presence of God and thousands of men, has to run DNA tests each time his wife bears a child. In his admission, he shaves the hair and packages it well to deliver it to the diagnostic laboratory.

The only time he can smile genuinely is when the results return as positive to give him surety of paternity. With each birth in the family, the man is robbed of peace as he engages in forensics to allay his fears.

He dutifully shreds the results and discards the papers safely at a city council trash bin on a busy street to be burned up the next day without fail. The wife will never know the story behind those random spurts of excitement and generous gifting from baba watoto.