HUGE signs that the woman you're dating is desperate for a man.

Women yearn to settle down when they hit the 26 to 30 age plateau. Matters get desperate when there is no prospective man in sight. The pressure from nosy aunties in miserable marriages coupled with the unsustainable payment of bills on a taxed salary can drive a woman to desperate measures.

 Add to this the inescapable biological urge to have a baby and the societal obligation to have a family and you have four years filled with drama for those to whom nuptials are nowhere in sight by the 26th birthday. Here are 20 pointers that a woman is desperate for a hubby:

1. She spends more time with your mother or friend from the Coast who knows how to make malleable, edible chapatis and that killer stew. She just has to learn how to get a man through his tummy.

2. She really like babies, little babies who have not started demanding for ice cream. In fact, you occasionally put your nephew’s and niece’s pictures as profile photos on social media. She never bothers correcting guys who think the kids are yours.

3. She plays to a man’s tune, no matter how foolish. She looks at your life from a man’s point of view.

4. She suddenly get religious. Out goes the miniskirts and take-me-to-heaven heels. Only ‘wife material’ fashion will do. Drinking gets a ‘speed governor’ that confines wines to Sunday afternoons.

5. She have submitted to full disclosure, like giving details of your salary and investments. You heard that men like honest women and you don’t mind.

6. If she has found ‘the one’ she has this nagging urgency to meet his relatives, more so the mum and the sisters. You want to size them up, win their approval. She really scrubs that sufuria like a shiner in a steel factory!

7. She attends all weddings to pick mistakes that won’t be repeated in your wedding which she has been planning in your head every night before bed time.

8. She has dropped her previous ‘principles’ like never cooking for a man for instance. She knows where kienyeji veges are sold whenever you go visiting.

9. She tells whoever is calling that ‘I’m with my man’ and she makes sure he hears.

10. She urges your friends to act mature and friendly when around him even as she watches Sharon who has a reputation for hubby snatching.

11. She has suckered up to at least six potential men lately with the hope of tying one down. But she dropped the one who took your laptop to a Shylock.... the rest were hit and run charlatans!

12. She has been trying the trap that has been employed down all geological ages: pregnancy!

13. She has at least fought off or threatened to gouge out the eyes of one or two women, whom you’ve warned not to ever dare text ‘your man’ again.

14. She has been putting up with his sister who grates your nerves to the point of bleeding!

15. She found him funny (never mind the bugger cracks jokes so dry they can light a bush fire) and his friends are a good bunch (despite being God-forsaken booze buddies).

16. His feet smell, but it’s fine as she knows where to get him a proper anti-fungal.

17. She opts to remain indoors whenever he suggests you go out  not because she doesn’t want to go, but her mum has since told her to give a man his space.

18. She has learnt to position herself in places and events where she is likely to find a hubby, such as church and weddings.

19. She has this irresistible urge to change every man who seduces her and get a husband out of him.

20. When she meets a man who looks like ‘it,’ she is careful not to offend him.

21. She berated a man who took longer than two months to propose.