Charismatic preacher has wifey hooked

Last week, you noticed some flyer on the bedside table with some motivational message on it and a picture of a famed local motivational preacher beaming a smile back. Same weekend, she told you she was going to his church.

The said preacher is a controversial one and you have heard or seen somewhere on social media that he has a knack of wrecking marriages. He has so many female followers who buy his message wholeheartedly. He is so beloved with many middle-class women, in their 30s, who can use some motivation in their pallid marital lives.

Then you walked in on her watching the man's DVD and her obsession towards him happened so fast, it hit you like a thunderbolt. But when she suggested that you should pay the preacher a visit for some counseling, you are alarmed like a bee about to attack.

"We have some problem that needs us to see a counselor?" you ask her.

"No, but I want us to start going to his church, he is a very good preacher. You should listen to him and maybe you will become cooperative at home," she tells you with a straight face.

"I'm not cooperative?!"

"You are very traditional, you rarely help with house chores, or anything?"

"Don't we have a househelp?" you ask.

"When she is not around, you rarely even help cook."

For a moment, you think she is losing her head. Indeed, she is. Does cooking for three and washing the utensils warrant such a fuss? Surely, even if you have to be a new age husband? And when you think it couldn't get any worse, she forces you to watch the preacher's DVD. And man, what nonsense does he preach!

The man has a conspiracy against man.

"If your man does not help with the house chores, if he never picks after himself, if he never offers to help with anything in the house, that is a bad man," he says in one of the recordings.

"The era when men could sit and hope to be served like kings is gone. We are not hunters and gatherers anymore. Now you work (he says pointing to the women), he also works, so you must share all responsibility equally be it child care, domestic chores...," you mute him.

The man is clearly lying to his female congregants. Actually not lying, but more like misleading. And Carol should have been the least to fall for the preacher's charm. The preacher obviously knows where men are weak and that is where he strikes, to win the trust of women.

"I don't think that is the right church that you should go," you tell Carol, in a fatherly way, because now she needs fatherly counsel, not husband, "that is not how marriages are made, that is fantasy and many men will resist that," you offer your two cents.

She unmutes and the next thing you hear is the man talking about sharing finances equally. Carol fidgets at that part, and wishes that he doesn't dwell on it. He does. And in this case Carol is the guilty party.

"So, do you think we should have one bank account where we should put all our monies in?" you ask her, the sarcasm in your voice stinks.

"No way," she says without thinking twice.

"Same reason I'm telling you this man's advice can't work anywhere in the world."

Suddenly, Carol is in no mood for arguments.