When she gives you the silent treatment

You have not been talking for the last five days. You are sick and tired of her surliness. It has become childish.

To make matters worse, Carol has been cooking crap in the last three days. It is like the marriage has died before you can even wash the sand off your honeymoon swimming gear.

Three days ago, she prepared some cabbage and ugali. That is a suicide meal. You know she did it deliberately. You are damn sure; she is trying to rub you the wrong way. The Constitution should provide a clause on how to torture women who cook cabbage for their husbands.

The next day, she prepared sukuma wiki and some under-cooked ugali. In your culture, these are grounds enough for divorce. And you can’t take it anymore.

And the following day, you decide to cook for yourself. So you pass by your local butchery, carry some half-kilo of beef and you want to cook it like you are a bachelor again. You buy enough tomatoes, onions, and other accouterments. You buy the pearl rice for your starch needs and head home.

You labour in the kitchen and the result is a finger-licking good wet-fry, well-spiced, well-peppered and today, the western Kenya man in you will eat until he drops dead. You want to prove to Carol that you can do well on your own. Next, you grate some carrots, that you mix with the rice and boil it, and with luck, it dries well enough. You serve yourself, eat well and go to sleep.

When Carol comes from work, she serves herself, passes by the bedroom with her meal, doesn’t say hi. She goes back to the kitchen, and comes back and tucks herself in the corner. It is a cold war.

“Anything wrong, babe?” You ask her.

“Nothing, I’m OK,” she replies, curtly.

“Why are you not talking to me?”

“I don’t feel like,” she replies, adding, “I am tired, I want to sleep.”

What did you possibly do wrong? It can’t be arriving home late on a weekend night. It can’t be. You have not been flirting with women on WhatsApp, or Facebook, that you can assume, that she may be run into an unsolicited nude.

“Is this how you want this to be?” You ask genuinely.

No reply.

“I’m sorry, I will never stay out on a Friday.”

No reply.

You touch her and she rudely reminds you to leave her alone.

That hurts. What is going on here. No marriage went south so fast, in the history of marriages. You underestimated her capacity to be petulant. Or is it because you did not take her out with you.

That is the mystery. But now you need to devise a way of hurting her some, to exact revenge. You have played fair, but women never understood the language of fairness.

So, in the next few weeks, you decide to deal with her, on your terms and see who will lose.

@nyanchwani [email protected]