Different ways wives drive men to an early grave

You have now figured out why husbands die first, leaving their wives behind. Wives drive men to an early grave, literally. It just hit you that none of your married friend is happily married. They inordinately fear their wives.

For all the bravado you exude, Carol is an Osama bin Laden wannabe that terrifies. She seems to derive some masochist pleasure from it. There are different ways that Carol terrifies you.

1.      Her money

You can’t play around with her money. If say, in the rarest moment she gave you her ATM to withdraw something and you accidentally withdrew more, and she receives an SMS alert on her end, she will call you and give you a piece of her mind and you won’t like it. She will shout at you until you turn deaf, and you can feel the fire from your phone’s speaker. She will remind you every single financial misdemeanour and indiscretion and any money you owe her since you married.  

2.     Her food

Carol is actually a good cook and can leash out a good meal when she puts her heart into it. Which is about once every year. As a Western Kenya man, ugali should be a constant in every meal. But every day you are treated to well-spiced junk and rice, and rarely what constitutes your traditional meal; ugali, fish, vegetables and half a litre of sour milk. The only place you get this treat is at your aunt’s place or your mum’s place. Recently, Carol told you in front of the house help, “If you want ugali, you have two hands, there is everything you need in the kitchen. It wasn’t so annoying as humbling.

3.     Her wardrobe

Granted a woman must look her sharpest. Granted male clothes and shoes can be doubly expensive, Carol has a way over going overboard. She can buy a weave for upwards of Sh20,000 and her cosmetics budget is big enough to be a loan for some salaried people. Thing is, she doesn’t give a damn. “It is my money” is the usual refrain.

4.    Her friends

Whereas introverted, Carol has a host of friends and chama members that she occasionally meets. You have driven them, or have eavesdropped them talking in your living room and man, you now believe that old adage that, wherever women gather to gossip, the devil tags along to take notes. What they say about their husbands and boyfriends, if their men heard it, they will die. Of humiliation.

5.     Her ambition

You have never been one to curtail a woman on the move, but there ought to be a ceiling to what a woman wants. The academic and material aspirations of Carol are so stratospheric they can be dizzying. You won’t stop her, but if she goes at this rate, she will be more robotic than humane.

6.    Going home late

As said earlier, going home after a night out is a moment every man dreads. The prospect of sleeping on the couch with mosquitoes sent on a mission to milk your blood is an existential reality. You can be locked out. She may not talk to you for a long a time, or you risk being starved or eating cabbage for a whole week, which you have no choice but eat.

All these silent terrors, combine to make wives such terrorists, driving their men to grave with undue pressure.

@nyanchwani

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