Tough call for geographically unsuitable couples

By SILAS NYANCHWANI

Growing up separates couples for unconscionable amounts of time if one of them happens to be sent to some odd town away from home to search for the bread and butter. So much for adulthood and the price we pay to sustain worthwhile lives!

Think about a married businessman who is consistently travelling or the young airhostess who is dating. Think about individuals who have settled in neighbouring countries working for a couple of months before getting their often well-earned Rest and Recuperation (R&R in NGO lingo). Add to these, such one-flight-away places like the Middle East or South Africa.These individuals are separated from their spouses at least for two to three months. Employees in lower rungs are scarcely given a chance to travel home frequently. Or they don’t make enough money to afford a flight back home after every few months. Often, they elect to send money home instead.

At some point in the relationship, it boils down to bills — you know that dream house, better schooling for children, a healthy bank account, not forgetting the extended family. We all want to cross the bridge, to a better neighbourhood. The need to have some millions in the account can constantly keep the working spouse away.

This leads to a scenario that has been termed as geographical incompatibility (GI). It is unlike long distance relationships where everything is predetermined and minds set. GI is a geographical inconvenience. As the love for money goes up, the regularity of meetings goes down.

I have worked in a desolate village in Sudan. I had an opportunity to interact with married persons — young and old — and I empathised with the choices and decisions they had settled for. There were phone calls from the incessantly complaining wives, who scarcely saw the need of money substituting the comforting arms of human company.

Married women, on the other hand, had to deal with doubtful and insecure husbands. I saw the things they did; how they fought sexual urges and other temptations. It was not funny.

It is a choice between saving some more, for a better but elusive future that can be stolen by disease, distance, infidelity and even death. Talking about infidelity, GI in a way can sanction marital infidelity on either party, though in a subdued way.

Adulthood sacrifices come with a price. You can be alienated from your family to a point where you are more of an ATM than a dad or a mum. For women it is doubly strenuous. From a doubting spouse to randy colleagues deep in some desert in Northern Somalia, it can be debilitating. The conditions are none too friendly mostly and in a bid to while away the loneliness, we often have to look up to those around us for moral and emotional support.

In these tough economic times, money naturally precedes any affection, especially if kids have arrived. Men can be forgetful and presumptive, especially if their conjugal end of expectations can be catered for in the rendezvous of their travels. They assume that their monetary remittances can represent them. As someone once said; distance to relationship is like wind to a fire; if it is new and small, the wind can extinguish it. If the fire is old and strong, the wind can only strengthen the flame.

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