I have decided that in the old days, men and women lived well together apart
(I know what I said) . And that was the secret to a happy marriage.
After spending a day at the police station because of matters marriage (not mine) or lack thereof, I am more convinced that we made very bad decisions when we gave up on the ways of old.
In days long gone, a man had his own house. He took a wife and built her her own house. He took another and she too got her own house. And he repeated this for as long as his wealth and life allowed him. Everyone had their own corner of the world. To do with as they pleased.
If you wanted to leave the toilet seat up (I know there were toilets then) you did. You arranged your sheep skin and three-legged stools the way you wanted. Like the mammals we are, you did your mating dance. You told Min Toto that that night you would be her visitor. Min Toto did not disappoint. She looked for the best meat and cooked it in her prized pot. All this was to make sure the mzee ended up in her bed and hopefully get her in the family way.
She would then not see him in her bed until she was able to send the baby to fetch the broom from behind the door. Talk about personal space and room for growth!
You rarely had a chance to hate each other unless the man was a woman beater or the wife barren. (Men were never infertile because they had brothers and cousins)
What is even better, as a woman, you could have a little thing on the side with his attractive clan's man. Your guy knew his role. Fill in where the mzee was failing. The mzee was not stupid to think he was handling all his wives alone, he knew there was someone helping so on his way home, he would cough or whistle so his helpers could disappear through the fences without causing embarrassment. And if there were children from these helpers, they belonged to the mzee.
Then a certain strange creature on a floating vessel came and told us that we should have one man to one woman. They gave us a book and said, if you want to go to heaven you can only have one wife to one man and you can never leave each other because some guy in the sky hates it when you leave each other so make it work. And as we were battling each other to live together (the irony) they created more unachievable standards. Hollywood. And we have been in hell ever since.
They say pain is passed down generations. That you inherit trauma, etc. Apparently our DNA stores information. Now imagine, we are here with information in our DNA that we could be having something on the side or that we could have space to bond and bring up children without worrying about staying sexy for your man lest he leaves you. The frustration of holding on to a man whose DNA has information that he needs his own house and a beehive of women yawa becomes tricky.
So here we are holding on to each other for dear life. The men sneak around looking for space and harems and the women try their best to distract with cooking and bedroom acrobatics. None really succeeding.
The worst part of all this, we bring children into this confusion. We start off thinking we can manage one man to one woman. At first, we think the kids we bring into this union will cement us, then we use the kids to punish the one who is not allowing us to do what we want. Whether what we want is control over the other person or freedom from the other party.
Men and women have no business living together. I know there are those who want to count for me the years some old couple have lived together, but if you ask them honestly, either they have taken turns being unhappy or one has been unhappy and the other one content. The happy one is most often the man.
How else will you explain people who thought they loved each other once, are now willing to ruin each other? This way is not working, why don't we try the old way?
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