Guest Columnist

Marriage: Between Old School and Yuppies By Michael West

Michael West

Gone are the days when women would trap men with pregnancies to be married by all means. Gone are those days when having a girlfriend was like winning a laurel. We wish we could experience the era when sex was so valued and appreciated. At that time, only older men were having concubines discreetly as a mark of respect for their wives. Even when a husband had a serious fight with his wife, quitting the marriage was never an option. This is because men of that dispensation hate to be stigmatized as “irresponsible.” Hence they were quick to make peace and rather learn to tolerate their wives and their excesses.

Men will always be who God had made them to be; they are sowers! They like to sow ‘seeds’ wherever they can find fallow grounds. Even if the land is unavailable and it’s being occupied by another sower, some covetous sower(s) may still encroach on the space through surreptitious means to defraud the legitimate landowner just to satisfy their insatiable appetite for a variety of grounds for cultivation. Such thieving sowers could be dangerous because they could kill to take over the land or wear a boldface via law suits or they instigate acrimony within the domain to dispossess the legitimate owners. That was a part of how the old school hunted for sexual satisfaction.
One thing we can’t deny about the old school generation is their openness or transparency. No matter how bad a situation is, they will own up! It is an open secret that many of our grandmothers know their husbands’ concubines. Some of them were friends or were into the same trade or belong to the same society. The mothers were largely tolerant of their husbands’ excesses. They valued their homes, cared so much about their children and support their husbands unconditionally, most of the time. This level of tolerance was the hallmark and the secret of settled homes in the ages past.
Today’s generation of Yuppies are full of treachery. Lack of trust, mutual suspicion, pretence and intolerance are the major issues bedeviling their marital relationships. Unlike the old school generation, some of today’s spouses lure their partners into marriage by deceit. Upon discovering the antics, the marriage then faces threats of imminent collapse; and if interventions could salvage it, things would never be the same again in the home. That’s why I appreciate some people who are having health challenges but are sincere enough to tell their partners immediately or even before they start dating.
I know of cases where some partners had deceived their mates into marriage before unveiling their true health conditions. For example, a woman exhibited uncommon degree of love, care, support and tolerance to hoodwink her partner into marriage. Her husband later discovered that she has a damaged womb. In her confession while pleading for mercy and forgiveness from her husband, she disclosed that she narrowly escaped death in a complicated abortion. She was gang-raped by four boys back in her secondary school days but she maintained sealed lips to avoid stigmatization as warned by her elder sister she was living with at the time.
The fear of rejection made her to keep the information from her husband until it was revealed. She knew, according to her statement, that someday it would be known but she was hoping that it would happen at a time it would be too late to lose her marriage. In response, her visibly angry and disappointed husband said he would have still married her if she had opened up to him right from the onset. “All we would have done is to reach an accord that I should have a child from another woman who she would accept to nurture as her own. We can then adopt one more child and that will be it,” he lamented. For the sake of love, the home survives and is still intact as at today.
A marriage contracted mid-December 2017 is now on a shaky ground of possible collapse. No thanks to an act of insincerity. The couple met in the university and groomed their relationship into a conjugal consummation. Everything seemed to be working well until early this year when the bride was hospitalised. The nature of her illness was initially misconstrued for mere symptoms of advanced pregnancy but when she was fast looking pale, weak and becoming unconscious, she was rushed into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where she was on oxygen for more than three weeks.
Series of tests were conducted and her mother confessed that her daughter is suffering from Sickle Cell anemia. Petrified by the outcome of the results and her mom’s disclosure, the husband’s family fumed, alleging deception of the highest order. Upon enquiry from their son, the husband, he said his wife told him about her SS status after the wedding. Unfortunately, he kept it to himself, thinking everything is under control. The seven months pregnancy was successfully evacuated in a desperate bid to save her life.
After weeks of convalescence at the specialist hospital with bills running into almost N2 million, the in-laws decided to back out of the union on the strength of deception. According to the elder brother of the groom, “The foundation of the marriage is faulty. We can’t continue with it. We have made our decision known to our brother, the husband, that the decision to continue is entirely his. We as a family feel cheated into the union. It is a different matter all-together if we’re told from the onset. We will then weigh the chances, the cost and the implication before we go ahead. We would have braced up for the challenges ahead or we will quietly bow out of the deal to avoid this life-threatening situation.
“As it is now, the family is expecting our brother to come and pick his wife so they could continue living their life as a couple. We can’t force him to abandon his wife or continue with the marriage but we have made our position known to him if he chooses to continue. Our major ground is the tactful deception upon which the marriage is based,” he stressed.
Due to the fragile nature of the petite wife and her type of SS (Sickle cell disease), it is risky for her to carry pregnancy with complications. Also, the financial wherewithal to respond to her crisis situation whenever it occurs appears not available to the young graduate husband who is just starting a life.
Sickle cell disease is a health condition that has the potential to lead to a number of complications, due to the altered shape of haemoglobin in the blood. There are various different types of sickle cell disease, which are classified according to the haemoglobin abnormality. These types include: Hemoglobin SS.
People with sickle cell *trait* carry only one copy of the altered hemoglobin gene and rarely have any clinical symptoms related to the disease. In contrast, people with sickle cell *disease* carry two copies of the altered hemoglobin gene. Hemoglobin SS disease is the most common type of sickle cell disease. It occurs when you inherit copies of the hemoglobin S gene from both parents. This forms hemoglobin known as Hb SS. As the most severe form of SCD, individuals with this form also experience the worst symptoms at a higher rate. Unfortunately, her own falls into this category.
Send your responses/private issues to: *Email: mikeawe@yahoo.co.uk*
*+234-(0)8035304268 – SMS*
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  • New Telegraph
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