I Married My Wife For The Wrong Reasons. Lessons of COVID-19 [18]

I have been married for 35 years now, but during the recent lockdown, I discovered that I married my wife for the very wrong reasons. 

Like most young men, I wanted a woman who was beautiful and elegant. I also wanted a wife that would be a help meet—that is someone who will help you to execute your vision. In my mind, she needed to be a nurse since I was going to become a medical doctor. Then, obviously sex was a constant in the equation, and raising children would eventually become the crowning glory.

I did not eat her meals before we got married, but eventually she turned out to be a wonderful cook. Except for when I’m out of town, I hardly eat outside my home. I eat mostly at home. 

I watched Christiane Amanpour’s narrative on the nations that most effectively handled their COVID-19 crisis. It turned out that their leaders were women. 

I also noticed that apart from Dr. Birx, the head of the U.S. presidential task force on COVID-19, a great percentage of the public health physicians and doctors were women. Most of the nurses were women.  

For a woman to become a medical doctor or work as a nurse, she must have handled and still handles more challenges than her male counterpart. They coped with challenges of being a woman, child birth, rearing children, sexual harassment, and gender bias, and still rose to the enviable positions they found themselves in this crisis situation. They also have to cope with domestic chores. Some are single mothers who have been able to manage the pain of divorce and emotional pain of unfaithful men. Some have lost husbands, and if in the United States of America some would have husbands in jail for drugs, robberies, and violent crimes.

Despite all these challenges, they still held forth in the battlefront against this virus ravaging humanity. 

For those female presidents to have emerged in the male-dominated field of politics, they must have transcended the level of being females to becoming human beings. Some of the female presidents are young mothers with husbands. 

If you married or will marry for the C’s I mentioned a while ago, then you have married or are going to marry for wrong reasons. Remember the C’s: cooking, curves, coils, color, class, charisma, clothes, children, and copulation. 

Marriage should be, in addition to the previous attributes, for the following C’s: complementarity, capacity, competence, character, and crisis management. The last C, crisis management, should have been the main reason I married my wife. 

Dating will hardly reveal the true character of a woman or man. Both sides will usually pretend to be who they are not, and hide who they are in reality. Even if they are not pretending, both sides will try to put on their best sides. Pressure and crisis will eventually reveal the true nature of people. 

The euphoria of falling in love is worse than cocaine addiction. 

What you see in marriage, when everything is going smoothly, will hardly show the true nature of an individual, particularly a wife. Many husbands are going to find out the true nature of their wives because of job losses, reduced income, reduced patronage, and bankruptcies. The tragic part of it is that lockdown and curfews will force husbands and wives in confined spaces. There have been several reports of spikes in divorce rates in several countries during the lockdown.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, all my sources of income were shut down. The school was closed. All my conferences were cancelled, there were no book sales, and no lectures in the university where I lecture, but somehow we have always had food on the table. 

The poultry, she runs, raised broilers that I marketed online. We were able to still take care of the layers and market the eggs. 

She was coordinating the construction of our new school despite the challenges of the lockdown. 

She was able to extend the poultry to accommodate new day-old birds that I bought with money someone gave to me on my birthday. At 59 years of age, she is still able to handle the house chores. 

Children, copulation, curves, coils, clothes, and charisma were not what has kept us going this period; it is her capacity to manage crises. This evening she had less than 2 dollars in her hand, but we still had a beautiful dinner with our granddaughter and my daughter visiting.

One of my greatest fears was how to take care of our workers; we can’t let them go hungry during these hard times. She was able to pay them half of their salaries; at least our workers were happy. 

I married my wife, like most young men, for the wrong reasons, but COVID-19 opened my eyes to the real value of womanhood and crisis management. 

Remember the woman who threw the head of Sheba over the wall. Remember the woman that cracked Abimelech’s head with a grinding stone. Remember Ruth and Naomi. Remember Esther. Remember the harlot, Rahab, who became the great grandmother of David. Remember Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel during the Yom Kippur war. Remember Queen Nzinga of Angola. Remember Queen Taytu Betul of Ethiopia. I must not forget Professor Dora Akuyuli who tackled fake drugs to a full-stop in Nigeria. We still have Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala managing the financial crisis in South Africa currently. The list goes on and on. 

Big buttocks and boobs have expiry dates, but a woman with a sound brain has no expiry date; her legacies live on after her. Young man, don’t let the erection of your penis give you direction. The womb that will carry your children must have the capacity to manage crises. 

Don’t be deceived, marriage has a lot of crises, even those of Papa and Mama, that you admire. What you see in billboards and on the altar don’t always tell the truth. 

God bless you.

Read previous Lessons From COVID-19 here.

Read next lesson: Identify Yourself.