USE AND DUMP!...Part 2
Case 2.
Ms X was a friend... very sweet and doting... and caring on the outside...yet occasional tantrums and fits of temper tend to give away a strenuous attempt at keeping below the surface her true self.
I had this inkling that something was amiss and bid my time...till things being kept in abeyance started rearing their heads...
A phone call came in. Sad news... Papa..her father just passed away.
A loud wail. A sob. A scream. Then again, another loud wail. Papa had to be interred that same day due to his religious inclinations. So we proceeded to Ms X hometown, Abeokuta, Nigeria.
Being of the male gender and borne out of my professional calling, I was invited into the inner recesses of the house where Papa's body...or what was left of it lay on a mat! His frame so wasted even in death...
Still more sobs and wails...and after due prayers...and some other necessities, his corpse was finally committed to earth.
Apparently spurred on by the pain of losing her "dear father", Ms X lost her mask of self-restraint and opened up...
Her father was dumped with his relations by her mother after he suffered a stroke. Her mother countered that she dumped him after "trying her best".
Mother was no less hot-headed than her daughters... four in all....who still bunked with their parents late into their thirties... for no man could stand their tantrums or tolerate their ways!
Papa would ignore his meals for days out of intense sadness and insults...and neither mother nor daughters found him worthy of being humoured to take his meals!
Oh! How she now regrets... Bla. Bla. Bla.
COMMENTARY.
You see, perhaps out of some accepted "weaker vessel" biases in favour of women, we often hear of how they are victims of maltreatment by men... but hardly of the atrocities they commit against men. Physical beatings. Disparate rights. Biases in inheritance. Widowhood problems!
Of course our women may be "weaker vessels" in raw physique...but who can compare matters of the brawn with those of the mind? Why men may bully the body, women are more inclined to, and more skilled at, assaulting and bullying the mind!
Being copious users of the mouth, they are so eager to deploy these skills at the slightest of provocations! Their tendencies to fabricate and poison minds, situations and relationships is legendary... as they immerse it all in tears and acts!
The legal duty of a man to provide for family presumes that he would be more financially durable than his wife who preoccupied with domestic chores and childcare, may be financially handicapped by these impediments.
But these days, such "impeding" wifely duties are delegated to third parties! Child rearing and guardianship is left to governors, nannies and teachers.
Cooking is done by cooks and laundry by laundries and laundresses. Cleaning is now the duty of cleaners and errands run by maids!
Domestic staff in some homes now rival those of companies in numbers and expertise...maids, cooks, gardeners, security men, butlers, chauffeurs!
And husbands pick up the salary bills of such servants in financially capable families!
Even bed-related wifely duties are often ignored...as madam goes a-trotting the globe! And the days of farming are gone! So as madam has little to do in terms of physical activity, she either marries the gym or grows fat!
An assertion that "even a carpenter-husband needs to provide for a professor-wife" not only defeats the spirit of the law requiring husbands to provide for wives, it sounds downright self-serving if not daft!
Women must desist from harrying men to their early graves! For they too have sons...and what goes round comes round...as they would not wish the atrocious things they do to men for their own sons! But this is not about wishes.
Women pressure the men into a life of monumental stress, hypertension, strokes and horrifying disabilities...only to abandon them in their times of need!
Perhaps why mothers-in-law tend to be so protective of their sons...as they make to "shield" them from wives who they often accuse of being bewitched!
Perhaps they are so consumed by fear of their own kind...knowing what the female stock is capable of!
Afterall, women should know women better! So mothers-in-law are commonly bestial to their sons' wives!
How I wish the men would resist the temptations to fall into these traps! No point digging an early grave for yourself on the vain altar of being perceived as an "achiever"...or "responsible "!
Don't become a nauseating invalid just to "head" a family...of all human clusters! For life goes on after you are dead and buried!
It is not worth the trouble...and vainglory!
And definitely not your health...
....or your life!
As soon as your woman "kills" you, she simply proceeds to the next level...her main preoccupation now your material possessions...sentiments of widowhood now her new weapon!
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.