Woza Friday!
Apologies for last week. I
actually have no explanation or excuse for not posting something on that day.
Perhaps people should start paying for articles on Airtel Money or TNM Mpamba
to keep me motivated. Either way. Pepani. It won’t happen again. I hope.
Having interacted with a lot of
people over the past two days, I was bombarded with a lot of ideas on what to
write about on this particular day. Two of them, however, struck me and when it
came to drafting this article, I quickly turned to the two conversations and
jumped on the keypad.
If you are not in a happy
relationship, you probably have noticed that there is some sort of war or blame
game on why the longevity of many relationships is not that impressive and why
many people are not happy in their relationships. Men blame it on women and women point their blaming fingers to men. Well. One good lady friend of
mine had an answer to that and it came in the form of a picture status on
WhatsApp. The picture status was an anonymous quote which stipulated that so
long as men do not open up to their women about the demons they are struggling with;
love is going to remain a temporary emotion. Those are not the exact words but
that was the message. Iyiyi tiisiye kaye pomwepa for now.
Earlier today, when I posted
flyers of tomorrow’s events (three engagements and a wedding), I got under a
heavy barrage of judgmental questions on when I was going to stop posting about
friends’ weddings and do my own. My response to one of those who were asking
the “not-so-clever” question (at Richie Online we try to avoid the word stupid
when we are not talking politics) was a simple reflection of the question to
the one who posed it. To back myself up, I used the fact that he is in a
relationship and I am not, which makes that particular human a better candidate
to answer the question than I am. The response? “That one is not marriage
material and I will soon be single.”
You now know where this is going,
don’t you?
The “not marriage material”
response to my question triggered memories of the initial conversation. When I
had seen the post about love being a temporary emotion, I engaged the young
lady and asked her whether she thought that was what was wrong with modern day
relationships. We spiraled into a long post-mortem on zibwenzi zanu zinatha zija. That is what I want to share now. Relax and take notes, because this article is the Richie Online version of that post-mortem.
Rather related to the “not
marriage material” response was the fact that people do not take much time to
get to know each other before falling head first in love (or whatever that is,
probably not love). We have a generation that has gotten into the habit of
getting into what I call accelerated relationships. You meet a person today,
get their number, text them all night for three days in a row and then arrange
for a meeting. In this modern setting, someone can transform from a total
stranger to bae in 9.2 days (on average). The 10th day? Sex. People
are getting to become other people’s baes without going through the process of becoming.
In the end what happens is that people end up parting (not sure whether this
qualifies as a breakup) on the promise that they discovered that their partner
had some attributes that were not good. Avoidable, right? Yes and no.
One could argue that giving
things a bit of time could solve this issue while some would say that people
are good at hiding their character. Muona kuti mupanga bwanji. Izizi mupanga
conclude nokha.
Did I mention sex in the other
paragraph? Yeah. That is the other thing that is leading to some of these untimely
deaths of relationships. Here is the thing. Sex is a very complex thing; so
complex so that in one of his lectures, one Dr Chiwoza Bandawe once told our
class that sex is very emotional, spiritual, psychological and political.
Having reflected upon that line over the years, I have gotten to appreciate the
fact that the main point behind it is that whatever sexual activity one does
affects pretty much every aspect of their life… for a long time. This is
probably why most cultures and spiritual grouping advocate for the confinement
of sex in marital union. It’s probably less damaging that way.
The simple psychology of sex
(according to one Chris Rock) is that whenever a man and a woman meet and
click, they almost always have the ultimate go of getting at it. That is Chris
Rock. If we are to assume that he is
right, process that is considered normal is that of getting to know each other,
dating and getting into a matrimonial union before doing it; then… Ultimate
goal achieved. In the later day, however, people get to the ultimate goal on
day 10 after knowing each other on day zero. In line with the psychology, people
get satisfied and have no reason for fighting on through their disagreements
and differences. Boom! Breakup. The other funny thing about sex is that it is
easy to refrain from it when you haven’t tasted the fruit. What happens in the
end is that we create a downward spiral in which when one relationship ends
because of sex, we go into another without that fear of replicating the
situation. Here is where the concept of matrimonial union becomes interesting. If you get there without tasting the fruit, whatever happens after you do it doesn't matter much because you are confined to that unbreakable union. At least on paper.
There you go. I just broke it down for you.
It really got to me when I got to
realize that some people think that the modern day relationship problem lies in
the fact that men do not open up about the demons they struggle with. I would
like to believe that it is not only men who have skeletons in their closets,
although I would say that in my own experiences and observations it is men,
more than women, who have this problem. The issue is just that it gets hard to
open up when you anticipate a reaction that is not favorable. I, for example
have my own issues, and if I am to open up, I would want to open up to a mature
person who would help me up, other than one who would judge me thus throwing me
deep in my issues and making me lose hope for a positive change. Perhaps we all
have to learn to listen if others are to open up to us. Mwina dzikoli can
change for the better, abale ndi alongo.
At the end of it all, the point
of this is that we need to get to know our spouses better at every stage of the
journey before proceeding to the next one. The other point? Intimacy should
come after commitment. Izi za wadya balalikani izi is damaging our society.
Ndanena ndanena!
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