Everybody in Nigeria is unhappy. Several businesses are failing and throwing workers into unemployment. For the businesses that are still alive, the operating environment is worsening. Everywhere you look, you find that the struggle for survival is causing severe tension, making people angry and straining relationships. Add to this mix is the astronomic rise in the cost of living.
Now the situation of the country is beginning to also heat up homes, and particularly the ‘Other Room,’ which should be the temple of every marriage. The good fellowship sessions that used to hold there now face a different kind of lockdown. This is coming at a time when men, after dealing with the headache of terrible traffic that traps them for hours, come home, which should be a refuge and a place to rest and ‘recharge.’ Instead they are met with a “No Fellowship Session today in the Other Room” announcement. Imagine the frustration and the volcanic eruption of anger!
Doesn’t the Bible say that God saw that Adam was lonely and made “an help meet for him (Gen. 2:18, KJV)”, to make him complete? So right from Eden, it was intended that a wife should provide succour, comfort and pampering to her man, from the dining table to the ‘Other Room’, to soften the pain and stress of living in present day Nigeria, where bandits, herdsmen and misdirected gunmen waste lives daily. These days, what most men get are superfluous excuses why fellowship will not happen in the marital temple. When wives use flimsy reasons to deny their husbands sex, they add to the men’s pain and anger. Imagine when a man frustrated at work or business and bad traffic comes home to discover he has been barred from engaging in “oil exploration” in a field for which he has validly issued a mining licence.
Hey, where are those women who give questionable reasons to be AWOL (absent without leave) in the other room? You once consider yourself a chick, but after the wedding and child bearing years, you suddenly decide to turn God’s special endowment bestowed on you, to sustain marital relationship into a weapon whenever there is a disagreement between you and your man. Some of you after child-bearing wrongly believe that you should be exempted from marathon sex with your husbands. It is such women that would say things like: “The bed is making noise; I don’t want to be pregnant; I don’t want the children to notice what we are doing. Your mother is sleeping in the room next to us.’
Hush it please! Do you want a side chick to replace you or would you rather be his side chick? All your reasons – the bed, children, Mama and getting pregnant – just don’t jell. You are the real problem. For starters, you know the way to family planning clinic so as not to get pregnant. Who told you that the children would keep vigil to monitor what goes on in your marital bedroom. Even if they are adolescents they already know that Dad and Mum touch base.
Let’s get real with case-study #1: Peter Claver Fadipe and his wife Joan have been married for 12 years. They have two children, aged eight and six. Like he learnt from the pastor-uncle he lived with, Claver is the kind of man who heads home. He does his best to be a good husband to his wife and best father to their children, paying bills and generally providing for the family. But anytime he reached out to his wife in the other room, a rain of excuses would fall from her lips. It was her endless excuses that led the man to seek for transfer to another city, and has since been getting sexual satisfaction.
Now, where are those who pretend to be sleeping when action is about to take place? Who are the ones who place their babies on their chest or use protruding pregnancy belly to avoid their men? How many of you women use the pains of a new hair-do to prevent ‘action’ (with apologies to a popular certain beverage promoted on FM radio? The funniest women I have encountered are those who use church activities to keep their men at bay. They tell their husbands, “Tomorrow is Sunday, I will be on duty in the church; Sunday should be kept holy; our pastor has declared one week fasting and praying and we are still on it.” Others say people will come to their house for fellowship and so she needs to wake up early to prepare for them.” What nonsense are these excuses? Except in the particular case of ill-health God never forbade marital sex in any way. Again, you have those whose regular flimsy excuses are: “I am tired, is sex food? After all you did one last week, I am not in the mood; you are too heavy” and all the monotonous litany of reasons not to have fellowship in the marital temple.
Case-study #2: Mr Lawrence Agbo is no longer hiding his sexual predicament as most of his business partners have become aware that his wife of over 30 years starves him of sex. She became a grandmother and her whole attention shifted to her children and grandchildren. Mrs. Agbo has completely abandoned the husband of her youth, and set her life on travelling from one state to another to babysit and take care of her daughters when they give birth. It is also an opportunity and ‘strategic’ arrangement to stay away from her husband who still disturbs her in the other room even after several years of copulation. Agbo is not alone in this saga. Even when most men are in their 60s, their wives tend to forget that they still need ‘it’ badly. Women forget they are wired differently. In this regard, women make the big mistake by abandoning them thinking they are created the same way to hold back. This polite abandonment, to look after their children and grandchildren has led a lot of men to their early grave. Men still want enjoy sex with their wives, quarrel and argue, disagree and then make up again. This was the very reason Mr Amaechi resolutely refused to allow his wife moving from the home of one child to the other. “I do not allow my wife to go to the children all the time. When they give birth, if they need their mother, they come here and we spend time with them.”
There is no question about it, women need to take out to watch the Youtube videos of Pastor Funke Adejumo and take to heart, the helpful advice she gives women about how to be good wives and ‘anointed ministers’ to their husbands in the marital temple. They should learn to create codes about the other room, which only themselves and their husbands would understand even when used by them in the presence of the children.
In all these, bear in mind the payoff line the defunct Equitorial Trust Bank which used to be: “Partnership That Works.” Beautiful marital relationship is the result of partnership that works. Yes, women may be good in multitasking, but they are not Marcopolo vehicles. Therefore, there is a role for the men to play if they want their wives to turn into their side chicks. They need their men to superbly support them in all areas. When men do their bit well, I dare bet that it is the women would never run away, instead that will regular fellowship in the marital temple. When you hear her say things like, ‘take your bath and wear perfume’, it is a gentle reminder that she is ready for action. Other acceptable romantic cues include increase the fan, let the air-conditioner rotate towards me, lay the bed very well. Wait for me in the room and we will take a flight to Jerusalem tonight. I challenge you men, when you are upright and responsible as you should be as a husband, she would be the one to say the opening prayer in the marital temple. And when the fellowship turns out to be very uplifting, her pet names for you will fill the temple.
When women are in the mood, when their mumu buttons are caressingly pressed, when their needs are met, when they are happy, they would not watch late night movies in the sitting room again. Rather, they would watch that movie with their husbands in the other room. In the days when their used to be one television placed in the sitting room alone, women used to watch late night movies as excuse to run away from their husbands. I have not forgotten my roommate Iyabo who told how her aunty would sit in the sitting room into the wee hours of the night; when she suspected that her husband had slept off, she would tiptoe into the room and quietly wrap herself up with a duvet and move close to the wall and pretend to be half dead.
Dear women, put yourselves in the shoes of these men and feel their psychological pain when they are turned down.