A few weeks ago, I came under serious attack in response to the publication I titled “marriage is not a woman’s only option to living a fulfilled life”.
In that article, I listed options that abound in pursuit of living a fulfilled life as a woman. I said what I said for obvious reasons.
Case in point: A few months ago, a video surfaced online, it was a man dragging car steering with his estranged wife in the middle of the road. The wife allegedly left him due to domestic violence. She left with their children and the car he gifted her while they were still married.
Unfortunately, the car was registered in his name and not hers. To spite her or for reasons best known to him, he asked that she returns his car, a plea that fell on deaf ears. When he sighted her in traffic, he decided it was a better time to take his car back.
The scene those two created was unimaginable. Their two children were seated behind crying while the man struggled to forcefully take his car from an equally unwilling woman behind the wheel.
A video also surfaced some days ago of a young man who went to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and took the television and Dstv Decoder he bought for her. While his ex-girlfriend was pleading with him as he made his way out of the compound.
Another storybbroke the internet some days back, a gentle man came into a lounge filled with people, walked up to his girlfriend who was seated with another man he assumed she was cheating with and ripped the wig off her head, collected back his engagement ring and also pulled her shoes off. He did all these to her in public and walked out of the lounge majestically. The lady was too embarrassed to even react.
Dear ladies, hear me and hear me good, keep striving to make your own money. As a man strives to buy himself the good things of life, it should also motivate you to do same. Strive to give yourself, your family and children the best. You have options aside just getting married and depending fully on a man. It’s only a lazy woman who doesn’t have options.
The reason a man would spite you for daring to leave an abusive marriage or walk away when love is no longer in the mix is because he knows you cannot afford to give yourself those things he provides for your comfort.
Such men are power-daters. They deliberately date down so they have control of all the power in the relationship. And it is not because he accepts you the way you are, it is all about power and control for him. He knows you depend on him literally for everything. It’s a power play for him.
When a man knows you can afford all that his money can provide, he ups his game, he looks for ways to treat you better. The goal here is not what a man can give you in marriage or relationship, it is what you can give yourself when there is a man or he decides to leave.
Financially empowered women don’t wait up for men or husbands to gift them what they can afford themselves. Their respect for their spouses is not dependent on what a man can offer them materially. As a woman, keep making money moves everyday, be deliberate about it. Push your business, sell goods and services. Don’t wait around for husbands/boyfriends to give you handouts or even more.
Don’t wait around for a man to marry and give you what you cannot afford to give yourself. A man is a companion and not a meal ticket. Marriage is for procreation and companionship, not your poverty alleviation program, it is not your only option at living a fulfilled life.
So, go out there, make money and live your dreams. When you are in a good place financially, it helps you break the shackles of lack and wants. With money, the expectations and ignorant validation that tradition and religion imposes on women to deny them of their freedom of choice is watered down.
When a man is in a relationship with a woman that has her own money and doesn’t need his money to bring fun into her life, watch him try to leave his footprints in her life. He gets creative so he can leave memories with her and reaffirm to himself that he is still of some value.
When a woman can do things for herself, a man begins to understand that it is a privilege to be able to give, to care and do things for her. He begins to value the rare moments he’s given the opportunity to give. Showing up all of a sudden to ask for his material gifts because they are no longer together or she wants out won’t even arise in the first place because he knows she can take care of herself.
Any man who wants to take back the gifts he gave a woman because it is over is a man who has nothing else to offer a woman except his gifts. He’s a power-dater whose ego is only massaged by the material things he can offer a woman that he knows she cannot afford herself. His gifts are his instruments of control.