At some point, I thought our marriage was coming to an end. My wife didn’t complain but nothing was the same. When I watched her go about her usual duties, I couldn’t help but think of all the things that have changed in our relationship. I started getting scared. If four years could make every colour fade to grey, then how is our tenth anniversary going to be like? What would we have to celebrate?

I blamed her. “You don’t dress like you used to,” I said. She answered, “I’m a married woman. What do you expect me to do.”

I reminded her of our beginning. The nights we stayed awake just to watch people pass us by. The times when we could dress up and still have nowhere to go. When we attended weddings of friends and dreamt of our own. When time meant nothing but two of us in love. I said, “I want those times back. I want a revival. Something to tell us that we are still young.”

We dated for six years because we didn’t have what it took to get married. We were jobless and still eating from the kitchen of our parents but what we didn’t have in money, we had it in abundance in hope—hope that we would get good jobs. Hope that we will make a lot of money and get married. We lived on hope and that was fun.

Six years later when we got married, we did it with pride knowing where we had come from but four years after marriage, it all came to a standstill, like we were not the couple who six years before marriage thought they could rule the world.

One day my wife said, “Maybe if you helped me around here, we would have enough time on our hands to do something new.”

Yes, I was that guy who believed that a woman’s job is that and a man’s job is this. When I do my job, however little they may be, I don’t care about the rest. I will fix the light when it’s broken. I will pay the bills when they pile up. I will—I will—I mean you know the things men do. I would do them and leave the rest for my wife.

I started helping in the kitchen. When she’s driving the banku, I’m the one fanning the fire. When she does the laundry, I hang them in the dry line. I started seeing changes. Changes in the way we connect daily. We spent more time together and it gave us the opportunity to talk more and plan more.

One day I was washing her panty while she sat there laughing at me. “Are you doing this? Don’t you know you’re washing your good luck down the drain?” I asked, “What about those days when I took them off with my mouth? Did I wash away half the years of my life on earth?” She laughed and I laughed.

When your woman is happy, it changes the way she sees life and the way she carries herself around. Two months after helping around the house, a lot of changes happened. We went out often and visited the places where this love began.

I’m writing this after reading Philip’s “5 Marriage Lessons”

It looks like men are told not to do the things that make women happy. It’s the reason relationship suffers. Men are told; “Don’t wash a woman’s panty is bad luck.” “You’re a man. The kitchen does not belong to you.” “Men don’t mob the floor. It’s too low for a man to kneel on.”

“You’re a man” is the reason why we are here. When a woman loves you truly, is about the little things. If a woman requires big things from you to be happy, then she’s not the one.

I joined my wife to do the little things and it brought the biggest changes in our relationship. We are happy now—happier than even our beginning because I came out of the dark. And because I came out of the dark, I now appreciate the little things that shine in our marriage.

I’ve Thought About How To Blame God

I served my wife tea one morning and all day that day she kept asking me, “Who have you met? Did you see a counsellor? Did God speak to you this dawn? Let me know,  you’re doing all these just to make a big request from me, right?”

I was only doing my husband’s duties; to be there and to hold and to do.

SHARE | Help Others See It Too

—Tony

This story you just read was sent to us by someone just like you. We know you have a story too. Email it to us at [email protected]. You can also drop your number and we will call you so you tell us your story.