We agreed to have a small wedding. We both thought it was the best thing to do so we could spend the rest of the money on our honeymoon and our future. No, we didn’t decide on a small wedding because of financial constraints. My wife-to-be had a great job. I was doing well for myself too and we both had saved for the occasion after dating for two years.

When we met her parents, we said the same thing to them; “It’s going to be a small wedding. We don’t want anything that’s all over the place. Small and simple.” They nodded and gave us their blessings.

Sandra sent photos of wedding dresses to me and asked me to choose. I chose the white fluffy dress because I thought she would look good in it. She responded, “I chose the same too. It’s GHC3,650. Send me the money.”

I called her immediately; “All that for a simple and small wedding? It’s too expensive. Get something lower. Something nice but at a lower price.” She didn’t listen. She bought the dress and took the money from me. She told me, “Simple and small doesn’t mean I should wear rags. It has to be classy.”

Everything from that point on was beyond my expectations. In my mind, small meant small. Simple meant modest but the kind of wedding we ended up having was larger than what I would have thought was large. We fought a lot because we didn’t agree on so many things. My dad came in to offer his advice. “Wedding is for women. Allow her,” he said. “But Dad, we agreed we were going to have a small wedding so why all this?”

Slowly and gradually, we had a beautiful wedding that to me wasn’t small but she said it was small but classy. Our honeymoon was another problem. We fought on the bus to our destination, spent three days arguing about who was stingy and who was not, who didn’t understand the meaning of ‘small’ and who did. We fought on our way back too.

All of a sudden I was asking myself questions, “Is this going to work out? We are only days old at this thing called marriage but look at us. Is she the same woman I dated?” I was scared to say it or think it but I didn’t believe we’ll survive.

Sandra is a clean person. It’s one thing I love about her. She’ll step into an old room and she’ll leave it sparkling new. Clutter hears her voice and shivers, dirt sees her and runs for cover. Chattel sees her and they arrange themselves. I knew she was clean but it looked like I underestimated how clean she could be. I started seeing how far it could go when we started living together.

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She’ll clean the toilet before she uses it. She’ll mop the living room thrice before sunset. You leave a pen on the center table and you won’t see it again. Leave a key on the dining table and Sandra will pick it up and place it somewhere else. One morning I screamed, “Stop cleaning what doesn’t need to be cleaned. What dirt does a pen create when I leave it on the centre table? Just stop moving things around, it drives me crazy.”

She’ll simply say, “I want things to be clean around here. Learn to put things where they are supposed to be.”

My wallet got missing. It took us three days to find it because she placed it somewhere she had forgotten. When we finally found it, I blamed her. She told me to blame myself because I didn’t place it where it was supposed to be. After seven months together, she felt I knew enough so when I placed things where they were not supposed to, she got angry and we fought. She would scream, “Keep the place clean! What’s too hard about this?”

Where I come from, clean is clean. A pen on the sofa doesn’t make the sofa unclean. Socks in my shoes and placed on the shoe rag didn’t constitute a mess. You can eat and leave the dish in the sink for a while. Water can splash on the floor and it will later dry up on its own. It’s not anything to worry about but Sandra had everything to worry about. “Are you a baby to leave splashes of water on the floor? Grow up, I can’t continue cleaning up after you when babies start coming.”

To me, that was an insult so I fought her and she also fought back Spark turned to fire and it consumed us. We were only nine months together when I told her I couldn’t do it any longer. She laughed, thinking it was one of those fight starters. I was serious. I didn’t want the marriage again because I was too tired. I’d married a woman who didn’t know the difference between small and huge. Who also didn’t understand that a pen on the sofa doesn’t create dirt. I wanted to go back to where I used to be, where people understood these things because they were basic.

After weeks of reflection, prayers and engagement with Sandra, I identified what the problem was; my version of clean was her version of messy. What she called small was what I called big. We couldn’t understand each other because we both had different perceptions of the same word.

Questions saved our marriage.

Instead of saying “small wedding,” If we had the chance to do our wedding again, we would put a budget to it. No longer “small wedding” but “We are going to spend this amount on our wedding.” That’s specific and it stops everyone from looking at it in a different spectacle.

Instead of saying “I want a clean room” we say, “Pens don’t belong to the sofa. Take your socks out of your shoes after wearing them. Put them in the laundry basket.”

I Didn’t Tell Anybody Because I Enjoyed It

We learned to be specific and forgiving and explanatory and patient. Once we crossed the first year and the second and the third, before the babies started coming, we already had developed a common language we both understood and from there, there was no ambiguity. When I say ‘small,’ she asks, “How small is small?” When she tells me to keep it clean, I ask, “How clean is clean?”

We’ve done five years. Six is coming soon. Wish us good luck.

—Washington   

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