When we were taking our wedding pictures, we struggled to get a good picture because of my husband’s body type. He looked so thin that you could easily mistake him for an older person. He just didn’t have flesh in the right places. His cheeks were hollowed in. And his clavicles were protruding. He almost looked like a skeleton. This made him look quite old. When we first met I thought he was an old man until I asked of his age. I was surprised to know that we were close in age.

On our wedding day, I heard a lot of whispers, “Of all the men she could have married, why this old man?” True, I had a lot of suitors. They were rich, handsome, well-built, and charismatic. In fact, my husband was the poorest among them and the least good-looking as well. Maybe for an average-looking person that wouldn’t raise a lot of eyebrows. But you see, I am anything but average. I come from a family of giants. My mum is thick and tall and very beautiful. My dad is not as tall as her but he is a handsome man.

I took after my mum in every way except her height. However, being short has not diminished my beauty even by an inch. I have a very good skin tone with curly hair to match. I could be walking on the streets and a stranger would call me just to admire my beauty. Sometimes it made me uncomfortable. And while everyone saw me as beautiful, I always felt inadequate because of my height. I used to cry and pray to God to make me taller. I just wanted to be as tall as the members of my family. But God doesn’t give some of us everything.

I coiled in and became very anti-social throughout my basic, secondary and tertiary school days because of my insecurities about my height. However, insecurities or not, in the eyes of the world, I am incredibly beautiful. So I always had a lot of influential and rich men trying to get my attention. This often confused me. I couldn’t tell the difference between someone who genuinely loved me and someone who just saw me as something to be acquired or conquered. I had zero confidence because of all the attention that flooded me. This is why among all the men who wanted to marry me I chose my husband.

He was not rich or good looking but he is a visionary man who seemed to genuinely love me. He had been persuading me for years to marry him and the fact that he didn’t give up after I rejected him several times made me believe his love must be true. So while people wondered why I married him, I felt like a winner because I married a man who loves me.

Our marriage was beautiful and we were so happy. Shortly after our wedding, I conceived and we welcomed our first child. This changed things a little in our marriage. My husband started doing something that bothered me. Whenever our child got naughty, this man would scream; “Look at your protruding forehead like your mother’s, stop what you are doing.” Sometimes we would be walking in public and he would tease me saying, “See her short body.” I always either ignored him or told him to stop saying that but he never did.

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One day we were having a discussion with some people. He told them, “All tall women are beautiful but not all short women are beautiful.” Not long after that, he had to give a talk to a group of people at a conference on marriage. He is a public speaker so he does that a lot. One of the things he said was, “Some people don’t wait for God’s will concerning marriage partners. They rather want to gratify themselves by choosing thick and tall women.” I felt bad immediately after he said that. I thought to myself, “The way this man is talking, won’t people think he was forced to lower his standards because it was God’s will for him to marry me?” I also wondered why he kept talking about my height and calling me short when he knew that was the one thing I was insecure about.

I didn’t want to start an argument so I said nothing to him about how I felt. A few days ago I wanted him to do something for me but he was with our neighbours. Instead of him walking to me and telling me he won’t do it, he stood in front of our neighbours and shouted at me that he won’t do it. I felt quite embarrassed by his behaviour. And I tried to salvage the situation by acting as if my husband and I play with each other like that. So I shouted back at him, “Look at you standing there with your hollowed cheeks and big floppy ears. Come and do the thing for me.”

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You should see how quickly he transformed into an enraged beast. You would think I stepped on his balls. The moment I saw his anger, I knelt down and quickly retracted my words. But the harm had already been done. I could see angry fumes coming out of his floppy ears. He refused to forgive me for publicly embarrassing him. I innocently referred him to all the times he publicly body-shamed me and threw my insecurities in my face. I told him, “Because you do it to me all the time, I thought it is something you would enjoy if done to you.” He responded, “We are not equal. I am your husband and a public speaker. Your actions will make me lose respect in front of our neighbours. I can tease you like that but you can’t do the same to me.”

It appears in my husband’s world, what is good for the goose might not be necessarily good for the gander. Please am I at fault for giving him a dose of his own medicine?

–Eka

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