I married my wife in 2020 during COVID. Maybe I thought the world was ending and didn’t want it to end with me as a bachelor, or I was scared to die alone in a room with no lover by my side. So I asked her to marry me. We had dated for only four months.

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I was scared it wasn’t the right time to marry. I thought I didn’t know her that well to sacrifice my future on her altar of love. So when I asked her to marry me, I wished she would say no but she said yes. Two months later, we were married.

When we started living together, I thought I’d made a mistake. She was everything I’d rather live without. I asked myself, “What have I done to myself? So I’m going to live forever with this woman?”

I bottled up my feelings because I felt telling her would hurt her. I thought time would change her. I felt magically she would know what I didn’t want and stop doing them, but she never did. So we started fighting almost every day. She said, “If you don’t love me anymore, it’s not too late. You can divorce me and I’ll leave your house.”

Honestly, I thought about divorce when our marriage was less than a year old, so when she mentioned it, I screamed, “Fine. Then get ready. The next time you do it again, I will take you to your parents.”

I saw her crying and it broke me. It meant I still loved her. A lot wasn’t going the way I thought it should, but I cared to fight about them because I still loved her.

In a desperate attempt to solve the problem, I talked to a friend who was also my boss at work. He had been married for ten years and he looked content. I said, “It’s going well for you in marriage because you married the perfect woman. Come to my house and see what’s going on there.”

We ended up talking for over two hours. He told me, “For my marriage to work, I had to accept that there were things I couldn’t change. I identified those things and got used to them. I’m still not happy when they happen, but I tell myself that some things can never change.”

I went home a different person. After five years of marriage, these are the things I had to get used to because it was hard to change them…

#1. No matter what, she’ll leave the dishes overnight. I hated it. I fought with her about it. I stopped fighting and did it myself while wearing a frown, thinking that would make her do it. Instead, it became my work. When I complained, she told me, “But I thought you would wash them?” We started a new rule, “Wash as you go. Don’t pile them up when you can wash the first one.” It worked for a few days. These days, I don’t complain when they’re left. It has become something I can’t change.

#2. I had to learn how to sleep with the light on and the fan at its lowest. Air conditioning is a no-no because, according to her, it causes catarrh. She would hide the air conditioner remote and lie about not seeing it. The light has to be on because she’s scared to sleep in the dark. The fan has to be at the lowest because it’s always cold. We fought until someone had to go and sleep in the hall. Sometimes I would turn off the main switch so we would sleep in the darkness. It looked like a small issue, but we could go days without talking to each other because of this. Now I don’t talk about it. I don’t remember the last time I slept with the light off. I wake up and tell myself, “Sleeping with the light on is not that bad after all.”

#3. I don’t fart in her presence, but she does it with reckless abandon. First thing in the morning, tuuush! So her enemies will know she’s awake. She likes to go loud and proud. At night while in bed, she’ll have a go at me and tell me it’s her good night sign off. I used to think she didn’t respect me. I said, “Would you do that in front of your father?” She responded, “Go and ask him. The way that man has suffered.” These days, it’s fine. I get worried if she doesn’t do it. If I don’t hear it, then it means she’s not fine with me because of a fight we had not long ago.

#4. Money. She didn’t say it, but right from the start she selected the things her money would take care of. They were the little things. The one cedi things. The pesewa things. Her money only solved salt and pepper kind of problems. When it’s big, she’ll come to me. “That’s why you’re the oga of this house,” she would say. I used to ask what she does with her money, and she used to tell me, “It’s for the season of drought, when you have nothing.” Later, I got to know her definition of ‘nothing’ was different from mine. It’s been five years, but I still haven’t gotten to her definition of nothing.

#5. I’ve grown to accept she’s not a good cook. Not that she’s not a good cook, but she can only prepare five meals very well. The rest is hit and miss. No one cooks ‘ɛmo ne angua’ better than my wife. She said it was their go-to food when she was young. I didn’t like it at first. I tried to push my favorite food on her, but each time she tried, we ate a different version of that food. She would say, “I can’t cook Jollof to your taste doesn’t mean I’m a bad cook. Have you tried my fufu and dry fish soup?” We are stuck to those five foods she cooks very well and eat from outside when we are tired.

When we had our second child, I realized there was more to life than just being fixated on your partner’s flaws. She has also grown to accept my flaws too. What she used to complain about, she has stopped. She either solves it herself or she just lets it go.

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I haven’t been married for ages, but these lessons make me understand it when they say marriage is work, compromise, and communication. But above all, one should know that some things never change. Live with it or work around it yourself. Don’t force change in people because a stone breaks when you try to change its shape.

—Darlington 

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