Opinion/Feature | 5 April 2012 01:38 CET

THE UNFAITHFUL SPOUSE

Source: Dr. Inyang Oduok/Nollywoodgists.com

Good, loving and caring. Like most hard working women in this country, some of our women are hard pressed with juggling between jobs or trying to get their kids to school, help them with homework and in addition deal with financial and domestic stresses. Sometimes we wish they did not have to struggle so hard. Amid this, they try to make sense of the world we live in –the great America and indeed the Western World and some of their values which thankfully are not those of our people.

THE CHANGING TIMES:

Time was when we could talk of love, faithfulness in marital relationships. Not any more. Time was when our mothers used to pass food on the table for our Dads and wait to hold water for them to wash their hands. Not any more. Time was when morality was held a virtue in our culture. Not any more. Nowadays it is the morals of a market place.

The stated purpose of union of a man and a woman was to alleviate the hardships associated with singleness. Not any more. Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm's length are forbidden to those bound by blood ties. Not any more.

Nowadays Parents ignored by their children and society die in isolation. Honor and loyalty the most sensitive in a relationship are now lower than the morals in a market place. Marriage is now a business transaction and emotion the product to be sold to highest bidder. Something has gone wrong in our society. What is it?

We enjoyed a loving society, companionship, support, affection, right of consortium and kindly offices of husband and wife until a wanton intruder- the women's liberation movement and western culture came along and wrecked it with their immoral authoritarian personalities and practices which are totally alien to our nature and values.

The Nigerian libertarians have forced their spouses into coercive life styles or isolation in their reckless serial demands for understanding, cooperation all to no productive end, subjecting their spouses to embarrassing humiliations and servitude.

ANOTHER FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM:

Too much western freedom- freedom from obligation to one another; to walk away from marriages when they chose to; the freedom to come and go as they please; the freedom to chose to bear a child or not and how many children they want. Even the right not to stay married has been declared a “universal women's right.”

They call themselves liberated women as if they were imprisoned under our culture and tradition. Their vision of a liberated woman is “a woman who does not grocery shop, cook, clean, wash dishes” and like Mitchell Obama “expects the husband to get up in the morning and dress the bed for them and put away bottles of spices on the shelf.” “Can't check my calls; inquire about my movements because I am a grown woman.” Even when their spouses cater for their domestic needs, some still complain of the husband “loving them too much and filed for a divorce”

Nigerian families in United States have had their shares of wives who plot late night coups and make disastrous turns. They decide to create a suffocating union, decide to be selfish, frivolous, and pleasure seeking.

Broken families have become public enemy No.1 for Nigerians in United States . A combination of bad luck in the choice of a partner, bad taste, manners, have doomed so many marriages leading to so many divorces and regrets. Coping with this madness has become a nightmare for Nigerian men. Nigerian men now have little or no appetite for marriages let alone marrying our women to bring them to join them in United States . Marry and keep at home, the Unfaithful have shown, is not an attractive option either.

The Unfaithful have undermine one of our most sacred institutions such as the institution of traditional marriage between men and women and our religiosity to accommodate lesbianism knowing or having reason to know that our culture has no room for such practices nor does our constitution.

So much has gone wrong with the world we live in, the Unfaithful contend, so how should an overwhelmed or over stretched spouse respond to these stressful conditions? It sure is not infidelity. That we all know.

The Un-faithful argue that “Nigerian men are difficult, bigots, chauvinists, authoritarian, and fail to balance idealism with realism of American life. They are grown women and owe no obligation to explain their movements to their spouses. With the encumbrances of every day life, there is need for outlet. Hence the right to go and come whenever they please, including the right to late night stay away and bumping bottom to bottom disco dances in night clubs with fellow women or parting all night with fellow women, diluting the essence, the fundamental values of our people and the concept of Nigerian motherhood.

People, listen to the messenger. Reject the messenger you can, but not the message.

Spouses differ in their opinion on how to handle societal stresses. Some are flexible, some stick to their core values.

But the Unfaithful are uncompromising, have more baggage than the airline, exercise their choices and let it go. They are a menace to our culture and traditional values.

Investments in human and material resources is not an easy one, costly sacrifices are made by our families in the process of uniting both men and women. And when marriage fails, we fail everyone including our parents.

If mistakes are made in a relationship, are we to say that we cannot learn from it without resorting to selfish monstrous life style of western world?

I know the unfaithful are going to go after the writer like a lose canon. Well if the shoes fit, you can wear it.

But the challenge posed by the writer relates to a special class of Nigerian women. It's about their lost ways, chasing after pleasure, diluting the value of our republican motherhood to take on what they call freedom. Freedom to ignore their spouses, walk away from responsibilities to their families- unfaithful spouses who are fundamentally warped and lost in pleasure in America, pollute our culture and debase our values. This is the class this article is addressing.

I can see the forum dashboard is getting ready to Lit up. We argue, you decide.

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