Marriage – Page 4 – PurplePretoria

An old friend from High School I met for tea once asked me, if I was happy. He meant happy with my marriage. It was such an uncomfortable question that he winced and looked away after he asked. I wanted to tell him that if it was on a day to day, the answer would vary but if it was on the grand nature of things I would say yes. Definitely Yes. So I just basically said, yes. Although I did wonder about it soon after, what his backup plan would have been if I had said no and whether I had not looked dazed or happy enough.

Did you get your fairytale ending? O asked. For the Queen of Day time TV, she really did not give her guests much opportunity to talk. She cut them off at the most important angles and directed them to her own answers.

Yes, M replied, staring reassuringly at the Prince as she squeezed his fingers in a tight grip. “I did. And its greater than any fairytale you ever read.”

The culture of being in love in America is very overt. You must always be staring longingly into your lover’s eyes, squeezing their hands, touching their knee, nodding in agreement, saying the same thing at the same time, in continuous agreement, bathed in a halo of light and apparent joy. You must affirm to your spouse that you love them, once a day, twice, three times maybe. Anyone who does less than this is suspected of not being in love.

This is so different from the African context- where there were no I love you‘ s in the household before the millennials were born, certainly not between man and wife. Desire was expressed through the shyness of the wife- her inability to look into her husband’s eyes, through symbolic gestures and poetic words of victory. Love was submission, love was provision and protection- and in a sense it would not be described as ‘love’, those giddy telepathic synchronized sensations. It was more a sense of duty, responsibility for the continuation of life and community.

I listen to this podcast called Goop by Gwyneth Paltrow, which, although controversial in American society for its lofty high end ideas, and controversial to me for some of its strong leftist ideas, is mostly very educational and entertaining. On this date, the guest was talking about the mundane-ness of married life and how Elizabeth Gilbert never quite finds the one because of the very idea of The One. She leaves husband no.1 because the fireworks have died out. She goes on a quest to find herself. She finds a handsome aging hulk who guides her into his hammock with his smooth rainy day music and his exotic ways. This is supposed to be ‘the long marriage’ and yet, somewhere along the way, it does not work out and Elizabeth is off to find another adventure on a completely different channel. The guest on the podcast suggested that this view of love and marriage is not sustainable because marriage in its day to day is ordinary. He suggested that the things that end up holding up are unromantic – how you handle disagreements, how you step up and support each other during difficult times.

This is why cringed when M said she had found her fairytale. It is because I knew that something someone somehow would fall short for her and I hoped that the disappointment would not remove her from her real life Prince.

Of course, it is psychologically debatable as to why we invest in these people whose lives are so different from ours, whom we will never meet and whom society (media) has placed on a pedestal as super human. I think for me, it is because in the grandeur of their existence, I see a deeply vulnerable humanity and also, there is something Prince H said, about an invisible social contract between the media and the Royal- to create a sort of perception that attracts the ba kopi to follow the lives of the rich and famous. Although, this very perception, he implied, is like a quid pro quo, a symbiotic relationship, where both media and the monarchy (famous) maintain each other’s relevance. It once again proved how flawed and calculated the artificial creation of the untouchable, unreachable mogul, celebrity- the cult of the demigods. Financial empires have been built on thia and now actual empires are hanging onto it for their very existence.

But, what happens after the Prince saves the Princess and they live happily ever after? They never told us. The story always ends at the wedding party, or with the two riding into the sunset on a white horse-driven carriage. They do not tell us whether the Princess forgets her shoes at the wedding venue. Or whether the Prince continues to go out with his friends the way he did as a bachelor. Or what happens when the Princess forgets to flush the toilet. Does the Princess ever need a C-section? Do they ever get robbed in the middle of the night and have nightmares about it for several months afterwards? Do they ever misunderstand each other, forget who they were when they first met and attempt to start from scratch?

There is a following that believes that by the very nature of men and the nature of women- woman and men should be kept apart because woman is to man what a deer is to a leopard. That, it is therefore impossible for them to be platonic with each other. To protect the pride and honour of the men who follow this teaching, women and men meet only within the nuclear unit or within the approved blood lines.

Women are protected from their inevitable ability to tempt and men are protected from their inevitable ability to succumb to temptation. That is, according to my own deduction.

President Buhari on a visit to Germany, standing next to Chancellor Angela Merkel is [in]famous for saying, “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.”

It is the proud declaration of many such as him that, ‘their women’ do not work for a living. Although it turns out that this is an option that some would rather have, just like the option of driving cars.

A comment on an article about women who had changed the face of Sudan, a man had written requesting the writer to add one more female figure who had fought against the practice of female genital mutilation. He stated that although the practice had been aimed at preventing women from sinning, it was no longer feasible because it all began in the mind and not in the physical body as previously thought. This seemed to put the commenter at ease. It seemed to please him that it was now just the mind that had to be controlled, with little physical damage, a different, but less invasive form of control.

This view of control is very unpopular today in an age where there are very few if any, taboos left.

In spite of all the calls to freedom, to do whatever our minds can think of without any harvest, the question still recurs. Can women and men work in close proximity without winding themselves up?

In European culture, unlike the Arab, Ancient Chinese and Traditional African culture, the individual comes first, he creates his own destiny, pursues whatever he desires to pursue, to whom it may concern. But in the other cultures mentioned, everything was done for the benefit of the community, including what Buhari was referring to when he spoke about his bedroom. The control and in some cases the commodification of women served to protect both political and economic power- in what womb which men were incubated, whose clan you expanded, whose name would live on. There were rules to follow and banishment if you did not.

It is now the new millennium and many women are crying ‘foul’ and yet Carrie Bradshaw still chooses Mr. Big, forsaking all others- regardless of where you meet all others, even if it is in the middle of an Arabian desert and the hot desert wind is blowing. And Carrie, admitting that she would never be the wife who stayed in and cooked (well, she still had to choose a ‘take-out’ menu) and that she would never be ‘a woman who wanted children’, allows Mr. Big to buy her a ring. And the possessiveness that is exclusivity, the ‘ring fencing’ that is commitment, the borderlines, the high walls around the little world two people create between themselves, once again, went up.

Tag: Marriage

Happily Ever After

Sex and The City