Why are women turning into men’s servants.

But well, since I have never pretended to be a feminist or even close, I will stick to what I believe is the reality out there. True, we have ideals, but the reality quickly brings our feet to the ground. Especially when that reality has to do with sex and keeping things sexy in a marriage even after several years.

We were discussing with married friends – male – what usually goes wrong with the sex, or at least what triggers the ‘sex famine’ in many a marriage, or what causes the man to start looking at the grass on the other side of the fence longingly. Three aspects kept coming up, and these are things I am already familiar with from observing other marriages too.

The sex ban

Honey, if you feel you have not been treated right, or have reason to start worrying about the HIV/AIDS status in your marriage because of your husband’s philandering ways, walk. Of course God hates divorce and many people ‘hang in there’ quoting just that, but while making no effort to improve the marriage or the sex therein.

In fact, some have crammed this like a nursery rhyme and gone ahead to have extra marital affairs to satisfy sexual cravings, while maintaining a comatose marriage back home. Yes, God hates divorce, but he also abhors adultery, fornication, perversions, etc!

In other marriages, because a wife has decided she is angry or suspicious of her husband’s faithfulness (or lack of), she slaps a sex ban on him and ‘faces the wall’ for months on end, yet still takes offence when he so much as eyes another woman. By the way, men too play this sex card – refusing to make love to their wives or when they do, having brutal sex with them as a means of ‘punishment’ for suspicions and insecurities.

Look, there is a sexual responsibility you have towards your spouse; when you feel you are no longer able to meet it for emotional or other reasons, state your case clearly. And if you decide to stay, you cannot stay in the marital bed and stubbornly look the other way.

Plus, should your spouse succumb to pressure and temptation and seek TLC elsewhere, it is ridiculous to pounce like a lion and sting like a bee, as you cry foul.

To be quite honest, there are marriages that do not glorify God’s name, yet people stay there in “God’s name” and it gets so confusing. You are married to each other but you are each having sex with different people outside the marriage, all in the name of honouring the fact that God hates divorce? Jeez. I am not advocating divorce of course. Just wisdom.

Shooting yourself in the foot

I don’t know how many times I have heard men complain that when they try to be innovative during lovemaking with their wives, they are accused of unfaithfulness. Many have stayed true to the same old well-trodden and boring path during sex, because any attempts to introduce a new highway to paradise raises questions that have no answers.

Actor and comedian Patricko Mujuuka once joked during this Record TV show that wives are hard to please.
“She complains that you bore her and when you come home and try to experiment with something you read somewhere, she starts quizzing you about which prostitute you bedded to learn such manoeuvres!” he once said.

As a result, spouses remain their own biggest stumbling block on the way to a better view point for seeing the trumpeting herd of pink elephants. Look, a man who has not believed in kissing for the last ten years of your marriage can wake up and unleash a good kiss. Don’t interrogate him about the possible ‘teacher’, simply encourage him if you like what you are getting!

With technology and increasing literature about the subject of sex and marriage, people passionate about their marriages are actually reading up and trying out new things; don’t shoot them out of their trees!

You and your big mouth!

I don’t know whether to blame it on oestrogen or the motherly/disciplinarian instinct in every woman, but boy, can we load a mouthful of a punch sometimes, or what!
If I had to list the number of marriages where men confess to being painfully henpecked by a ‘loving’ wife until his erection withers, I would need to buy extra space in the paper.

While men are infuriatingly quiet when we are looking for answers, women do the talking for two in most marriages. Many times, we are truly aggrieved, but choose the wrong approach, words and tone to communicate our grievances.

Many more times, our grievances are really related to PMS, but by the time it blows over and we realize the blunder, we have successfully hen-pecked a good man out of bed and out the door.

There may not be immediate lessons in communication in a marriage, but train yourself to say exactly what you mean to say. Don’t quarrel about the peeling paint and withering flowers when all you want to tell him is, “Baby, I want you.”

Don’t scream about the too many guys’ nights out or the calls he didn’t return; there is always a better choice of words. Use the oldest trick in the book – counting to ten before you speak. Or if you are a Christian conversant with spiritual tongues, pray silently in tongues and then speak. I learnt that last one from one evangelist Joyce Meyer’s teachings about marriage and I tell you, it works.

by Carolyne Nakazibwe