What men shouldn't trivialize while preparing for marriage

The intense workload of marriage shouldn’t always be mounted on women alone. Men must also have some roles to perform in aberration to help their partners.

But for the sake of tradition, which in this case, has accentuated the ego of men the more by leveraging on the idea that women must do everything in the marriage. Thus, recently, marriages suffer a lot of fallouts.

The below can however strip off the ego of men, making them see their spouses more as partners than slaves in the then Salaga market.

COOKING

Let no one befool you that you become an effeminate husband should you take up cooking responsibilities at home. I know our culture, in one way or the other, supports the idea that men mustn’t do kitchen duties.

But don’t mind this aspect of our culture, lest you indirectly bury the vivaciousness of your love life. Or you would be going mad for nothing when you actually need to go to the kitchen yourself.

A man needs to know (if not in detail), at least, the basic knowledge of food preparation. Meals like egg stew, tomato stew, and especially light soup should be at your fingertips before you are due for marriage.

In the course of the marriage, your wife could go infirm — sick or something. That you would need to prepare light soup for her, or be the one to make dishes at home. If you don’t know how to do this simple task, whenever your wife gets ill, you either exacerbate her pains by further imposing cooking duties on her, or go hungry yourself for no reason.

More so, once you understand cooking, it will do you a lot of good. You would understand your wife, even on days that she says she doesn’t feel the urge to cook and wants to eat outside. Also, you would understand her, when after preparing a dish, she loses appetite and wants to eat outside. You won’t bark like a dog and be saying that she’s wasting money or resources.

But if you still insist that it doesn’t make sense to learn how to cook, remember that a man who hasn’t shed tears, due to the burning sensation of chopping onions in the kitchen, reserves no right to complain about the bad taste of a meal.

SWEEPING

Again, in our tradition, sweeping has been made a gender-based role, which shouldn’t be the case. During our growing up era, the girl child was always tasked to sweep, while the boy child finds his way to the playing field. Don’t take this same unbending position into marriage; it will sour your happy marital life.

As a matter of fact, sweeping is never a gender-based role. Men should sweep. Women should also sweep. Do you want us to believe that all this while your mother or sisters have been sweeping your room for you? In your hostels at school, weren’t you tidying the place all by yourself? So don’t let people mock you if you’re helping your wife with cleaning the house. It’s not her role; it is supposed to be a shared responsibility.

But one thing is that if you’re living in a rented apartment — and in a house where sweeping has been shared among tenants, they (those women whose husbands have neglected them and the megalomaniac men) would call you names and offer some advice for you to stop assisting your wife with cleaning. Don’t listen to them. Continue helping her, for she’s all you’ve gotten.

WASHING

When it matters to laundry, most men do well with the washing of their clothes. After marriage, however, they feel it’s their wives’ special conjugal duty to wash their clothes. Men even allow their marriages to be put on the brink of collapse just because their wives had said no to washing their “boxers”. Pathetic!

Learn to wash your own clothes after marriage. If washing is something you hate, then get a washing machine. You might be lucky to have a woman who would always love to wash your clothes, don’t sit down like an Arabian King while she washes alone.

When she washes, spin and dry the clothes. It may even be that while you’re putting the clothes on the line, other men would be watching and thus they would also learn your godly way.

ERRAND BOY

If you hate running errand while you were a young boy, marriage would humble you. Unless you would want to be a man who sees her woman as an all-condition-gear wife, that even in her sleep, you would wake her up to heat water for you to bath or make tea.

In other places, women don’t go to market; it’s the men who do. This is just to shift some of the hectic responsibilities women shoulder in marriage. Yes, their responsibilities are heavy and pregnancy alone weighs a thousand times heavier than that which you would ever shoulder as a man.

So learn to be an errand boy. She will obviously send you to get things from the market or mall. Sometimes you would be sent from the hall just to get something from the inner room, or to bring a special cream to the bathroom. Even if she wants to do all this, take up the duty of errand running, in order to provide assistance to her.

Women love it this way — that their men become supportive, not oppressive. The truth is you would save yourself some coins in the long run by going to the market.

BEING A SERVANT

I know you’re aware that a king isn’t to be served; he has to serve his subjects. So as our tradition and religion have called you the head of the home, don’t rule like a politician.

Make sure that her needs are your goals and responsibilities. From clothing, food, shelter, to mental freedom are the premium services you would need to render to her till death. You need to serve her with all your might and strength.

And once she’s pleased with your service, then would you become that king you so yearn to be accorded! Because a king who doesn’t serve is no king at all.

These are the various ways men can also register their romance, not by only growing their beards, wearing nice clothes, and looking fresh.

Now go into marriage with the intention of perfecting each other, not ruling over women. For Dave Willis said: “A perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other.”