A young couple married for barely 2 years, separated recently because the wife complained about the husband’s snoring. But it was more than that. She had been complaining about the snoring and asking her husband to do something about it.
“Didn’t you know he snores when you were dating?” I asked her.
“I was visiting and didn’t really see it as an issue. But these days I have to cope with it every night and it is affecting my sleep. I can’t sleep well at night and it affects me at work and I am losing it”. She answered.
The husband bought a device he saw online to wear in his nose to curb the snoring but found it uncomfortable to wear and sleep and resorted to some natural herbal therapies to see how he could solve the issue but that route was slow.
Wifey obviously was not in for the slow motion and kept pestering oga to do something fast or….
And one day, hubby felt he had had enough of the complaints and screamed at wifey loudly, stamped his feet on the ground, hit a table, and furiously asked her to leave if she couldn’t tolerate his snoring. She told her friends. Her friends counseled her that the reaction of her husband is a red flag indicative of a violent husband, so she should leave the house. Even her new-generation pastor confirmed that the attitude of the husband was a red flag and counseled her to take a break. After dilly-dallying, she finally took the decision to leave the house.
Their matter got to me because they are my people. I spoke to them separately and also together. I am not a professional counselor, so I can’t lay claim to giving them any professional advice. But I have been married for 17 years. I sleep on the same bed with my wife. I snore sometimes. When I am tired before sleeping or when I drink alcohol.
I asked her to GO BACK HOME. “If that man is not hitting you physically, he is not starving you of emotional needs or dodging his bills, if it is just about his snoring, please Madam, go back home to your husband. What if you married him and he had an accident a month later and lost his limbs? Will you have abandoned him? He is already making efforts to solve your complaint. Go back home and be patient with him. If he shouted at you and hit a table, that’s because you were choking him. If he wanted to hit you, he wouldn’t have hit the table or stamped his feet on the ground.”
After some months out, a certain gender advocacy organization (name withheld), which got involved, facilitated, and encouraged the wife to take a break from the red flag, began to have issues with her for refusing to follow some directives they were giving her. She accused them of manipulation. Now, husband and wife want to get back together, but you know the problem? All the people that both of them bad-mouthed themselves to. Over sabi friends and social media in-laws who told each of them that they needed to get out and move on. They are now feeling ashamed about what those people will say. They are still relatively young and susceptible to those influences.
The good news is that arrangements have been completed. A new apartment has been procured to avoid their former neighbors who saw them barking at themselves and they are moving into the new apartment by next week. They also took a decision to change their church and avoid some friends or keep them at a distance.
I am sharing this with you because very many of you know in the deepest recesses of your hearts that, it is friends, social media in-laws, over sabi friends and family members, and external pressure from organizations with sinister motives, that are still keeping you out of the marriage you left. Deep in your heart, you know you want to go back home.
Little little issues that were hitherto resolved by couples themselves, or by a small circle of family members, are now easily escalated by a bunch of total strangers in our lives, and organizations that are using you as data to access grants and tearing families apart, just because you want to show how modern and independent you have become.
This is not in any way meant to support domestic violence or battering. It is also not a denial of incompatibility in marriage. My thoughts here are also not to say there are no genuine reasons for separation or divorce from irreconcilable unions. It is to say that, we have trivialized the place of marriage and the patience and perseverance that builds the stamina in enduring unions.
We no longer view marriage as a union of till-death-do-us-part. We now have exit plans ab initio. If you have to go back home, damn all those busybody interlopers, give a thought to the intimate moments you once shared with your spouse, summon the courage to grab your phone this morning and call your estranged partner. Begin the process of returning home and I wish you all the best.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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