Jude is fed up of his marriage. “I just bought her a car, did the registration in her name and paid a six-month salary to a driver who takes her everywhere. Before this, she gets a monthly allowance of N10, 000(that’s not the house-keep allowance which is N40, 000) I get her clothes and jewellery anytime I travelled or bought from mobile merchants in my office. But Kike is never pleased,” stated Jude, 38 and father of three. “She is one of the nastiest women on earth. She is so ungrateful and never sees any good in whatever I do. The only moment she is nice is when I give her money or a gift. She would nag about imaginary women I NEVER date, coupled with her hostility to my family members. Meanwhile, her family enjoys such largesse from me, especially her ailing mother, who lives with us. To Kike, I have strings of ladies, who I spend so much on. She even believes my mother and sisters are planning to make me marry another woman just because all her four children are girls. Let me confess that I don’t have any concubine and she has never caught me with any woman. As a matter of fact, neither my mother nor any of my sisters ever talked to me about my daughters, who they adored. She is never satisfied and I come home daily to face her caustic tongue. Lately, my friends have started introducing some nice ladies to me and I am considering one of them for an affair. I know I would get the happiness I am looking for in her.”
Greg is under fire at home. “I am always scared to go home after work,” he confessed. He said that his 11-year-old marriage is equal to living in hell. “My wife exhibits some traits that I don’t know how to describe. She could be happy this moment and be nice to everyone around her. The next moment, she would be fuming and ready to break anybody’s head, including mine. Her children are so scared of her and would prefer playing with me to her. Last week, she took me up on a telephone call I received from a friend in Lagos. We live in Imo State and I travel to Lagos to buy my goods. My wife believes my friend is a womanizer and exposes me to concubines whenever I am in Lagos. While throwing banters on the phone with my friend, she kept hissing and cursing but I ignored her. By the time I was through with the call, her voice was raised; she fumed and called him on the phone to steer clear of me! The situation is so terrible that I don’t have who to report her to—her mother is worse and has traversed five marriages. ‘My daughter is no trouble-maker, go and change your ways,’ she always told me anytime I went to her about my wife. There are no uncles to go to because they are all afraid of my mother-in-law. So I am stuck with a monster at home. The only nice moment together is when we are in bed and that is within 30 minutes!”
“My wife is so troublesome that I am ashamed to go out with her,” said Levi, 39, a businessman and a part-time pastor. Not a member of his church visits him at home. “She would always send them away with her bad behaivour and there are some women she had beaten just because she felt I was sleeping with them. She is so unfriendly and nasty for a pastor’s wife that I have stopped introducing myself as a pastor. Last year, during my ordination, I had to beg her parents to help convince her to attend. Her reason? She married a businessman and not a pastor! She knew her non attendance would be a stint on my ministry and I had to beg her (even my friends and relatives) for many weeks before she agreed. Now, I can’t divorce her because I am a pastor but I am tired of her ways, what do I do?”