Author: Funke Egbemode

EBUN noticed that her husband was avoiding intimacy with her. He was travelling more, sleeping outside the home under one flimsy excuse or the other. The traffic was terrible. I did not want to drive home that late because my spare tire is bad. I had had an extra bottle of beer and my friends thought it was safer for me to sleep over instead of risking driving into a ditch. The family meeting dragged on till the wee hours of the night. All kinds of lines that he rarely used in the 12 years of their marriage kept popping…

A MAN ‘firing’ his mistress or girlfriend is not on a mission to reap bountiful harvests. All he wants to do is sow impressively and give a good account of himself. He loves the hunt. He loves the moans, groans and his woman’s vigorous vote of confidence after every play. But babies? Nothing like the announcement of a pregnant mistress to kill a man’s vibes. His third leg simply goes limp. The cowardly thing always recoils into a harmless shape at the sign of such trouble. One minute it’s a tough-looking stern and straight entity and the next it becomes…

A MAN married two wives. To maintain fairness, he set up a roster to guide who shared his bed and when. Since they were only two, he made the bed-sharing a weekly arrangement. Both wives agreed, and the man faithfully fulfilled his duties in each wife’s bed. It seemed the women were satisfied until one day, the senior wife decided to rock the boat. “You cannot sleep with me and you cannot sleep with my junior wife,” she declared. The husband blinked in disbelief, as though trying to clear cobwebs from his brain. Even the second wife was stunned. Since…

YOU know our forebears have traditional antidotes for infidelity? Yes, they did. They had things they said, did and believed would protect the marriage institution and those things worked. It does not matter what you think of their antidotes. The fact is today, whatever we are doing is neither working for marriages nor stopping infidelity in its rampaging tracks. Everything and everyone is straying. Nothing is what it used to be. So it doesn’t matter whether you sneer and say ‘jazz’ or ‘juju’ is not your thing, your ‘fuji’ is not working. Today’s marriage is dancing to a tune only…

THIS DNA problem is steadily becoming a problematic epidemic, isn’t it? It is querying the integrity of our men’s manhood and stripping our women of their belts of chastity. Even good wives are being subjected to bombastic side eye when their husbands think they are not looking. Hitherto regarded great wives are now being looked at suspiciously with daddies checking out the noses, nails and hairlines of their sons and skin tones of their daughters to see if they match those of their living and dead ancestors. Home-made DIY (do-it-yourself) DNA all over the place. Husbands who have been itching…

WHAT is going on here? Am I the only one seeing it? Why are our brilliant young women not finding husbands or is it the husbands that cannot find them? Single women who are doctors, engineers, senior bank executives, pilots, business owners (those ones are many), hardworking beautiful, ready-to-mingle, mingling and coming up with nothing. Some of these successful women are not just financially stable, they are humble well-mannered ladies. Why are the men looking away? There is trouble in the marriage sector. Okay, that is not new. There will always be trouble in the place but we are able…

LETTY was a good girl who became a good wife but the seasons changed and this once-upon-a-time choir leader, like Lot’s wife, looked back and right before the eyes of her Pastor and in the presence of her bewildered husband, is turning into a pillar of salt. The kind of salt no one wants to touch or taste. It was all the fault of this Japa syndrome. Letty and her husband, Brandon, had decided that Nigeria, the way it was going, was going to ruin their plans for the future. As it was, their future was becoming more and more…

YOU cannot take a maid. I cannot live with a maid. We will not employ a maid. If the man you are considering spending the rest of your life with is a man who is allergic to maids and househelps in any form, you need to pause and take a second look at your shopping list. Are you the kind of woman who can do without a maid, run a home without help and still grow a business or career? If yes, then you are good to go. Just think it through because this is 2025. Don’t for a minute…

IT is rare to find all four in one husband. Sometimes you find two in one man and unless God helps the couple, that marriage is doomed. These sins hurt and scar women. The men who commit them also suffer from deep-seated issues. The children bear the scars for life, oftentimes carrying them into their own marriages. Fortunately, they are sins, not incurable diseases. Let’s do a quick check. 1. The Mean Landlord This is the husband who bullies and threatens his wife with quit notice at every turn. Here are some of his favorite refrains; “I’ll soon send you…

WOMEN, we do all kinds of things, for love, for men. Some of those things are smart, many are stupid. One of the stupidest ones, or should I call it strangest, is women killing themselves because their men are mean cheating, lying sons of Adam. Why should a woman die because she is in a bad relationship? Why will a woman commit suicide because her husband’s ‘dangling modifier’ knows no boundaries? Why should a wife who has stomached her husband’s indiscretions for years suddenly sum up her life and decide the only logical way to reward her own resilience is…

KUDI, fine-girl-no-pimples, was one of those undergraduates who lived their lives on their own terms on campus. Kay-girl, as she was fondly called, was an ‘aristo’ girl. Small small boys were not her thing. She liked them known and rich, politicians and business tycoons. The age or size of their bellies did not matter. They just needed to be loaded in their pockets but if they were loaded ‘downstairs’ too, ah, that was an added advantage. Once, according to Kay-girl, she had ended up with a rich, fat ‘sugar daddy’ whose only load was in his pocket. You know those…

WOMEN, we do all kinds of things, for love, for men. Some of those things are smart, many are stupid. One of the stupidest ones, or should I call it strangest, is women killing themselves because their men are mean cheating, lying sons of Adam. Why should a woman die because she is in a bad relationship? Why will a woman commit suicide because her husband’s ‘dangling modifier’ knows no boundaries? Why should a wife who has stomached her husband’s indiscretions for years suddenly sum up her life and decide the only logical way to reward her own resilience is…

SHE married down, below her needs, wants and vision for the future. She was already a nurse in the state hospital when she met Dare. All Dare had was a fine face, great physique and creative hands. She was ambitious. He was not. She believed in setting goals and burning her candles at both ends to meet them. He believed in que sera sera, whatever will be will be. She saw a good life beyond where she was and was determined to get it. Dare believed in going with the flow. Nobody believed in them, Tutu and Dare. They were…

WHICH one of you started this new campaign of ‘women enslaving men’ again? I have been seeing the articles on different platforms about how women have a playbook on how they will make men become their slaves. And their text is taken from the a book called The Manipulated Man written by Esther Vilar in 1971. Yes 1971. Originally written in German and later translated to English. Guys, are we still on this matter? Why are you like this, seriously? How are we enslaving you and why do you need a 53 year-old book as reference for crying out loud!…

ARE there really women whose main and original ambition was to become second wives? I mean, are there women who never once had a goal of meeting a fine young man whose first wife they want to be? Do some women consciously set out to be second or third wives? Take a look at your young daughter, your sister, look back at your teenage years, your female teenage friends, your classmates in the university, did you actually hear any of them talking about playing second fiddles in marriage? Yet, I’m sure some of them are today second, third and even…

HOW many times do I have to warn wives to desist from going to the territory of their husband’s side chic or mistress to fight, physically fight? It is dangerous, demeaning, disgraceful. Babe, you can gossip about her, report her to her friends or even call her out on social media (which is also dangerous). You can even report her to God in any way you know, but you must not, should never go to her territory to roll up your sleeves or get into the gutter to do combat. Trespass is illegal everywhere including Nigeria. Becoming a public nuisance…

ONE man, three, four wives, and a strong home, a marriage that lasted till the end of their lives. How did our grandmothers, and great-grandmothers do it? How did they cope with the sleep roasters, sharing their men’s affection, attention and bodies? Didn’t they ever get jealous, feel betrayed when the men they love bring in new women? Wait, did they ever love their men? Their husbands? Maybe love never existed in their vocabulary? If love wasn’t part of the marriage deal in those days long gone, what held their homes and marriages together? What made it bearable when they…

I WAS nicely, gently coming out of church, my Pastor’s sermon still running around my brain, when my phone notified me that a certain Deputy Inspector-General of police had called me three times. That was strange. Usually I do the calling, almost always. I am the one who needs bailing out of tight corners. So I quickly called back. “Are you watching this discussion on television?” He asked. I rushed to YouTube to catch up, and lo and behold, the discussion was about ejaculation, masturbation, outsourcing, erectile dysfunction and so on. Come on, why was a DIG watching program? He…

‘WHOSE idea was this whole ‘husband snatcher’ theory? Who started it? I asked my friend. He’s a man, street-wise one too. ‘Women.’ He said simply, and continued scrolling through the Whatsapp messages on his phone. ‘Women what?’ I asked, covering the screen of his phone with my palm. ‘Women started it, like many other theories. You people are very creative especially when it comes to intimate affairs.’ He winked and chuckled. ‘Come on, be serious.’ ‘I am as serious as let-us-pray. Have you ever heard a man call a woman husband-snatcher? Oh wow, that’s true. I said under my breath.…

HE was the lord of his manor. Whatever he said was law. His children feared him. His wife trembled at his feet. He was a god in his private shrine and decreed that he be accorded the appropriate worship and sacrifice or he breathed fire from both nostrils. He ruled his home with an iron fist and he was feared more than respected, avoided not loved. For 33 straight years, his wife put up with his excesses. His children watched their mother endure her marriage. She wore a smile that eventually became a grimace but she soldiered on. Nobody was…