TINU, Tola and Rita have been friends for about 20 years. They all started small but God has been kind to them. Their marriages are still intact too. So, we can safely say that they are lucky or blessed. That is not to say they have not had seasons that looked like God was not on their side. Tinu lost two precious pregnancies. Rita lost one of two sons and Tola had to wait 10 years for a second child. As for their marriages, the storms came. Rita’s husband went male-child fishing and caught nothing.
Tinu’s husband once kicked her out for three years and Tola actually has two stepchildren. See, they had all weathered stormy times but they have staying power and are staunch believers in the marriage-is-forever code. So when Tinu said that one of her church members said she wished her husband would just die, Rita gasped and Tola almost choked on her chapman.
W-h-a-a-at?
Seriously?
How can a woman wish her husband dead?
The father of her children o!
A church woman too.
A Christian.
Wetin una talk reach that level? Rita wanted to know the full gist.
So, okay, here is the story in full, at least the reported version.
Seyi is 32, confused and fed up. She was not a born-again Christian when she met and married Iyke. Iyke was not a Christian either but neither was he a pagan or cultist. He was an occasional church guy. He attended church on Easter Sunday, Christmas and New Year eve. Three years after their wedding, Seyi noticed some strange things around her husband. He had and entertained visitors at odd hours.
Seyi was told to stay in the bedroom when those visitors came. That was followed by Iyke getting up at night and locking himself up in another room. Soon after, that room became a no-go area for Seyi. Iyke became rich, richer and more influential. He changed his wife’s life in every way. That included a drastic change in their relationship and the health of their marriage. Their first daughter died.
Seyi had two miscarriages and the stillbirth after that almost claimed her life. When she left the hospital, she ran to church, became born-again and that started a spiritual journey that revealed that Iyke was a member of a cult that required regular blood ‘supply. Seyi’s gynaecologist advised that she rested her womb for a while. With what she now knew versus Iyke’s desperation to impregnate her as quickly as he could, again, Seyi went on contraceptives. Her husband raged, accused her of infidelity. Why would she not want to get pregnant again? Why was she listening to others and not him, her husband? He made her miserable in all the ways he could.
Seyi stood her ground until the doctor gave her the all-clear. When she finally got pregnant, she lived more in church than at home. The more she drank anointing oil and wet the house with holy water the more difficult her home got. Iyke raved and raged over everything. Seyi believed it was because his juju was not working. Her pregnancy progressed. Iyke starting acting frantic around the house. His wife tip-toed around with suspicion, watched her food and drink. She avoided sex with her husband so he would not ‘donate this baby too’.
You can imagine the tension in that marriage. Well, it all reached a head when she woke up one night and her husband was standing over her, a black wrapper around his waist, muttering. Of course, she bolted out the door, ran to her pastor and that was where in tears, in front of the marriage counsellors and elders she blurted it out : I wish my husband would just die.
It may sound extreme but when a woman or anybody for that matter feels caged and suffocating, she just might consider extreme solutions. For Seyi, she had reached the end of her tether. Her husband looked and felt like powerful jailer and she could not see any other way out. Of course, packing up the marriage, running for her dear life should be the first option. But have you considered the spiritual angle of the story? Maybe I have been watching too many ‘Nnayi Sacrifice’ movies but what if Iyke is like a Kanayo O. Kanayo character who can reach between walls without breaking a sweat? The poor girl has a right to desire release from her prison and the death of the man she believed wanted to kill her was all she could think of.
If your husband has been caring and responsible, you can’t relate. If all your marriage has experienced are regular marital blues, you won’t understand. If you had never felt like life had its grip on your throat and you were dying, you may never understand why some women wish their husbands would just die.
Now, wishing a man dead is different from actually killing him. There are women who cannot imagine being called a divorcee but would not mind the widow tag. They are largely conformists who believe in till-death-do-us-part.
But their marriages are hurting badly. Their husbands have given them no joy. What they bought is not what they found when they got home. Their husbands are wife beaters, child molesters and the ones who impregnate the house-helps and take them for abortion. What about the husbands who leave their wives to cater for four children while they cater to the needs of their mistresses or side chicks?
Lola (not real name) told me she wanted to have a taste of what real marriage feels like and her church would not recognize another marriage until her first husband dies. She wished her husband would just die. Sounds mean and inhuman. But Lola’s husband left her about 14 years ago, ran abroad with another woman. She has single-handedly put the children through university, paid rent and lived like a widow, anyway, all those years.
‘It’s not fair that everybody calls me Mrs. Something while my husband lives with another woman. What is worse, the whole world would drag me if I exclude this irresponsible father from his children’s weddings, right? What is there to show in my life that he is alive, tell me?’
Lola’s conclusion: Demola should just die and let her move on. And you may ask, why can’t she just move on and damn what her church and friends would say? It’s her life, after all. Wishing another woman’s son dead is not a solution. You may be right too.
Did you read the story of the bride who poisoned the wedding party? What about the one who stabbed her husband multiple times? The latter was forced into an arranged marriage with a man old enough to be her grandfather. She was a child bride, confused and desperate. She did not just wish the man dead, she took his life.
Wishing it and actually carrying out the wish are too different things. But the unspoken and dreaded truth is wives, some wives do wish their husbands would die. It is wrong, hard and extreme but you cannot command or legislate what a wife in pain thinks or wishes. We may even pretend there is no woman who thinks like that. Or that no good wife would wish her husband dead. But what about a good woman married to a cultist or wife-beater? Does she have a right to have wishes even if she can’t physically do anything about them?
- Egbemode, is former President, Nigeria Guild Of Editors, former Commissioner for Information, Osun State, her syndicated column, Intimate Affairs, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Sundays. She can be reached on egbemode3@gmail.com.