Why should a good/bad marriage be the doing of a woman? Sometimes, I always ask myself….what if women stopped going according to ‘how to keep a man’/’how to grab a man’/how to spice up your love life/ how to…/how to…., how will relationships/marriages work?

The only talks we see everywhere is how women should be better wives and build homes, how to please their husbands, knowing what men want, how a single woman should position herself to be found by a husband etc. No wonder we have an increasingly growing generation of men who have become absentee fathers, homes where women are the bread winners, wife batterers, chronic serial cheats/adulterers and most importantly men who have relegated their headship roles to the wives to bear the enormous responsibility all alone.

Why must relationships be all about feeding a man’s ego? When are the men going to sit up and learn how to keep their marriage?

To some men, the only time a marriage is a partnership is when money is involved. Paying of bills is the only 50:50 they know…The rest is you, yourself and you. Less is said about the roles men should play in loving their wives and their input to make marriage successful.

Everything the man does and every shortcoming or failures he has in the marriage is laid at the feet of the wife. A lot of women are burning and hurting under the pressure of having to keep their homes physically, emotionally while at the same time struggling to endure infidelity which has now seemingly become the birth right of the male gender and now more increasingly financially.

How many programmes are organized for men alone to teach them how to treat their wives? Whilst a mother is telling her son to marry a respectful girl, she should also tell him to respect his wife. Respect is earned, it is not commanded. When advising her son to go for a good homemaker, she should as well teach him that there are some days a woman needs to be relieved of her duty … that is how it works!

No wonder more marriages are now falling apart because more women are beginning to refuse to be treated like their mothers. More women are beginning to fight for their rights and think more of ‘me’ instead of remaining in the marriage for the sake of the man or children and more women are believing in the ‘marriage is not a do or die affair’.

Some men after wasting all their youthful years in chasing ‘front and back’, they wake up one morning and decide to marry meanwhile, they cannot even commit – they’re more of ‘womb diggers’, their motive of marrying is far from what a proper marriage institution should be. They just go in search of whom to stress and give stress for the rest of their lives.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong in teaching women how to be good wives; a lot more needs to be done to raise a generation of men who will begin to play their rightful roles as husbands in the marriage institution. It is about men having a passion to work on their marriages the way women do.

All lessons, advice and pressure of making marriage work should not always be directed to only the woman but to the man as well. Yes a wise woman builds her home but when the co builder is doing things to wear out the building and stress the structure then it becomes tiring and frustrating.

This is also not about saying all men are the same but a lot has shown that the burden of making marriages work, remaining faithful to one’s partner, tolerating abusive behaviour/tolerant of their excesses, raising the children etc, is directed more to the woman. Sustaining love and making marriage work is not meant to be a one sided phenomenon.