Some years ago, I met a couple. They had advanced in age. They had an inharmonious irreconcilable living arrangement that was bizarre to me. They had grown up children who did not live with them anymore. They lived farcically like strangers. The wife cooked her meals and the husband cooked his own meals. There was absolute zero communication. They stopped talking to each other eons ago. They each had a car; no one touched the other person’s car. Not even when one person’s car broke down and the other needed to go anywhere, they took a cab instead. They attended events separately and returned same way. I wondered what transpired between them that they grew so cold towards one another.

The common tale going round was this.

The man and wife met in the polytechnic where they both had their OND. Thereafter, the wife opted to work so her boyfriend would proceed with his Education. It was expedient because both were from underpriviledged social class. Afterwards they got married. He got his degree and masters. He began to lecture. By then she had risen to an appreciable level in the ministry.

Then she began to hear stories about the man’s infidelity. He was always with different girls in the institution where he lectured. He rebuffed her entreaties to stop his philandering. He called her old and uneducated. He forgot the sacrifices she made for him to be where he was. One more than one occasion she threw young girls out of their home while their young children watched. The turning point in her life was the day he brought home a concubine.

The man gave her an option to leave or stay because she had become an embarrassment and insignificant to him because of her status. Humiliated, she went back for her HND without the support of her husband. She enrolled for PGD, and with great determination went for her Masters Degree Program. She left her job in the ministry for a foreign sponsored program. By this time, the man was alarmed that the wife had measured up to him. She was posted abroad for a three-year period where she applied for a PHD course. The man was livid because she kept everything under wrap until last minute. He threatened her, but she was determined after all she had nothing else to lose. By the time, she returned two years later, her husband had married the concubine.

People vilified her, laughed at her, and told her it served her right but she quietly moved her things to a rented apartment. Her Job ended at the foreign sponsored platform but she went back to the same university she applied for her PHD as a guest lecturer. She took her three children one after the other to school over there.

The new wife wiped out the man. She was young and terribly burned out.  She was itchy for new adventure not hold up in a dreary and unexciting life. She left him for another appealing and life stimulating younger man. The shock gave him a mild stroke as his BP spiraled. He could not believe in his delusion that a woman could walk out on him.

The children and family pleaded with their mum to take their daddy back. After much persuasion she relented, took a vacation home to nurse him. He got well but instead of him to show her gratitude, he turned round with his family members to accuse her of being the harbinger of his misadventure. In despair, once again, she took off on sabbatical as guest lecturer.  She came home after she retired to live in the house she built with the husband. Her prerequisite for their mutual cohabitation was so long as he did not expect her to wait on him. The man had no option than to accept her terms or live on the streets.

Life is a biting wit!