Things That Bang

Nothing makes a woman feel more unappreciated than marriage. Ask any woman who has been married for over five years and she will tell you the same thing. Oh yeah, past the five years the value of a woman is no more than that of an Air Conditioner or a Refrigerator-vital for existence but easily forgotten.

There are few who are lucky enough to have husbands who show their appreciation and fewer still who don't go around saying that their marriage has done them in, that marriage chains a man and worse still they crack jokes about exchanging their wives for newer items.

Yeah, crass jokes but most men at one point or the other have cracked these jokes and others have laughed over them.

The truth is men stand to gain more from marriages than women.

Post marriage if their mommies are the non interfering types (they call themselves feminists but basically bring their sons up to be totally redundant around the house) they hand their precious sons over to the wives to take care of.

So begins the dis-empowering of a woman- the wives take on the role of a lover and a mommy- A mommy to her own husband. She cooks , she cleans, she pampers him, takes care of his house and then his babies. And did I forget to mention his family as well? Her personality changes, her freedom limited- no more girly nights, no more spending on self- its all about the hubby, the babies, the hearth and then if she gets the time then its pretty limited which btw is in the loo or at a salon.

Somewhere along the line she watches the romance die as well and to add to the injury the jokes start. And here on starts the syndrome of feeling like a martyr - I did so much ...no love, no appreciation..blah blah blah

Does that mean I am against the institution of marriage. Well, no; what I am against is expecting our husbands to make us happy. Think about it. If we expect the highs of our lives to depend upon one individual are we not setting ourselves up for disappointment?

The appreciation is important and so is the romance but a duck is a duck and a dog is a dog. We can tell our husbands to SHUD THE FUCK UP when they crack crappy jokes but to expect a man to change his basic non romantic nature would be taking it too far.

The way I see it here is what we women need to do-

Curb our maternal instincts when it comes to the 'love of our lives' coz even though we spend most of our time thinking about them they don't.

Disassociate the need to equate happiness with eternal romance. We were happy with our lives before men and we can surely find happiness without being solely dependent on them.

Always have girl friends. Oh yeah, nothing like talking to the girls coz few men talk to their wives more than ten minutes- be it at home or on the phone. They suffer from ADD when it comes to the wives but hey with their colleagues they can jabber on like the village gossiper!!

Don't look for approval or appreciation. The day a man confesses that he is half a man without his wife would be the day the rest of his manly kin would stone him to death. Am I wrong? I think not. Also if there are men reading this and saying hey I show her my looove I'd say you are one of a kind or you are deluding yourself.

Don't expect him to greet you first. Oh yeah that one hurts- its always the kids first then the pets and yeah consider yourself lucky if you are greeted before the help.

Don't look for compliments- that was a tough one for me but I realized the futility of it when I heard the 'manly jokes' about marriages, lack of satisfaction with one women made by most men. Which brings me to the other important point

Never ever let them make you feel your age- Most men continue to dream of babes in their twenties but the hitch is we women cannot look sweet twenty the rest of our lives, right? We age but hey they forget their own imperfections, point to the spouses and continue to look at young nubile yet to be destroyed females.

And never ever let a man tell you that you are fat!! - Thats the worst one of all. It isn't them who have babies, it isn't them whose bodies get torn up inside or land up with stretch marks producing the apple of their eyes but its the women and guess who lands up listening to crap about change in body structure etc? Its the women!!

As far as the men are from mars and women from Venus shit goes- don't believe that either. They know what we are talking about , they have always known it but just like you can't teach a dog new tricks one cannot expect a man to suddenly surprise his wife with a candlelit dinner and flowers after five to ten years of marriage for no reason at all.

So yeah- its a recipe for disaster to expect a man who has hunted you and chained you to his hearth to stop taking you for granted and if you are looking for appreciation after five years of being together my advice is - go in for a live in relationship, for the rest of us women who are married its a constant battle to deny all our Barbara Cartland dreams and accept our men as the unfeeling bumbling brutes that they always have been.