What man tells his wife he doesn’t like sex?
Let me tell you how I got here.
I got married late…
All my sisters, even my younger cousins had all gotten married long before I finally did. In fact, at one time, going to weddings was becoming a burden. My family always had words of “advice” “Get married, just have children…,”
“Do it before you can’t have children o, you know you are not a spring chicken.” This came from nasty relatives.
My cousin introduced me to Sam when I attended her Traditional wedding. She was obviously match-making. I didn’t mind because truth be told, I was desperate to get married and to become a mother.
I let myself be “arranged” into a relationship.
From the get-go, I sensed something odd about Sam. In all of the seven months that we courted, all Sam did was kiss me and give me tight hugs. And hey, it wasn’t because he was being a Christian brother. Before we got married, I asked him, “Can you get ‘it’ up?”
“Does ‘it’ work, your thing, does ‘it’ work because I don’t want surprises.”
As I said, I got married late and so, I was no shy small girl too scared to ask the right questions. It wasn’t as if I was a sex addict but I needed to know what I was getting into. I wanted to have at least one child if not two.
Sex is important in marriage
Even in church, during counseling, the pastors had told me that as a woman, I should give into my husband’s needs for sex. Many times, too, when we were taught marriage principles in church, the issue of sex was discussed and so…
Sam then told me he didn’t so much like having sex.
So I figured ok, if your average man likes it seven times a week, for instance, Sam would be like, thrice a week…right?
He told me he was a “complete” man and that there was nothing wrong with his instrument, he even teased that if he got a hold of me just once, I would be satisfied for one full month!
Ok, that cleared the air for me.
After marriage, of course, we had sex but he came to me like it was a ritual.
You know, like he had to perform a chore…
We made love…or we had sex four to five times a month and no, I never felt he was so great that I was satisfied for one month after each “meeting”. No…but this is what I signed for, right?
When you get to a certain age, you manage your expectations. I did just that. All I wanted was a child.
I took in some eight months after our marriage and lost it six weeks after!
It was awful for me. I had to be evacuated and I was in the hospital for three days. I was told that things like this happened. Doctors told me I could still get pregnant again. At that time, the way I saw things was like, “time was going fast, we have to hurry and get back to having sex,” the way Sam saw things, “let’s take things easy, no sex for some time to come.”
Have you met a man who hates sex?
He wouldn’t have sex with me because he claimed he wanted my body to heal…three months after the first miscarriage!
We fought over this because, I mean, I had to practically be chasing my own husband around the house to have sex with me!
He told me he was helping me recover before the burden of pregnancy!
I found it degrading. I was humiliated when he would just slip out of his shirt when I grabbed him. He would later pick up another shirt and leave the house to be with his friends.
And this is where I ought to have been more vigilant. Sam went out to hang out with his friends. I became someone he wanted to avoid…just because I wanted sex. Our lovemaking dropped from four-five times to twice a month!
You can guess how hyped I would be on the days he dignified me with his ‘thing’. Can you believe, finally I was married, I thought I should take my time to enjoy legal sex with my husband. Instead, he would just come, like a farmer, dig in…I can almost remember the number of times he dug in and he wouldn’t fail to say, “Sebi you want babies…oya, take.” He would just plunge in because I would be spread from bedpost to bedpost, waiting to be fulfilled like a woman!
He was a five minutes man
But five minutes later, he is done. He would be hurrying into his trousers and going out. I would lay there, waiting for his sperm to fertilise my eggs. I had been told not to hurry to get up after sex if I wanted a child. Anyway, I’ll be there wondering what drove me into a marriage that looked like a duty post.
I got pregnant again, months after, and like the previous one, even though I followed the doctor’s instructions, I lost the second pregnancy at 7 weeks.
At 39 years, you know your chances of having children gets slimmer every passing year. This second miscarriage almost killed me.
Sam was there for me, to be honest. He was with me throughout the hospital, paid the bill and all that but I knew it would be almost impossible to get him to quickly come back to us having sex for babies.
I thought about how I would have to start chasing him around the house for sex again and this just crushed me.
While I was still mourning my loss, Sam was out cruising with friends. Let me be honest with you, I didn’t suspect any foul play because my dad was also like that. I remember my mum used to say my dad had “eaten dog legs” so he couldn’t stay in one place, he had to “waka about.”
I took his going out to be a “man thing”
Sam’s constant need to go out was a man, thing. I mean he didn’t like having sex, isn’t that what most men go out for? Maybe this was my fate, never to have children.
I was home one day when one of my sisters came to visit and that visit changed my life. My sister, a nurse, had agreed to go with a colleague who ran a private midwifery clinic to circumcise a baby for one of her clients. The two nurses were meant to go somewhere afterward but the circumcision had to be done before they headed to where they were going. It was a weekend.
The place is somewhere in Makoko. The baby’s mother is one of those agoyin women who sell beans…yes. Uneducated with two other children.
My sister said she and her colleague began to advise the woman on spacing her children and ensuring breastfeeding for the next 18 months when the woman said her husband wouldn’t allow it. She has three others.
They asked to speak to her husband but she said her husband didn’t live with them.
This made them curious, “You mean your husband no dey live with you?”
She said no, he didn’t.
They asked her several questions and finally, they asked, why she was ok with a husband who never stayed with her, she said, “He get anoda wife.” This made them curious as to what the man looked like. When the woman showed them the photo of the father of her four children, it was my husband!
He had too much sex with his mistress
My sister confirmed his name…it was him. So this was no case of mistaken identity
I mean, what are the odds?
My sister told me she didn’t want to call me on the phone but needed to see me face to face!
I almost passed out when she told me everything but I didn’t cry.
At the beginning, I thought maybe he was repulsed by something in me. Is that’s why he told me he hated sex? I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my husband who hated having sex was having a ball with this woman…in Makoko.
We don’t live in VI but we are comfortable…you know what I mean?
I am by every standard a good-looking woman. Who wouldn’t want an educated who can hold her own anywhere. I am particular about my personal hygiene. In my much younger years, I was actually quite sexually active. Not once did any of the men I went out with say they hated having sex with me.
I confronted my husband. The father of four tiny children outside our marriage, all born within the period of almost seven years…
“Where did I go wrong?”
He said, “You wanted to get married, I did that for you.”
I said, “Thank you, sir.”
Then I asked, “So why didn’t you marry this woman?”
He said, “She isn’t educated.”
I walked out of that marriage three years ago. I have stopped blaming myself for what went wrong. However, I can’t trust anyone.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)