If there is something that amazes me nowadays it’s how complex relationships have become. On a weekly basis, someone comes up with the statement of how ladies or men should act in relationships. Sometime back, the raging war was whether a women that didn’t cook or didn’t like cooking was wife material, closely followed by the argument that a submissive and responsible wife must inform her husband of her whereabouts before she leaves the house and the viewpoint eliciting a lot of emotion and comments now is whether if a girlfriend spends the night at her boyfriend’s and stays in bed till 8 am it is a sign that she’s lazy or really doesn’t rate the guy much, as any responsible woman should be up before 6 am and that of the video where the proposed mother-in-law attempts to test the character of her would be daughter-in-law by sweeping close to her.
The men are not left out of the ridiculous expectations being laid on them by women, like the video I saw recently, where a lady was visibly angry at her guy accusing him of not loving her because he refused to pay for the food for the 17 friends that she invited to go out with them to celebrate her birthday or the woman that is wondering whether it is right to ask a man she is thinking of dating how much he intends to give her every month.
Whatever happened to relationships as I knew it? When all that mattered when you meet a guy or vice versa was how much you were both into each other without thinking of who had an advantage over the other. When striving to please one another, sacrificing for one another without counting scores was the goal both partners worked towards.
If I didn’t know better, I would say love was never innocent or self sacrificing that the genders have always been at each other’s throat, throwing shades at each other, engaged in the game of tit for tat, unwilling to be taken advantaged off and to give of themselves without ensuring that they get something out of it.
Todays couples seem to be engaged in a fierce war of the sexes with both sides stuck in their side of the trenches shouting the now familiar battle cries of “men are scum” women are to be feared” across their walls , holding on to their untested theories, brandishing the testimonies of those that support their jaundiced view points and refusing to consider the fact that there are variables that make every relationship differ from the other.
The common statement from both sides of the divide is that there is a dearth of good girls or guys. Needless to say, in a world where selfishness is rife, where people are more concerned about the optics than the truth or facts, where people are taught that commitment is restrictive, where the art of communicating is lost, where realityTV promoting falseness is the new entertainment, where everyone is so afraid of being disrespected, taken advantage of it is indeed an appropriate question to ask where the good girls and guys have gone to.
More and more, we see selfishness play out in relationships and those that are bold to wear their feelings on their sleeves are seen as intense, needy and clingy. More and more young people are becoming scared of marriage and have their mindset shaped by people who seem intent on making their experiences or those of others the truth or fact applicable to everyone.
I have never liked absolutes and one of the surest way to get me started off is to make absolute statements categorically without considering the fact that scenarios, people, times and seasons and personalities differ and that what works or will work for A will not work for C, F or T.
I have often accepted that were I to have just started dating Mr Aisi, I surely will not qualify as wife material as I didn’t like cooking and only cooked at first because he seemed to like whatever I made. If we had gotten married in these times, he would have come home one day to demand that I give him my daily itinerary because every good wife ought to tell her husband where she was going to before leaving the house. As it was, I never had to ask for permission to go anywhere, I had no time that I was to be at home and there was no place I couldn’t go to. I am amused that I exhibit most of the attributes of a terrible wife if we are to go by the experts on social media who don’t have the experiences to back up their confident assertions.
Please don’t get me wrong, there are relationships that the partners have an understanding as to the time within which each party must get home, places they can or not go and it’s alright if it works for them. What is not alright, is if someone says their way is the only way relationships can work and attempts to push whatever agenda they follow on everybody.
Couples must feel free to work out what is best for them and not what others think is the best for them. No one including parents have the right to tell people have to spend their monies, what happens behind closed doors, what their ideal wife or husband should be and how they should act. Relationship advice is not a one cap fits all thing. There are dynamics to every relationship that are not visible to everyone. The heart alone knows its joys and happiness and also its pains and sorrow.
So are there still good guys and girls or as Joe sang in his song “Good Girls”
Have they all been taken? The truth remains that there are still good girls and guys, people who don’t have an evil intent towards their partners, people who are willing to give as much if not more than they take, people who will cheer their partners from the sidelines whilst waiting for their own big break, who are not afraid of being vulnerable, who are thoughtful, caring and loyal.
I know these people, they are my children and the children of my friends, people with values and good character. There are good people everywhere and at times because they don’t look like what we want them to look like, behave or dress in the manner that we may like, we tend to bypass them when considering partners. But they are there, there behind the walls they have may erected to ensure that they will not be taken for granted again, there in the friends that we may have unwittingly friend zoned, there in the person who is determined that their bad experiences will not make them become who they are not. We may need to look for them a bit harder or longer but be rest assured the good guys and girls are still around and they are waiting to be found by people like themselves.