Mr. and Mrs. Mensah’s Car Door

Dear Serwaa,

There is a story of a man who spoke so well of his wife that his friends had the cause believe that she was a woman of peerless qualities. One of the things he boasted about her was her cooking prowess.

One day his friends decided to pay him a visit and requested that they taste his wife’s cooking. Unfortunately for this man, his wife was not the best of cooks and on this day, she even deteriorated further, falling below average in her measure of salt.

Fortunately for her, however, it was her husband who first tasted the soup, and to his embarrassment, it tasted too salty. But he did something that would shock his wife, who had by then left for the hairdresser’s salon.

He simply served his own, reached out for the salt on the table, poured a noticeable quantity into his already salty soup and started eating as if he was eating the best meal after being starved for days. His two friends looked at him and nodded with understanding. They had no reason to fault his wife. If he still added salt after tasting what they were eating, then his wife was only moderate in order to satisfy him and his friends.

Why do I have to start today’s letter with this story, Serwaa? I want you to know that not all the stories and gossips you hear from your friends about how their guys give them queenly treatment are true. Some of those stories are as fake as those telling them. And until you stop comparing our relationship to those of others, we will never be content with ourselves and will never have the joy due us in this relationship.

There’s also a story about a woman who got very upset with his husband because he was not as romantic and caring as his neighbour. And what did she mean by that? Anytime their next-door neighbour returned with his wife in their old Nissan Sentra, the man would alight and walk over to the woman’s door and open her.

“See how Mr. Mensah will behave when he parks,” the envious woman drew her husband’s attention to the Mensahs when they arrived from town one evening. The husband lifted up his eyes from the newspaper and watched Mr. Mensah do his “gentlemanly” routine before parking the car in the garage. The woman then began to nag her husband and made him look very irresponsible for not according her the respect his neighbour accorded his wife.

When the man could take it no more, a quarrel ensued and Mrs. Mensah had to come over and calm tempers down. It was when the woman was going to see Mrs. Mensah off after her intervention that Mrs. Mensah asked what had actually gone wrong.

After narrating the story, Mrs. Mensah laughed till tears flowed from her eyes. When she was able to control herself, she told her neighbour that she had done the most childish thing ever.

“My side of the door is broken and I cannot open from inside that’s why my husband opens the door,” Mrs. Mensah explained. Her neighbour was even more embarrassed when she told her more about who her husband really was.

Serwaa, let me not bore you with any more stale tales. There is one thing I want you to get right even as we prepare for marriage. Every relationship and marriage often has two sides to it – the reality in the home and what the couple or partners present to the rest of the world. The couple that appear blameless and flawless to the rest of the world may have their peculiar problems or misunderstandings they contend with at home.

I may not be treating you the best way you expect. But I’m certainly not as bad as you think. The problem here is that you buy into those idle gossips and lies and think that is the reality in those relationships.

I have told you that we are in this relationship to make each other better. If at the end of the day I don’t become any better in my career, behaviour and personality, then you can be sure you have failed in some way. And if you don’t also become better, I have also failed.

In ensuring that we get better, we also try to make each other look better than we actually are to the rest of the world. We must make each other appear better to our friends and parents. And there are times we must be prepared to suffer in order to safeguard the integrity of each other.

I’m just imagining how disdainful the two men in the first story would treat their friend’s wife if they went away with the opinion that she could not even put the right quantity of salt in soup. But her husband saved the situation.

In our relationship and marriage, we will encounter many such scenarios. There will be times we need to stand by each other even if it will cost us to do so. I am not talking about complicity in illegality here. I’m only talking about the reality we must brace ourselves to confront. But even before we get married, I would want you to reorient yourself and realise that there is always the other side of Mr. and Mrs. Mensah the rest of the world may never know.

If I had my own way, I would say you should put an end to all such petty gossips that pollute your mind. But Efo Kodjo Mawugbe teaches us in his play, In the Chest of a Woman, that gossip is part of womanhood. You may call it girls-girls chitchats or whatever. But the value, we often says, is the same. You may not be able to seal your ears from hearing them, but in so doing, however, you must be real.

On this reality shall we build our marriage and the gates of divorce shall not prevail against it.

Your love,

Manasseh.