‘I’m your wife, not your mother’—I’ve heard it too many times.
I’ve been married for almost 10 years, and I miss one thing about being single. As a single person, I never appreciated the luxury of thinking of just ‘me.’ You don’t know what you have until it’s gone sigh.
Side note: This is similar to every single parent’s rant about how people without kids don’t appreciate their free time. Side side note: I am that ‘damn’ parent.
Like many husbands, I struggled with the mental shift required to be a spouse, a partner (even a father), while still ‘doing me.’ Single thinking is alluring; maybe that is why people end up living a single life even when they are married. It’s the art of playing the sport for fun but not caring about the final score. It’s easy to step into a relationship, but can you commit to it? Being single is our natural state of being, so it felt odd to consider the responsibilities and requirements of a spouse. In a relationship, you must consider a partner, but the responsibility scales become heavier when you get married. So a single mindset, becomes like a cocoon, and if we don’t shed it, our marriages struggle to blossom. Singleness conflicts with the requirements of togetherness.
Today, I have to pay a gardener (yes, give someone money to cut grass!) when in my single days, I would be tempted to trust Google and my ability to figure out what ‘pruning’ means. In all fairness, my previous attempts at gardening have left it looking like a wilderness. Basically, as a single person, you live with the consequences of a decision, but in a marriage, every decision impacts someone else. Before marriage, love doesn’t demand you live with consequences; considering how your choices impact your family is the foundation of a marriage.
Back in the day, if I wanted to fly to Ghana, my mama cared about my flight itinerary, where I was staying, or needed a call to let her know my flight landed safely. Now, my wife needs consistent updates. Once upon a time, I called this unnecessary bother, but now I understand it as necessary consideration.
It gets harder when you have children: Who is looking after them? Paying for afterschool clubs? Babysitters? Or figuring out if my wife has the capacity in her schedule to hold down the fort?
I don’t make decisions without consulting my wife, even if I know she might disagree with them. Don’t confuse dictatorship with partnership. A spouse is not a bank, a mother, a slave, a chequebook, or a bragging right; they are a partner. A marriage is a team effort, and whether you have the ball or not, you need to know where everyone else is on the court. It’s hard because it feels unnatural, especially as a man.
‘I’m your wife, not your mother’—a sentence that typically comes after me giving in to an expectation that my single self lived with. Maybe I neglected a responsibility or I put my needs before the family’s. We are all guilty of it because getting married doesn’t change your mindset. Thinking for a spouse doesn’t always come instinctively; the shift happens through awareness and effort. In life, you rarely get to choose your next phase, but in marriage, we are afforded the opportunity to face those phases alongside another person. A team takes time to come together, and the growing pains can take you close to breaking point, but life is transitionary; you have to let go of phases that no longer serve you.
Singleness has its pros; I would be foolish to forget the cons. Marriage comes with valleys along with peaks. If you manage to scale those mountains hand in hand with the people you love, the view at the top is breathtaking.
