Intimate Affairs: The lady boss wife, by Funke Egbemode

She has come a long way. She started small, very small in fact, but life has been kind to her. She has found favour with God and man. Today, the young awkward marketing executive is the Chief Operating Officer of a multi-million naira concern. She has men, her father’s age, calling her Madam, and women, more beautiful than her, scrambling for her attention and approval. She is a force you can’t ignore in her industry. Though many women wish they were in her shoes, her life is not all the colours of the rainbow that we all see.

She is married with children and the last line of her profile reads like that of most women in her shoes: she is happily married with children. Hmm, not totally true. Not totally false. Married with children yes, but the happy part? Not always. But come to think of it, which marriage is happy all the time? Some days you are happy, others you just wish you’d married someone else. And there are those days you want to shoot him, even if it’s in the leg or with rubber bullets. Not a biggie. Nobody should go into marriage hoping to be happy every single second. Happily, ever after, I think, is a concoction from Denise Robins’ romance kitchen. Oh, all those romance novels we read and believed! Yours sincerely read so many Mills and Boons I actually believed all the purple prose about tall rich, dark and handsome romantic man myth. If you are a fan of M&B, you’ll remember all the favourite authors now: Carole Mortimer, Anne Mather, Penny Jordan. Are you smiling? I am. The things those writers filled our heads with!

The other department you must man with all your strength is the bedroom. You cannot allow those little girls outdo you in the territory where you have more cognate experience.

Come back to the present, into the life of the lady boss and the man she married. Welcome to the life of the successful career married woman. And the fine-boy-no-pimples guy she married.

Hear her husband.

‘These days I’m not sure if I’m married or not because my wife is married to her job. I virtually have to book appointments to see her. Sex is no longer spontaneous. It’s like there is a roster somewhere for making love to my own wife o. For instance, Mondays are totally not sex days. Fridays are not either. Saturday mornings, she wants to sleep in so I cannot check out my property. And the week before a board of directors meeting is worse. She falls asleep surrounded by laptop, I-pad, tons of files, her glasses still perched on the bridge of her nose. I can’t even sneak a touchy-feel. We have full compliments of kitchen staff now complete with a chef who spices every dish to high heavens. But nobody makes vegetable soup like my wife. I miss the aroma of her ‘akara’ waking me up on Saturday mornings. Now, if two of the reasons you married your wife is the great sex and her cooking prowess, what do you do when she becomes a big girl, with a nine-digit salary, who neither cooks nor satisfies you in bed? Is someone going to blame me if I start getting some on the side?’

Now, why do I get this strong feeling that bros is already doing full-scale extra-curricular activities? You see, when a man threatens to take a second wife, 60 per cent of the time, he has already taken one. He’s just looking for an opportunity to bring her in. So, when the husband of the lady boss reels out a long list of his reasons why he deserves a girlfriend, hmmn, I can bet my leave allowance that he is already getting thoroughly serviced by one impressionable undergraduate or even his secretary.

All the same, let’s consider his complaint sheet without imagining him in a non-missionary position with his secretary. I truly sympathise with men married to career women, especially the one who have risen to the top of the ladder. They are rare breeds and even bigger boys than their big-girl-wives. To marry a big babe doesn’t take much, which is why a lot of men marry them in the first place. It is glamorous and men these days consciously seek out the big babes. Check out the wedding invitation cards you currently have and the weddings you had attended in the last six months. You will find the brides are bankers, doctors, even entrepreneurs. Guys suddenly prefer the already made girls, not just the ones who come from old money or who are daughters of politicians. Many times, I must admit, the unemployed girls don’t get as many proposals as the career girls.

But somehow, after marriage and as the years go by, the husband of the lady boss starts complaining and one wonders why. Could it be that he couldn’t see beyond his happy nose of long ago? I mean, a 29-year-old bride doing well in a bank will eventually grow into a General Manager and that post certainly will come with hours or responsibilities. As the perks increase, so will the meetings and official trips and dinners and meeting with clients.

Most men just generally assume that if their fine wives have dinner with a rich client, the rich client will have their wives for dinner. And we all know what those kinds of thoughts do to men’s heads. Poor folks. They just aren’t ever prepared for the brighter years and that’s when the complaints start.

Men are not like women in any way, are they? When a woman marries a poor man and he becomes rich, we just slide smoothly, effortlessly into the role of the wife of a big boy. We move from buying second hand dresses to designer ones. We move from cheap costume jewellery to dainty gold and even diamonds. We learn the movements and adapt to new neighbourhoods.

We even learn new ways to monitor our men’s movements. But a man is not really wired to tag along. Yet, since sh*t happens and this is a new world, the husband of the lady boss just must adapt. It’s just the way the cookies crumble. And the best way to adapt is to own both the assets and liabilities.

Now, the lady boss needs to do a lot of work to keep her man, her home and her marriage, Yes, she can’t do ‘efo riro’ and ‘akara’ as often as bros wants but she must make out time to cook her husband’s favourite dishes as often as she can. Dear sis, just get the kitchen staff to lay out the ingredients. Next step: get into your hottest pants or shorts and make sure bros is around to watch you sweat it out making his vegetable soup. Roll all your assets as you move up and down. Let him gasp. Let him drool but you don’t have to give it all up that night. This is just the cooking phase.

But somehow, after marriage and as the years go by, the husband of the lady boss starts complaining and one wonders why. Could it be that he couldn’t see beyond his happy nose of long ago?

The other department you must man with all your strength is the bedroom. You cannot allow those little girls outdo you in the territory where you have more cognate experience. Deploy those assets and give him the service of his life. If he’s one of those guys who likes to hang out with his friends on Fridays, Thursday night is your execution date. Show him undiluted service. Shake him up. Make him pant. Make him beg. Take him to the seventh heaven and let him ride back to earth on your back, sweating. Even if he does not cancel his date with the boys, you are almost sure he can’t deliver the goods with girls. Right? Give him something to think about all day. Let him doze at his desk. Let him look forward to a next time.

Beg him to make out time to accompany you on official trips once in a while. Take him far from the madding crowd and give him the treat of his life. Swim at night together if you do and …well, I can’t say everything here. Even when you are tired, you know great sex is great exercise and you need to work out, don’t you? See? It’s a win-win situation.

No matter how hard you work at work, you must protect the territorial integrity of your marriage.

*Egbemode (egbemode3@gmail.com)