Today, I got the opportunity to talk to a man. A real Kenyan man. The interaction was interesting, very insightful. He is someone that I have recently been acquainted with, though he is someone that I don’t know very well. We had an honest conversation. A real conversation where we both got to be honest and open.When he spoke about what men want in a woman, honestly I found it a little scary and depressing. Apparently (because he claimed to speak for all men) all men want a subservient woman for a wife. Someone whose only role in the marriage is to cater for all the needs and wants and expectations of her man. Her needs and wants would not feature at all in the relationship. He said that the relationship should center on the man. That he should be THE MOST important thing in that woman’s life.
When I asked about her happiness, he responded with a long, loud, extended belly laugh! He said this subservience was the only way a woman can have a long lasting and successful marriage. He said “love” was for women and children and the only thing that men wanted was “respect.” Respect he defined as total and complete obedience. No question of the man’s behavior. She should not to expect to have an opinion or say in anything happening in the marriage or their lives together. Her only reason for being in that marriage is to be in service for the man.
Even after she has all of these things, it will not even make him happy. Not really. But men, REAL men from Kenya do not want happiness, they want respect and continuity.
This conversation that made me feel very powerless, very alone and very defeated. It made me feel invisible. It made me feel like I was nothing. I almost gave up my life’s work; my “raison d’ĂȘtre”. I wanted to give up on my search. My belief that “someday my prince will come.”
After a bit, though, I remembered that, I do have a “super power”. My “super power” is mending relationships. My knowledge sits squarely on being someone who can maintain a relationship with someone who is completely different; who thinks, believes and sees life completely differently and being able to maintain a loving relationship with them, without having “DO” specific things, behave in particular specific ways to “make them happy”. I am able to live in close proximity with someone whose requirements is for me to be different, and me to be me, without changing and for both of us to be happy.
I also remembered God. I remembered that God exists and He is still here and that it is possible to hand things over to Him for resolution.
I remembered that I know how to love someone without condition. That I DO KNOW how to love someone and enable them live their lives happily without, without changing them or changing me.
I resolved that all this is really quite all right. All this really is very well.