There are many ways Ejike and I differ. For instance, i don’t eat red meat, plus i am allergic to eggs and everything dairy. While for Ejike, it wasn’t food if those aren’t part of the meal. Then again, he hates sea-foods, while i love love love. Our solution was simple – well, simple for him, since he wasn’t the one cooking – i kept a bowl of fried meat in the fridge for him to add to his meals. On days that i absolutely has to have my favourity shrimps or prawn sauce, i made altenative arrangements to go with his rice-slash-potato-slash-spaghetti-slash-whatever we are eating the sauce with. Likewise, our different tastes in TV programs was easily solved with two television sets and a dual subscription to DSTV. Another area we disagreed was in fashion. Take away my casuals of faded jeans and tank-tops, my wardrobe comprised of ten shirts of several bright colours, two black skirts (one knee-length, the other ankle-length), two pairs of black trousers (straight and flared), and a pair of white baggy trousers. There were also the traditional attires for Fridays: four full-skirted gowns in Ankara, Wooden, Adire and Malian brocade. All these i wore with one large handbag fit enough to pocket a three years old child, and beige wedge sandals. But, that was in the era before i married Ejike. Before they were all deemed substandard. Ejike dressed for the world to see, and so much Ejike’s wife. He was all about quality and designer labels that said the right things about him. Now, i have 50 pieces of clothings, 5 handbags, and 8 pairs of stilettos that were suitably shrieking elegance about me. It was really nice to wear pretty stuff paid by someone else.

Then there were the things that always caused friction. Like his idea of a well spent leisure – clubs, road-side beer parlours or random parties someone he barely knew invited him to on a Friday evening at the eleventh hour. I was strictly a cinema-garden-beach gal, and couldn’t understand why Ejike dragged me along with him to the places he goes to. I’d rather go off on my own than have him yawn and moan of how bored he was getting, which was exactly what i did when i went out with him. But, Ejike didn’t like going out alone at night. He said he’d look like a lonely bachelor and an easy target for fast ladies. If that was the case, why couldn’t he just sit his butt at home? He could drink all the alcohol he wanted and smoke all the cigarettes he fancied and I wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, Ejike was a social drinker cum smoker: it wasn’t fun unless somebody else was doing it with him. I neither drank nor smoked, which was too bad for us. Maybe if i did, i would be more like him, a person who didn’t culture emotional alliances outside his home. I’d be content with having friends made of bottles, cigarette packs, lighters, sport shows and football buddies who don’t ask one another’s surnames or what one’s wife said to him last night. Maybe then, i wouldn’t see the need to seek out people to unburden my heart and thus be that spouse that told the whole world about her marital woes. But, I was sharing with people who had my best interest at heart. Why didn’t that make it okay?