It will take me some time to get to my point so bear with me. For quite a few years now I have been fascinated with understanding relationships. Even though I am still in the stage of life where I am pretty much a wholesale seed distributor, I have always loved to reflect on, study and understand relationships that work and work for a really long time.

Long Distances and Mashada

So, anyway, one day I ended up on the popular message board Mashada quite distraught. There had been two long distance relationships I had looked at and thought to myself:

They will go the distance those ones. They’ll make it.

Typically when people in their 20s show up in the diaspora and say they are in a long distance relationship, I think of it at the very least as a joke and at the very most as an exchange of physical pleasure and flattery every so often, though when apart from one another, everyone and everything is fair game.

But not these two. Allow me to explain.

Relationship Number 1

They were both in their late 20s. They had both long since put the fun and nonsense that is high school and University behind them (point one for them). She was abroad pursuing her Masters and he was back in Africa holding down the fort.

When she spoke of him one could see that they clearly had a deep friendship and their relationship wasn’t just based on some superficial attraction (point two for them). She is a woman and she is abroad, and so of course African men jumped on her like chaff on Velcro. For a good year or so, the two men who had put forth the most consistent effort were consistently being shut down in spite of their clear charm (point three for them).

A Small Crack in the Ceiling

But alas one of them one evening managed to get her in a room for a game of tonsil hockey which was unfortunately interrupted midway. As soon as the interruption took place, the woman sped out of that room and we all thought that was all she wrote.

Six Months Later

Fast forward six months later and both of these men got what they wanted from her in spite of the fact that she had a chance to go back to Africa and visit her guy.

Relationship Number 2

She was quite young, still of college age, but she was the quintessential woman of faith (point number one for them). She admitted that once someone had her, he had her for life (point two for them) and that was pretty much her intention with her significant other.

No one has come between them, but the fellow who is also pretty young (point one against) has ended the relationship by trying to let her down easy. I won’t go into too much detail, all I will say is it took me by quite some surprise just how quickly it ended.

Right Back to Mashada

So anyway I end up on Mashada and I decide to ask folk:

Do these long distance relationships ever work?

Now of course a lot of you already know the answer that 9 times out of 10, especially when we are talking about people in their 20s they don’t work BUT out of that discussion something came up that I thought was definitely worth discussing.

Are Family and Community the Cornerstones of Succesful and Long Lasting Relationships?

You’ve all watched the TV shows where someone takes their partner to their parent’s home and the parents totally disapprove of him or her. In a moment of defiance, the person will normally grab their partner tight, leer at his or her parents and say something to the extent of:

Well she’s not marrying you. She’s marrying me and I love her. So regardless of whether you approve of this marriage or support it, we’ll get married anyway.

And then they walk of hand in hand to face the world together: Just the two of them and their love.

Is that a Huge Mistake?

In Australia we have this tabloid type program that’s very popular called a Current Affair. Sometime ago they had a special on Indian arranged marriages where they were trying to explore why Indian marriages last so much longer than typical Western marriages that are basically like Russian roulette with a 50/50 chance.

One of the things that came out of that is someone said:

In an arranged marriage, one isn’t simply marrying a person, they are marrying their family (or clan or community).

That got me to thinking….weren’t traditional marriages exactly the same and didn’t they also have the ridiculously low divorce and run away rates?

Accountability and Committment

I am just speculating based on the limited information I have but I think what it ultimately boils down too is when you marry or form a relationship with someone’s family or community instead of just them you have made a committment and are accountable to a lot more people.

Compare this with the typical love relationship where one is usually not even answerable to their spouse but instead to their feelings. How can we possibly expect to build a long lasting relationship or commit to anything long term simply on the basis of how we feel when we are so damn capricious as human beings? (I have waited so long to use one of my favourite words, capricious)

When you marry a family you are answerable to a lot of people and this helps get you by when your feelings tell you that you don’t feel like going.

They Force You Back Together

When you decide you need distance from each other lest you kill each other, you retreat to a family/and or community which considers itself a part of your relationship and so will try to force the two of you together……….

Back to You

My mental exercise ends there. What do y’all think? Does marrying someone’s family and community make a difference? Is this a load of bollocks? Leave a comment and let me know.

Just trying to figure this whole thing out,

Mwangi

I am growing up. I am actually growing up. Over the past couple of weeks, ever since I got hit by the lovebug, one thought has loomed deep in my mind: what type of husband/wife and father/mother do I want to be?

Now, seeing as I have the level of moderation of a junkie, I have thought about the answer to that question constantly and realized that in the grand scheme of things I have a lot of work to do.

I am still very domineering, especially of people that I know, and I think I need to calm down and work on creating the type of home where people can be comfortable being themselves and don’t have to worry about battling me for dominance.

In spite of that I want to create a home where people will feel safe. I want them to feel that when the world is crashing around them, I will be in control and I will handle what needs to be handled.

One place that I have made huge strides is honesty: Some time ago, I viewed my ability to lie to women as a virtue. Those days have since vanished. I want my woman to KNOW EVERYTHING about me. This isn’t because I am proud of everything I have done, especially in relationships, but because I want her to feel safe to be honest around me.

I want to home school my kids. The criticism I constantly hear about this is that the child is isolated from other youth and doesn’t develop social skills. For this reason I will probably enroll my child into a Christian school which he will attend a couple of days a week and I will home school him the rest of the week. Or maybe I will meet up with other parents who home school and we will create play dates. However it happens, I want to be responsible for shaping the character of the gift of life that God will give me.

The way I see my life going, I will probably end up a born again Christian who will found my own church ala Erwin Mcmanus. It will be a church focussed around men and developing men of character and strength. It will be practical and focussed on building projects such as Fidelis Wainaina did in Maseno i.e. projects that help people become self-sufficient, independent and self-confident.

I will create step-by-step guides for men on how to control their sexuality rather than be controlled by it. I think I have already spoken about how necessary this is, but in my case it will be beyond necessary because I WILL ALWAYS be faithful to my wife, not ony in my body but in my mind. I never want my eyes to even begin to find the possibility of the idea of straying attractive. I want my mind, body and soul to be drawn to only my muse and will do everything I can to ensure that happens.

I fear that I will not be enough. I am so idiosyncratic as a human being, and it is so easy to hate me that I fear one day after years and years of marriage, I will do something that will turn her off and she will leave me. I don’t know if this fear will ever leave me. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

I also fear that my wife will cheat on me. Some men can be so good at seducing women, I fear that in the midst of some turmoil or a period where passion is waning, a man will sweep in and sweep my wife of my feet. I would be devastated. Maybe this fear will leave me, maybe it won’t.

I want my child to experience first hand the consequences of addictions. I want him to work in rehab centres and sexual addiction clinics so that he can understand the power of moderation and control and what can happen when you don’t have it.

I have to develop cleaning routines. At the moment my cleaning habits and routines are…..errr…..errr…..lacking to say the least.

I hope I will like the type of people my kids grow up in to. Because like everyone in my family, even though they shoot me, I will still love them.

I never ever want us to fight over money. From the moment our souls interlock, every cent I will ever earn will be hers. In my mind I am lucky in that I don’t fear poverty, so she can take every cent I have and I will still love her (who woulda thought huh?).

I will be the best lover ever. If not at the beginning, give me time. My personality is way too obsessive for me to not work on it until every evening is a spiritual experience.

What type of husband, father, mother, wife and lover do you want to be? I never thought I would ever have such a strong desire to become a better human being: I guess love sickness does it to you.

Before you leave, make sure you leave a comment below.

You are loved, please go out today and spread that love,

Mwangi