Is the ‘small house’ all bad?

A friend of mine – a female friend, one day told a stunned group of colleagues that the ‘small house’ (a married man’s girlfriend), actually strengthens marriages, contrary to popular belief that ‘small houses’ are home wreckers. She gave three reasons for her conclusions:

            One: If a good man cheats, he compensates for his bad deed by treating his wife extremely well; a descending wife will realise that this is the time to put in all the requests and they will all be fulfilled. A lot of people will question why I am saying, if a good man cheats when almost everyone is agreed that a man who cheats on his wife is a bad man: The definition of a good man goes beyond whether he cheats or not and in most cases whether he cheats or not does not even factor into his qualification of good or bad. The cheating moments in a man’s life provides a stimulus that is needed to bring excitement and happiness to a marriage that had reached a boring patch. It is however important to note that the ‘cheating moment’ magic only works in the hands of ‘good men’; men who know that the wife always comes first and who make it clear to the small house that she will always be second best. Take a deep breath and read again; the theory is not as crazy as you think.

            Two: The small house teaches a married man how to love his wife and children. How is that so? In a bid to impress her man, the small house will make sure that he knows that she takes his family as seriously as he does by remembering birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional surprise chocolates and flowers: The majority of presents that go to the wife are chosen by small houses masquerading as secretaries, personal assistants...and the straight up small houses. A small house who understands her position as the small house will make sure that she reminds ‘her man’ that it is time to go home to the wife. Some even go to the extent of making sure school fees for the children is paid and that the man does not waste money on useless things before the family has been provided for. But again, this theory only works if the small house is in the hands of a good man.   

            Three: The small house does not carry the burdens of womanhood that the wife carries and usually has several sources of income that keep her reasonably ‘happy’. Because of this, the small is in a position to give ‘good sex’ and knows how to ‘listen’ to the man’s problems and issues. When he goes back to his wife, he is a refreshed man does who not bite her head off for the slightest ‘mistake’. The small house does not conform to the wifely burden of pretending to be a virgin whilst the likes of Mai Gunguwo are telling her that she should be a ‘prostitute’ for her husband. The small house will experiment with sexy clothing and dabble in all sorts of eroticism that will refresh the man and make him ready to face his wife with a smile.

            The three theories expounded above in trying to paint small houses with a bit of white have a lot of loopholes. One the biggest loopholes is that the small house will never fully accept that she is second best and she will always have dreams of replacing the wife. But we have to appreciate that the issue of small houses is very complex and in a lot of cases, small houses have brought happiness to marriages.

Confessions of a cheating husband

For years I had been telling people that I initially was not interested in a romantic relationship with Nomathemba Dube; a sweet, extremely beautiful young woman who now runs a highly successful catering company. I had always believed that all I wanted with Nomathemba was to help her realise her dreams. I maintained this line of thinking until Moses asked me a simple question:

“If it had been a young man, would you have shown such interest in his dreams?”

I wouldn’t have. Actually, I had been approached by several young men with brilliant business proposals prior to meeting Nomathemba. I ran a successful retail business and I was a magnet for young people who needed help with all sorts of business ideas. I realise now that it was Nomathemba’s beauty that initially attracted me to her. Reminded me of a young woman called Carol who once looked me in the eye and said:

“Relationships between men and women can only be sexual, nothing more and nothing less.”

Or something to that effect. My relationship with Nomathemba over the years has been civil and we have been jointly raising our son in relative peace. For all intends and purposes she has been my second wife and she has done excellently in that regard. She has also been an integral part of my retail business.

I met Nomathemba five years ago at Kelvin North industrial site in the high density suburb of Iminyela in Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe. It’s a thriving industrial site. With the depletion of the more formalised industry, everything has moved to the more informalised industrial sites. And the best craftspeople, journeymen et cetera are found there. They make a lot of money and they don’t pay tax. I was referred to Kelvin North industrial site by Moses when my car’s headlights just died on me.

I was on my way home around six and I was listening to one of those clever Oliver Mtukudzi songs that get you thinking:

Hope hadzina ndima

hadzina ndima

Ukagudugudza wasaririra

Apa basa mangwanani

mangwanani

Ukagudugudza wasaririra

Aiwa basa mangwanani

mangwanani

Ukagudugudza wasaririra

...

Hatina nguva yatinofunga kuti tinayo

hayo tinayo

Hatina nguva yatinofunga kuti tinayo

hayo tinayo

hayo tinayo...

I hit a speed hump at high speed and my headlights just switched off and I could not switch them back on again. I had been assured by the car salesman that kind of thing would not happen. But then, a salesperson can assure you of anything. A salesperson can even assure you that his brand of ice will not melt if that will get you to buy. I drove home at a very slow speed and my wife’s cooking made me totally forget about the malfunctioning headlamps of my expensive car. It could have been her skimpy dress as she served the food or perhaps the very sweaty business between the silky sheets she had bought on-line.

I remember a year later my wife sobbing when she discovered that Nomathemba was pregnant with my child.

“Did I do something wrong. Tell me what I did wrong, I will fix it.”

She was scared I was going to leave her for Nomathemba. But honestly, I had not been involved with Nomathemba because there was anything wrong with my wife. She was more beautiful than Nomathemba. And in spite of being a lawyer, she was respectful and did an amazing job of running the house.

“You did nothing wrong, I love you and always will.”

“Then why?”

“It just happened.”

It sounded lame, but that was the whole truth. My wife stopped taking birth control pills that very night and our daughter was two months younger than Nomathemba’s.

Moses pointed me in the direction of Kelvin North industrial site to have my headlights fixed. I took the afternoon off to go to Kelvin North industrial site. I was to see a guy called Trevor: It was said he was the best auto-electrics guy around. There was a long queue at his makeshift garage and I jumped the queue by virtue of having deeper pockets.

As I drove in I had noticed the reserved young woman who had a coca-cola cart in front of her and did not pay much attention to her. I bought fried amacimbi from a woman a few meters away from Trevor’s garage as Trevor attended to my car and inevitably I had to buy a coke from the young woman I had seen earlier. I sat on an empty drinks crate and chatted to her as I gulped my beverage. She had on a plain, blue dress and a woollen hat on her heard and looking at her, I got the distinct impression that she was carrying a heavy burden on her youthful shoulders. I realised later that she was not struggling to the extent I had thought she was struggling. She didn't look at me as she narrated her vision. It didn't seem as if she was talking to me at all.

“You know, I want to own a one stop functions company. You know; tent, catering, wedding dresses et cetera. But well, I guess success is for the rich as I don’t have any hopes of ever raising the required capital.”

I gave her my business card and told her to get in touch with me. I might be able to help, I told her. She brought a business plan to my office the next day. My heart hammered heavily against my rib cage when she walked into my office. She had transformed into a goddess. With the woollen hat gone and with the addition of make-up and a short red dress, I couldn't recognise the plain, young woman I had seen the previous day.

She explained her business plan in great detail and explained her cash flow and her loan repayment plan. We went out to lunch and I assured her that I would finance her business. All she had to do was put the practicalities of the whole thing into motion. I financed her business and she never repaid the ‘loan’.

We kissed a month later and had sex three months after that. I had driven her to a wedding venue in Hillside and as we sat in the car chatting outside her parent’s house, one thing led to the other and we had sex on the back seat of my car. I was surprised to realise that she was a virgin and afterwards she clung to me and giggled nervously.

“My mom is going to kill me”, she whispered nervously.

She moved out of her parents’ house six months later and we developed a full blown relationship that led to her pregnancy about a year after I had first seen Nomathemba at Kelvin North industrial site.

Now we sit in the park and Leroy, our son is running around the park. He seems to be chasing something that he only can see. Nomathemba takes my hand and looks me in the eye.

“Thank you”, she whispers.

“What for?”

“You have given me a good life”.

I glance at my watch and she gets the cue. It’s time for me to go home to my wife.

A Small House called Emmah

Model: Ellen Mahlangu

I let myself in when I arrived at Emma’s flat. She had left her keys under the cushions on the swing chairs on the balcony: The same cushions, on the same swing that had rocked us to sleep under the moonlight on many nights. The janitor had complained too many times about the empty wine bottles on the balcony. The empty potato chips packets too.

I had phoned well in advance to tell her I was coming: That’s what you do with small houses. She had told me she had a hair appointment she could not miss. She was probably lying, but how she ran her life was really none of my business: I was committed elsewhere; I could not expect her to be committed to me.

                Her flat was on the fourth floor; the highest floor on a neat medium sized building in a quiet neighbourhood. The double lounge windows gave a nice view of the street outside. Jacaranda trees were a given in such a neighbourhood. Not really upmarket by any standards, but respectable enough. The streets were strewn with the purple jacaranda flowers. Pamela, who stayed in the flat next to Emma’s was standing on the street corner. She had on a daringly short, purple dress and in her hand she had a green, tiny purse. The red high heels gave me a lesson in what they call colour blocking. She got into a black executive looking car and was gone.

                I did not hear Emma come in. I just felt her arms enfold me. I turned around and she stepped back a few steps to let me have a look at her. She had nothing on but a red chiffon piece of cloth wrapped around her mid section. I deeply inhaled and knew I would have problems pulling myself away from her when the time came for me to leave.

“Have you been here long?” She asked with a motherly look of concern on her face.

“Not really, I was just enjoying the view from up here.”

“I got us some takeaways – Are you staying?”

“You know I can’t stay the night. We have gone through this several times. I am married and happily so”.

She walked over to the window and for a moment or two gazed outsized.

“Do you love me?”

“What kind of question is that? You know I love you.”

“I mean, do you really love me?”

“What do you want from me Emmah?”

“Some seriousness would be nice. A certain level of commitment at least.”

“I am here, am I not?” I could feel myself losing my temper, but the red chiffon cloth pushed the anger away.

“Just because you want sex, otherwise you would not be here.”

“I am getting a bit confused here. You are the other woman. You are what is known as a small house. What more would I want from you?”

“So you don’t love me. You are just using me”.

I put my arms around her. She almost pulled away, but settled comfortably in my arms. When I turned her around, she was crying.

“I thought everything was clear. I told you I was married before I asked you out and I made it clear that you wouldn't replace my wife”.

“I know”. She tearfully responded.

“So what seems to be the problem?”

“I am a woman, okay. You think I can just open my legs and not feel anything. Not fall for you?”

“But I am not your only boyfriend”.

“You are”.

“I am not a fool Emmah. There is no way you can be paying rent on this place on your own”.

“The sixty year old who pays rent does not count. He just loves the idea that he has a young girlfriend. We have never had sex. I love you”.

At that very moment, I gained a bit of perspective. I had viewed Emmah as slightly better than a prostitute you pick up on the street. But it seemed I was wrong.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“I could be your second wife”.

She got out of arms and rushed off. I heard the bathroom door bang. I heard the sound of water gushing out of the tap. She was crying. I stood by the window and looked outside. Two young women were standing by the street corner. One looked up, we made eye contact and she gave a tiny wave and smiled. I waved back and turned away from the window. As I was walking towards the bathroom, Emmah came out. She let the red chiffon thingy drop to the floor. I took out a packet of condoms from my pocket. She took the condoms from me and threw them away.

“Don’t worry, I am on the pill.”

Is the wife to blame for cheating husband?

It is a big sign of weakness to blame someone else for one’s failures and weaknesses. But it seems that men have not evolved enough to realise this fact of life. Do men and the women who support the men realise how stupid it sounds to say ‘she seduced me’. I have heard women on too many occasions scream at pregnant girls, “Why didn’t you prevent? Did you think if you got pregnant, he was going to marry you?” And the man’s part in the whole mess is disregarded. The men are never censured and they go on being irresponsible and over the years men’s stupid ways have become acceptable: And the likes of our own Prime Minister are not doing much in terms of setting good examples.

Since creation women have been blamed for men’s disastrous decisions; as if men are children who cannot make up their own minds. I guess women were doomed the moment Adam said, ”It wasn’t my fault that I ate the fruit you forbade us to eat”.

Since then it has been women’s fault that they get raped – why did they put on miniskirts? Why did they laugh so much and make the men believe they were ‘available’? Moslem women are all covered up, there is breast ironing in Cameroon (the practice of ironing young girls’ breasts so that they become flattened so that they will not be abused by men), and there is genital mutilation in some parts of Africa.

 It is a woman’s fault if there is an unwanted pregnancy. It seems men are not capable of realising that their penises deposit sperms into a woman’s vagina and this leads to pregnancy. Every fool should know this. But the classic one is the ridiculous claim by married men that it is the wife’s fault that the man cheated. It can be anything from not being good in bed to not bathing or something as archaic as not being respectful. Honestly, between the sexes woman would be more justified if they said their husbands drive them to cheating: There is the totally selfish sexual intercourse; too many married women don’t know what an orgasm feels like. There is the emotional and physical abuse and of course there is the absence; out drinking with the ‘boys’ or out with a myriad of concubines.

The purpose of this article is not to question the rightness or wrongness of men or women cheating on their partners, it is the approach by both men and women to the issue and how the supposed consequences are dealt with and how blame is apportioned if blame has to be apportioned at all that I am trying to unravel.  No one really knows if monogamy is the natural order of things and it is not my place to say for sure what is what. According to our own belief systems, convictions or religious persuasions, we decide whether to be monogamous or not. But it is important that each individual take responsibility for his or her actions and deal with ensuing consequences if there are any. It is stupid of men to say that their partners drive them to cheating. Wouldn’t it be wiser to just admit that you don’t want to be monogamous and do it in an orderly way like the way our grandfathers used to do it?

Living up to social expectations of a ‘marriage’, men marry a plain woman or force a colourful woman to be plain. Under the same traditional umbrella of expectation of what a ‘traditional’ wife should look like and behave like, the wife is not expected to talk about sex and she is not expected to enjoy sex. For a man to now turn around and say ‘I got a small house because my wife was not satisfying me sexually’ is ridiculous. Honestly ‘sexual satisfaction’ is what a couple achieves together, not something one partner dishes up for the enjoyment of the other partner. Admit it men, you will still cheat even if you had the best sexual partner in the world. To try and keep their men, women have resorted to vagina tightening creams and powders. Some weird techniques like inserting ice blocks into the vagina have been concocted to try and ‘satisfy’ men sexually. Shame, that will not stop a cheating man from cheating. In return for all that abuse inflicted by women on their vaginas, what have the men done to improve their wives’ sex lives?

In the event that a man marries a beautiful woman who really takes care of herself and is empowered sexually, the cheating man will say ‘I found myself a small house because my wife is not respectful enough’. Women can’t win this one. A cheating man will cheat no matter what. So what’s to be done? Should women just accept that men cheat and learn to live with it? I think men should be more open about their intentions: If they want more than one wife, they should communicate that to the first wife so that she can make up her own mind about whether to accept it or not before she has invested a lot into the marriage.

Why men cheat

Image - momlogic.com

I am sure women all over the world are holding their breath for this one: I am sure this is the biggest thorn in most women’s flesh; the cheating ways of men. But of course a lot of women also cheat. I don’t have insight into that though, but I have a niggling suspicion that the reasons why men cheat might be similar to the reasons why women cheat.

Reason number one why men cheat is their big ego: A woman saying yes to man’s advances boosts a man’s ego. But this has got a pathetically temporary effect on the said ego; the moment she says yes, the excitement is gone and the next ego booster will be to get into the woman’s panties and the moment that is done it’s time to move on to the next victim. So if the whole process takes one day, then a new woman must be found every day. That explains why some men will propose ‘love’ to every woman they sit next to on the bus, train... every woman they stand next to in the queue at the bank, in the supermarket…There are men who will proposition a friend’s wife in the kitchen as the husband sits in the lounge.

But the above category is a lost cause: What wife can put up with a husband who proposes ‘love’ to different women up to five times a week. The kind that gives many a wife sleepless nights are the kind who has one or two lovers on the side; the so called ‘small houses’. This small house phenomenon is mainly caused by the rigid definition of what a wife should be like as opposed to what men really want in a woman. The traditional way of looking at things is that a wife should be ‘decent’ and obedient. By decent I mean she wears long skirts and dresses and in a few extreme cases she must always have a head wrap. This aspect is rapidly changing though as most women are insisting on being ‘fashionable’. The wife is expected to cook, clean and wash and most wives do this perfectly.

If the wife does her domestic chores perfectly and is fashionable, there is one area where a lot of men are unwilling to compromise on: The problem is in the bedroom: Wives are not expected to know anything about sex and to show that they enjoy sex. Even though this is not openly discussed, the argument amongst men is that a woman who enjoys and knows a lot about sex has slept with a lot of men and therefore she is of loose morals. And now herein lies the problem: Men enjoy sexual attention from women; the idea of having a total slut in the bedroom is pretty exciting. But God forbid, the ‘slut’ can’t be the wife. The solution is then to go and find someone else who knows all the sexual tricks. Someone whose sexual history does not matter. Someone who will look sexy in a miniskirt at functions and provide a night of wild sex at the end of the day. Someone who will never be introduced to disapproving parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents.

I once read a story in the newspaper about a man who beat up his wife because she sat astride atop him and demanded sex. She was acting like a prostitute, he argued. He wouldn’t have minded though if that kind of thing had been done by his ‘small house’. That’s where the dilemma kicks in for the wives: You know the ‘small house’ wears miniskirts, leggings… has a gigantic makeup kit and is a total slut in the bedroom but you can’t do the same so that you can keep your man to yourself because a wife is supposed to be ‘decent’.

Some enlightened men are now having hybrid wives who cook, clean up, and behave ‘properly’ in public, but are total ‘sluts’ in the bedroom. Because honestly the problem with insisting on a wife who does not enjoy sex in the modern world is that a lot of women are not married as virgins so as a man what you have to know is that your wife might have attained a wild orgasm before she met you and she might go out to find that and still pretend to be the ‘perfect wife’ with you.