What couples love about each other 

Husbands love it when their wife makes the bed, which is all the time anyway. And we do a great job of it. Save for the times I travel or get out of bed before him, I always make our bed.

Hubby’s idea of making a bed is him bending at an angle, strategically holding the beddings at the extreme corners and with one sweep, covering the mattress. Thereafter, fluffing up the duvet and placing the pillows. 

“Voila! Three seconds and we are good.” 

He sounds very triumphant but come sleeping time, you will be lucky to find a bedsheet, which is mostly curled somewhere at your feet. Does anyone else love sliding in between smoothed bedsheets?

Kui told me that her husband has never made their bed even once all their 18 years of marriage.

“What about when you travel?” 

She is a globe trotter. 

“He just covers it.”

Better drivers

There are things men and women are respectively, naturally good at. There are exceptions to the rule, of course. For example, a woman will generally make a better meal than a man. But also, some of the best chefs in the world are male.

There are however things we can do well enough, but we love it when our spouses do them. Wives love it when the hubby takes the wheel. We believe we are better drivers than them – do not tell them I said this – but we love it when they drive, especially when it is to unfamiliar locations. Driving through traffic or into those congested downtown routes is not interesting. Firstly, matatu drivers shy from harassing a male driver but will mess the day of a female driver, if not through sexist remarks, then through near-miss incidents.

We love it when they don aprons and grill that meat or make that stew. Hubby makes a mean fish fillet. The only downside of him being in the kitchen is the flour and oil. No one quite understands how flour got up the ceiling and the oil on walls and curtains. The floor mat is usually in a state of shock by the time we rescue it for cleaning. It takes me three days of cleaning the kitchen to get it to its original state. We still love his fish though, so the hours spent on torturous cleaning afterwards is just but a small sacrifice. 

Incidentally, the husbands love it when we cook. Jacquie makes it a point to prepare the family dinner because her husband, Tony, only eats dinner if prepared by his wife. Talk of pressure! The wife material that she is, Jacquie makes meals better than any five-star sous chef out there. I have noticed that our husbands will eat, either way, burnt offering or not, so long as the meals have a semblance of taste and are varied. 

A husband once told me, “Pesa ya bibi ni tamu sana!” A wife’s money must then be as delightful as that of a husband. Men have this self-imposed pressure to be the sole providers of their home, a back-breaking and risky affair, seeing as two incomes will take a family much further than one. But they still feel immense relief when a wife hands them a cheque or sends a six-digit M-Pesa deposit into their mobile wallet. In the same breath, I have not met a wife that will protest too much at the husband giving her his money card. 

A wife loves it when the husband is completely involved with the parenting job. The most resentful wives are those that are burdened with parenting, while the husband considers his role as only that of paying school fees and other bills. Never mind that the wife is also contributing financially. Either way, a husband that is involved with their child from the pre-natal clinics to their birth, bathing, feeding, changing, playing to school programs and graduation is a husband much desired and admired.

If you find a man complaining that his wife stopped paying him any attention when the baby arrived, just know that the said man is not involved in his baby’s life. He does not know what it feels like to have his baby puke, pee and spit on him. An exhausted wife will only focus on the helpless little being. An involved dad will take paternity leave and spend the leave taking shifts to manage their newborn’s erratic sleeping patterns. 

Karimi is a wife who believes in marriage. [email protected]