Some people are just stingy. (Well, frugal, is a more positive word) . Even if you turned them upside down, everything that could possibly drop down has been sewn into the bottom-lining of inner pockets. It’s just the way they visualize the future, full of emergencies and unforseens; the Great Unexpected. So putting aside excess – slicing off and saving everything not absolutely essential to survival today – is as essential as the next breath. It doesn’t matter which stars you struck down when you fell in love, you will quarrel about these things, especially if you are the sort that leaves the lights on in the sitting room and goes to bed. You could wake up the next morning to a photocopy of last month’s PHCN printout, carefully extricated from the Household Bills folder and positioned in front of your eyes, while the lecture on how these things ‘cost money’ plays in the background.
People are different like that. Some people cannot wear socks unless they match with the pant that no one will see. Some people cannot go anywhere unless it had been inserted into the diary, at least two weeks before, and after the appropriate discussions. But there are other people who can get dressed on the way out, slipping on shoes as they bang the door, applying lipstick in the rear view, only asking just after you pass Airport Junction, ‘Where are we going sef?’ The unpredictability of the future could be something that you don’t give too much thought to because of your faith, or because where you’re coming from people didn’t have to wonder about the next meal, or because ever since they dropped you on your head on the way out of the womb you’ve never worried a day in your life. So, you don’t understand millions in savings accounts when the shops are still open in Wuse market.
These things are deeper than feelings, stronger than emotions. If I like to stay in on weekends and you like to go out, we have a problem. It’s easy to call it a ‘SMALL’ problem when we’re still ‘hearing’ romantic music in the background, missing each other the second we leave each other, drunk with the thought of being together ‘forever’ (saying that word as if it meant two weeks). But I don’t know how many relationships are wrecked because the man woke up in the night and tried to strangle the woman, or the woman turned out to have multiple personalities one of whom believed itself to be a dog, complete with midnight howls at the moon. It’s always the SMALL things that do us in. You probably underestimate their impact - night after night of disrupted sleep, from your beloved’s belligerent snoring; listening to her, every single time, cracking chicken bones in an incomprehensible obsession with extracting every last bit of marrow.
Don’t ignore these things. You’ll need to exercise exactly the same muscles to tackle the ‘BIG’ issues, whatever they may be. In fact, it could be better to have many tiny little ‘containable’ fights on a rolling basis, constantly sharpening the art of compromise and conflict resolution, than one BIG one. So, come and sit down for a minute and tell me why we cannot go out to a nice restaurant every weekend. Because the thought of spending all that money on ‘non-essentials’ gives you palpitations? Ah! But do you not understand that it is important TO ME? Okay, fine, I get it; you’re doing it because you love me, and you don’t want us to run into difficulties tomorrow. Fine, how about dinner thrice a month? Twice a month? What is wrong with you for God’s sake?! Please don’t annoy me, what do you mean by once in two months? Let’s just leave it at twice a month? Okay? Okay.
Because that is what it really is – a deal between two people, always negotiated, always negotiatable; trying to find that ever shifting balance between two constellations. Did any of us fall out of the skies? No. That is why we have all have our sharp corners. So, don’t mistake these road bumps for bad omens; but don’t go thinking small storms can’t sink ships either.
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