How women use mind games to navigate relationships

A couple talking. (Courtesy/iStock)

God in his wisdom ensured that he gave men and women a reason to live together by planting an intrinsic drive that keep them somehow glued together.

Even when things get difficult and the man smells like an onion to the woman, certain natural biological variables kick in and suddenly the endorphins take the woman over. In a strange twist, everything about the man looks and smells attractive once again overnight.

It is a cyclic process that is controlling in a way that baffles but benefits both sexes. Some things are better left alone, we all ignore twists and knots and focus of the benefits thereof. Win-win! Come to think of it, other than offering some sense of security and company to the woman, the man has no known significant role in the space of a woman except for addressing occasional bodily needs.

In fact, in old age when that urge and need has waned off the system of the female, the male becomes an irrelevant nuisance in the family space only held in place by events of the past and the community sense of family.

Females on the other hand remain an integral part of a man’s world because of the dependence at the household level such as cooking and washing and the fact that we generally make home hospitable to a retired veteran waiting to die. I digress.

You see, a closer look at the female behaviour around the fertility cycle reveals very different people in the same person. At one point the man may not matter to us. We wouldn’t care if he had eaten cold food or died in the demonstrations along Parliament Road.

But suddenly, when the great descent of the ovum from the ovaries starts, she mellows down and starts to look at him from a different prism.

When the egg hits the fallopian tube needing to be fertilised, we become all friendly and are willing to buy the best matumbo with our hard-earned cash to make yummy dinner on time without asking the ninja for a coin to supplement the budget.

Among the whites, this is the season when women make the best pancakes and flirtingly invite their men to the table for a heavy breakfast meal of butter, cheese, bacon, cucumber – everything from the fridge suddenly assembled at the table.

While our switch is on, we do not realise all these subtle acts of seduction are indirectly related to the cyclic maturation of the follicles and the grand journey downhill.

You see, men live a confused life throughout their entire lives. In a cycle of 28 days, they can experience four different people in the same woman ranging from unexplained hostility of demonic proportions to a sweet angel in the ovulation window. These mood variations of nature are stronger than the tectonic vibrations that cause formations of mountains and valleys.

I mean, no man can resist the seductive call from a wife who has made a warm meal in time. The invitation will make any man to drop his drinking friends and rush home to the warm embrace even if it is short-lived. In fact, the fact that it is unpredictably short-lived means that the coziness has to be honoured when it beckons.

No questions are asked and no explanations are offered, instead some small differences are wished away and many more are safely swept under the carpet never to be revisited. Heavier ones are tucked away safely in a box of pending matters waiting to be reviewed on days when sanity returns. And life continues till death does us apart.