Remember, the past does not forget

Every man’s commitment story begins with promise. A man walks into a marriage with good intentions. He declares in front of the multitude in church, that it’s for love and faithfulness. He is not like the other guys.

The honeymoon phase passes, the lust tapers off and with the clearing of the fog, the man examines his partner for the first time and realises, “I could have done better”.  Sooner rather than later, especially after prosperity comes knocking, the wife becomes baggage. There is no such thing as an ugly guy with money. A surge in testosterone levels, directly proportional to the size of one’s wallet creates an appetite for variety but that need encounters a little hurdle.

Social scorn

In the class apartheid system of contemporary society, we are socialised to strictly mate within our classes, lest we soil the family’s hard earned reputation. It is always about what people will say. Social scorn and saving face are at the vanguard of society’s moral values.

The breeding restrictions amongst the different classes are maintained by social scorn. They say you do not do the help for a reason. You might just leave enough evidence to undermine the genetic stock and reputation is everything in the upper classes.

Even so, in the club of alpha manhood, adultery is permitted. It is getting caught that is frowned upon. Men try but in the heat of a hunt, the mind gets cloudy and it only after conquest that the man starts to really question his intentions.

What was it that I saw in her again? Go through a man’s closet and you will uncover such seedy associations that appear to have no relation to the dignified alpha males whose reputation is in question.

The faithful wife, who found him made, finds it difficult to reconcile how a man could sink so low in the pursuits of lust. But before the man was refined, he was down there with the scrubs learning the ropes. Before he was sophisticated and glamorous, he was a regular B-rate male, of average means trying to work his way up the food chain.  The women he despises now were the only women who would give him a decent chance and gave him a second take.

With prosperity, came access to life across the tracks. He damps his past, in a hasty bid to make a fresh start, now that he knows better. But not all doors stay shut. You may want nothing to do with your past but past is not always willing to let go.

Catalogue

 Thus, one thing that we can learn from the unnecessary ndrama that unfolds repeatedly at the funerals of high profiled Kenyan men; is that one shouldn’t be too quick to cast the first stone. Fidelity is easier said than done, because needs change with time and the higher one rise up the prosperity ladder, the greedier they get.

Tastes are elevated and those who worked hardest to polish the diamond in the rough are usually the first women to be discarded. So during a man’s last rites, kids and forgotten partners shore up to make one last push for acknowledgement and legitimacy. There is a fat lesson in there; you may forget the past but the past does not forget. In the end a man’s marital journey is a catalogue of trial and error.