WIFESPEAK: Before you take any marriage advice...

What’s your take on wives washing their husbands’ underwear? A recent social media post on the same generated a heated debate that made me conclude that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

The post read: A man I know beat up his new wife because she refused to wash his underwear.

Many people missed the abuse being reported in this post and instead focused on the washing of the underwear, or the refusal thereof. The comments came in fast and furious:

Just wash them, it’s no big deal.

Let him wash his inner wear, he is an adult for crying out loud!

Men, please, don’t embarrass the rest of us. Please. Just wash those basic intimate things like underwear and handkerchiefs. We should not be debating about this.

On and on it went, with two views, each downplaying or castigating the opposing viewpoints.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

The reason such arguments become heated and inconclusive is that there is no one size fits all advice for a marriage.

Save for the violence and other forms of abuse that no one person should put up with, all other concerns have to be addressed by individual couples.

For example, some people will swear by joint bank accounts, which allows anyone of the couple to access their funds without reference to the other.

We tried this and I can assure you, it is not something I would advocate for anyone. Some troubles and fights are not worth a joint account. But our close friends think otherwise. They say that a joint account is the best thing for them after Wi-Fi.

“We each throw in there something every month. It has helped us sit and regularly discuss our financial health, ”  they say

There are couples who have agreed to first seek their respective parents-in-law as a first intervention when they have a conflict. Nancy reports her husband to his mother when she feels that he is behaving like a toothache.

“It’s his mother and she is a woman like me.  It works perfectly for us, because he listens to her and I respect that she understands my view from a fellow woman’s perspective.”

DON’T TRAUMATISE OTHERS

This sounds awesome, but in reality, very few mothers in law will see their daughter in law as a fellow woman, especially when she is in conflict with her son.

Most will side with their son and before you know it, there will be an Armageddon.

And so is the case for washing of the underwear. Since there is no Biblical, legal, social or political creed that says a wife must wash anyone else’s but her own underwear, by all means knock yourself out if that is what roasts your goose.

But please do not traumatise others by declaring that this is what should be the case in marriages.

And if you are planning on soon joining this never –dull-full -of -drama covenant of marriage, please come on board with an open mind.

Listen to all the advice out there, but come prepared to chart your own path-because each marriage, each couple is as unique as a thumb print.

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