Socien's Blog

She wants to be serviced as a fleet. So I give her a one-sided service. She lays on the bed facing upwards like a baby who needs a diaper change. She can’t be undressed yet because this positioning begs me to tickle her—a procedure that must be done well by selecting points that have the highest density of nerve endings. I leak her body lotions until she feels warm enough to open the ground. Once I undress her, I labour for as long as I can afford. In this ordeal, I am the worker and she is the one on top of the food chain. I ingest lotions. She feeds on raw satisfaction.

She is robotic in everything love. She answers with single words and phrases that kill the conversations and she doesn’t disagree or give me advice or any form of support that isn’t money because money she doesn’t have. She doesn’t ask about my welfare. As a programmed robot her source code is closed and I can’t find it and reprogram it, that is to convenience her to change. Perhaps in this free world, no one should be reprogramming anyone either but I feel like I am the one who was reprogrammed. When I am with her, I don’t listen to my secular playlist filled with the Bruno Mars (The way you are is one I once played for her and her reaction told me not to repeat it) and the Talor Swifts of this world because I know she doesn’t like any of it. She listens to gospel alone and will never appreciate any song outside this bracket.

I dismissed her twice. But I failed halfway through the procedure. She was cancer refusing to go by mere exposure to advanced chemotherapy. She cried profusely and I had to retake her back. I was scared that my life would be unhappy with her. I didn’t tell her anything but my diary expressed my then thoughts about the relationship. “We are incompatible”

Over the months, however, she didn’t only stay mine but my love for her spiked. I recall as well reading Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah. Here is a story of two love birds who were separated by the economic situation in their country, Nigeria and they were forced to head overseas in pursuit of greener pastures. The male, Obinze, quickly returned when Britain didn’t treat him well and got married to one of the ladies he attended the same university with by the name Kosi. Kosi happened not to be secular while her husband was. She was loyal and submissive, avoiding going on the wrong side of her husband.

The female of these two separated, Ifemelu, returned at a time Obinze had already settled, his daughter Buchi already at school attendance age. When Obinze revealed to his wife that he wasn’t happy and wanted them to divorce the author brings us Kosi’s concern that Ifemelu was good at “acrobatics” in bed. Of her daughter, Obinze on the other hand, ‘feared that she would grow up to be a woman who, with that word “amen” would squash the questions she wanted to ask the world.

Incompatibility comes not through differences in preferences of perspectives—a chemist can be compatible with a fine artist and fail to be compatible with a fellow chemist. A difference in values does lead to incompatibility sometimes. Why doesn’t it always lead to incompatibility?

I hereby resay my statement: Values through the occupations, sensitivity, responsiveness, character and abilities, etc., it gives one, sometimes creates incompatibility when they differ with that of the other stakeholder in the relationship. You may have the same preferences while with differences in values. Preferences are do not lead to incompatibility when allowed to be a point from which consensus is driven or when one does not use his to challenge those of the other, imposing himself as superior. It is rather when s/he does not feel respected or not fulfilled in any way that one begins to see incompatibility s/he has with partner.

I may not have enough space to dig deep into the analects of me and my girlfriend here on this blog. But not being able to share a good romantic song with the one I love was unprecedented in my love life. Now, this latest landlady of my inner castle wasn’t up to that taste, welcoming only gospel music. But the broader issue was me feeling not being able to get as far as I wanted loving her and being loved. I felt empty, a civilisation conquered by an alien and powerful one. I felt as if I was being cast into the Earthly basket as she elevated herself to the heavenly stairs. I felt lost, a sinner. My sense of taste and my suggestions on what to enjoy were for the first time irrelevant.

This feeling alone was enough to make me think that we were truly incompatible. We have eyes that see incompatibility but those eyes are blind. To see incompatibility with whoever we are in a relationship with there must be something to open the eyes. This goes to the first love experience that lived its time before the current relationship took over only to fail to reach the yardstick of expectations reached by it. First-love experiences are dangerous. We have them before the responsibilities and burdens of malfunctioning systems and economies take over. But in the memories we carry into the future about these first love experiences, we fail to see how easy it was to fall in love without worrying about rings, finding a job and so forth.

The return of Ifemelu in Lagos became the start of an old court fire. A fallen dynasty had risen again. Ifemelu and Obinze started their relationship at a school before their College days. At the university, they continued their story. Anything that was to follow, any other lovers that were going to love these two separately were doomed to become victims of an enlightened duo that was so good at seeing incompatibilities.

Incompatibility, Conclusively, in points:

• Incompatibility, once it’s seen. It damages the relationship.
• Some relationships are health not because incompatibility does not exist in them. It isn’t seen by the two and only stakeholders. Serpent-like friends at the pub can’t change this.
• Some people would rather force a blind eye on incompatibility that they have seen and choose to stay unhappy, insecure and abused for the rest of their lives. Life is too short. The wise would do so and try to fix their part wisely.
• Some would rather create incompatibility that isn’t there and convince themselves to use it as a vehicle for breakup and divorce.

~ (above paragraphs) Subject Me Diary, DateNotDiscolsed