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At exactly
3.50pm, Onoseh starting clearing up her table. She did everything simultaneously;
shutting down her computer, arranging her files back on the shelf, putting away
her water flask and handing over her office key to Antonia who shared a space in
the office with her. “Please, I must get
to the Airport before 5p.m to pick my husband. The flight from Abuja should
arrival at 4.30p.m and I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting for too
long. Kindly understand with me,” she pleaded.
“Just drop
it on that table as usual”, Antonia replied without bothering to raise her head
up from what she was doing, “ by now I should be getting used to it that your Fridays of even some Thursdays as the
case may be, are not 100 per cent for us here.”
That did
not worry Onoseh anyway, as she picked her bag and made for the door. “See you
on Monday”, she said. But just before she shut the door after her, Antonia gave
her one for the road. “My greetings
to your weekend hubby ”, she said
laughing out loud.
Onoseh’s is
just one out of so many couples who live apart due to job demands. The challenge of getting a good-paying job and
sustaining it has made many a couple to relocate to towns other than places
where the family made out to stay. When
situations as this happen, the spouse who has the good-paying job is forced to
go and start off a new life, with hopes that the other partner would also
relocate with time. But has it always been so?
Different experiences
have shown that many of such couples end
up living apart owing to countless excuses;
some say they have settled in the first town and would not want to move; some
others may not want to move with their
spouses because of their children’s schools; while for some, the complaint is about the high
cost of living in the new place.
The last
decade saw a lot of such situation as couples living apart due to job demands in
places like Lagos and Port-Harcourt grew. This development cuts across males and
females, depending on the person who got the passport to greener pastures. While jobs took some husbands or wives to
Abuja or Port-Harcourt, others found their ways to Lagos or Abuja from
Port-Harcourt. There was also relocation
to other towns. They serviced their relationship via the mobile phone, and in cases where the networks decided to fail, so be it.
Of course,
we all know that this turn has not been the best for marriages. While some planned
their visits for every weekend, others only get to see their spouses on a
monthly basis. Spouses have paid impromptu visits only to find their wives or
husbands in messy relationships. While
some accept the weaknesses of their spouses, others have simply walked out.
In my
opinion, if a spouse must relocate to another city for reason of better job,
then the other spouse should be ready to move over shortly after. This is
important because a couple should be
together to support each other emotionally just as financially. This decision
will help their relationship. What do
you think?