How a woman can mess your confidence and what you can do about it.

MEMO NO. 13 FROM THE NATIONAL DESK OF THE WELFARE OF MEN
How a Woman can Mess Your Confidence and What you Can Do About It.
Today’s memo is plagiarized from a conversation I had with a great friend. A man who is full of wisdom and a tremendous positive mentality.
A great female friend recently told me about his brother who is married to a tyrannical wife and all attempts by the family to rescue the man have failed and now they are helpless. I know the feeling. It is like having a child kidnapped, you know the kidnapper but there is nothing you or the government can do. She said, her brother’s confidence is so low, ocean-bottom low. I remembered this when talking to my friend who works in Insurance.

We were talking about a mutual friend, a young man I was with in college who intends to vie for a political seat in the near future. Our mutual friend is broke, a bit deluded, but his wife is the most supportive spouse according to my friend.

Make no mistake. Our mutual friend has a future. He is the type that gets a nomination or a ministerial appointment and everyone wonders who the hell is he? If our friend had a bad wife, his dreams will be invalid. But he has a wife who is a DJ Khaled. She ensures he dresses well, eats, and gives him all the peace and tells him, “YOU ARE THE BEST” every day. The young man is always in a suit, dresses sharply and speaks impeccable English. A young Kisii musician recently called such men, Chinkondi(Mikora). But he is destined for greatness. That I know without a shadow of doubt.

We also talked about another mutual friend, currently a hotshot lawyer, one of the most sought after in the country. My friend told me how his first marriage nearly run him out of town. When the hotshot lawyer was nothing but a slender, confused baggage of bones and frustration, he dated his college classmate and they cohabited at first and got a baby boy. But like any man, the start to a good future is never a straight line.

So, msichana akaomoka wa kwanza, when the lawyer was earning Sh 10,000 for clerical work and they were living in a one-bedroom house pale Zimmerman. Matusi ikaanza. Msichana joined a group of girls (you know them, young, employed, with no responsibility for their cash and out to have fun). This weekend wako Naivasha, next, wako Mombasa, next Zanzibar. And these things worried the man a great deal. So, any time the man tried to ask her, what is going on, he got the standard, gaslighting response such women give: “You are insecure, you have become a nag. You like are like a woman…Only women should nag.”

Of course, our man lived in denial for another year or two, as the wife perambulated all the white beaches in the continent with her coterie of girls. And of course, the woman dumped the man for failing to step up, and for being such a nag. There is no moral in this story. The guy picked up the pieces, worked hard, and now in his 40s, he is doing pretty well, met a nice girl from the Coast, married her and now live in relative marital bliss.

Had the man insisted in his previous marriage, he would never have been where he is today. And that is something men should learn today: Stop flogging dead horses. If she doesn’t respect you, doesn’t respect your hustle and is full of disdain for you, pick any morsel of dignity left on you and walk away while you still have a proper frame to make your future. Most men fail to know when to walk away and mortgage their bright future, for no reason whatsoever. Know this, when a woman wants to leave, she will leave. Men should have the same attitude. It is never personal, kids or no kids.

More to the point, what should a man do when the love of his life is decidedly determined to put him down?
When a woman wants to put you down, she does so in a clever way, if you don’t have brains you will not notice. They always say these small nasty things that can ruin your mood for a whole month. Especially, when it comes to the comparing games.

“Eish, kina Liz, wamebuy CX-5 ya 2015, imagine?” she will tell you as you are having the post-coital pillow talk. So far so good.
“That is god stuff, hiyo gari inaeeza, nilipandavya beste yangu. Ndani iko poa.” you ask, trying to keep the conversation going, unaware of the trap she is laying for you…

“Ni ya black iko poa sana…” and now, she brings the downer… “aki imagine waliibuy cash, hawa Watoto wa 90s, si mchezo…”
The last part of ‘hawa Watoto wa 90s” is meant to remind you that you were born in the 1980s and you are being bypassed younger kids. Pull up your socks, dude.

It is OK, for your woman to motivate you. But a good number of women do it the wrong the way. Instead of channeling positivity, they channel so much negativity that makes you question yourself as a man. It is always some small small statements that are supposed to provoke you to action, but knowingly or unknowingly, they end up being counterproductive.

Our lawyer friend, for instance, there were days when the wife would ask him, why, a full-trained lawyer should live in a one-bedroom house in Zimmerman paying only Sh 10,000? When the kids started school, the wife wanted Makini and such but the lawyer wanted some prudence and asked for a more affordable school, and the wife asked, why is he a lawyer if he can’t afford a good school for the boy. Do you have ambition?She would ask.
Now to men.
American journalist and humorist, Helen Rowland once said, “it takes a woman 20 years to make a man of her son, and another woman 20 minutes to make him a fool.”

There are so many men who have been made fools by the women they chose for marriage. Or to date. And a wrong woman can really waste your time, your life and make you resentful for the rest of your life. I told you in Memo No. 10, don’t date low-quality women. Because low-quality women with irrepressible urges for materialism are the ones who push men so hard, the men lose their heads.

When a woman makes such kind of comments that kill you in the inside, they are not doing so to help you. They are looking for a reason to dump you. And there is no amount of stepping up on your side will ever satisfy their craving for material things. You will build a Times Tower for them, and they will damn want the next one the following morning.

My friend put it better when he described how a man loses confidence in stages. It is like receiving a call as you walk down the fire escape stairs of a building like Nyayo House. Usually, the reception is poor, and the more you walk down, the worse it becomes until you get to the basement and there is no connection.

Same with confidence. Every day your woman makes a nasty remark, you lose your network. To a point you start doubting yourself. To a point you can’t even sit with your fellow men for a drink. To a point you can’t even leave the house. You question everything. Your very being, your papers, your abilities. At this stage, if you don’t leave, madharau uanza. Ile mbaya kabisa. She will tell you in no uncertain terms that you are failure and you will never amount to a hill of beans.

And that is why I am a proponent of walking away. But first examine and know where the comments are coming from. There is a thin line between insecurity on your side and bad faith on her part. Most of the time, it is bad faith on her side. Often she is full aware or bafflingly ignorant and the results are the same.

Do you know why should walk away? Because as a man, the only thing you need for you to be a champion, for you to be rich, for you to conquer, is simple: PEACE OF MIND. You can’t function if the primary source of your motivation is the very source of your pain and depression.

So, after reading this, if your woman has been putting you down. Or after every confrontation with her, she leaves you feeling like shit, from her shitty remarks, you know the drill. Walk away, two years from now, you will buy me a good gin and tell me, ‘Silas, you were right.”

Because every day, I meet men who walked away, and they are so happy, it is toxic.
Whether a man or a woman, never stay with someone who belittles you. And if you are a woman, always weigh your words. Always think before you talk. Some shit you say, scares even the devil.

PS: I had taken a break from the memos to market my book, but now that you are buying it and we delivering it, I say thank you, and the memos will keep coming.
If you are in Mombasa copies are readily available. Eldoret, we sending more tomorrow. And those yet to receive, we will keep calling.

By Silas Nyanchwani