Do men feign headaches to deny their wives conjugal rights?

August 18th 2013
By SILAS NYANCHWAI
Many marriages begin by the groom running marathons in the bedroom to his young wife’s chagrin. But a few years on, it is the wife who becomes the instigator as men suddenly discover ‘low’ moments when they don’t want ‘disturbance’.

This surprises women who, barely a year earlier, believed that men are annoyingly ‘automatic’ — like a switch.
But truth is that tables turn and by the time men are in their 30s and 40s, it is them who are often ‘not in the mood’. Pushed to the wall by sexually demanding wives and fearing to have their fragile egos bruised, they have devised hilarious strategies to evade that vital marital obligation without being deemed ‘useless’.

Joel Ombati, knows too well that his wife hates his mother: “Anything about my mother and she gets irritated instantly. So I make sure I yap lot about my mother and all her stalled projects that I intend to kick-start — a conversation that irritates my wife so much that it sends her to bed unusually early,” says the 30 year-old Nairobi based urban planner.
Foolproof
“It works like magic. It can switch off her excitement in a flash. I just have to, for instance, tell her that we need to visit mum or she is coming over, and all the excitement she had disappears — instantly. Any argument afterwards will be welcome, because that postpones the do even more,” claims Ombati.
A few women we spoke to weren’t, however, too impressed with Ombati’s so-called foolproof strategy.
“That is evil and extremely selfish of the man,” says Rose Tum, a 33-year old tutor at a Nairobi  college. “I mean, he can just say he is not up to it, not that women are such nags. We are understanding.”
Not necessarily true. Another woman, who did not want to be named, calls this approach, childish, saying only the weak and the slow can opt for such.
“Real men, speak up and should not afraid of telling their woman the truth. It hurts, but it’s far much better than obvious lies,” she says, obviously irked by the cleverness of this manipulative strategy.
But what these two women don’t let on is that any time a woman wants it and the man does not, the man is confronted with all manner of questions. Are you sleeping out with other women? Do you hate me? Have I added weight? Is it that I don’t turn you on anymore? All questions will be about her self-esteem. And a man will have to carefully word his defense with the razor-sharp wit of a lawyer accompanied by the humility of a respectable preacher. But still, some wives hardly understand. So some men would rather try and fail, or deliver an underwhelming performance than face the tirade.
Steve Gisiora feigns sickness — backache — and carries himself around in a rather weakly way. Like most men when they anticipate a call of duty but have, for instance, been up to some hanky-panky mischief or they are just not in the mood following a bad day in office, what Gisiora simply does is feign sickness. Unlike women who feign the headache in the bedroom, he does it long before he sets foot in the house.
Gisiora will get home, head straight to the bedroom and request her to get him some painkillers or some Malaria tablets from the nearest chemists. Women are sympathetic; she empathises with him and foregoes her conjugal rights.
“You pretend that you are about to die the next minute and you don’t encourage any conversation. You send her for medicine, she brings it and you take it and you sleep. If you encourage a conversation, she might talk you out of your pretense,” warns Gisiora, a businessman in Kisii.   
Alternatively, Wycliffe Ouma, buys the medicine and takes it home. At home, he will announce how unwell he feels and in the process ask for water to swallow down his medicine (read painkillers). Ouma claims that this is just as effective as when they claim to be having a headache. Easy does it.
Expanded
Another cunning man, Boniface Katili kicks a storm in a tea cup by complaining about her body weight and hygiene. This is another strategy that can turn off a woman and virulently raise a storm between the sheets. Women hate any reference, implied or otherwise to their body weight, unless when it is when they have dropped some kilos.
Katili, claims to have used it once and it was very effective. He got home and his wife was too excited and had even set the right mood, but unfortunately on that day, what Katili wanted is what he describes as ‘a damn good sleep’. He inadvertently alluded to the fat accumulating around her waist and she cried the rest of the night. It saved him the energy he would have expended, but the apologies for that slight were, however, just as much.
“Look, for a woman just do something or bring up a subject that will tamper with her moods. Weight is one such issues guaranteed to hurt her. Most men who know this trick have employed it from time to time. Similarly say something alluding negatively to her hygienic, body odour or hair, especially the weave. Tell her you don’t like the way it smells. It works like magic,” claims Mr Katili.
Smith Ouko, 42, a matatu driver lets on that whenever he gets home and doesn’t want to be ‘bothered’, he fouls her mood by attempting to borrow a loan from his wife.
“Nothing irritates my wife like when I ask her to give me cash,” Ouko reveals. “Women have an intimate relationship with their money and nothing puts her off than when a man asks a loan from her on the heat of the moment. When a woman is thinking about tender loving care, she never wants a discussion revolving around money, more so her money!”
Phony
But Martha Njeri*, who is married to a police officer, has noticed a pattern about her husband. Whenever she’s suspicious he has been up to some mischief, he comes home fuming.
“Even when everything is perfectly in order, he will raise hell over her slight delay to open the door. He exaggerates his anger and acts and says things meant to offend me, rather badly
“What is funny is that every time he comes home quarreling, he never demands anything in bed. In fact, he pretends to fall asleep immediately he gets into bed,” Njeri notes.

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What men don’t understand is that whereas they can run, they can’t hide and soon come to rue their phony headaches and fake quarrels. American journalist Daniel Bergne in his book What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, says women are just as lustful, their minds full of fantasies and their sexual urges not any different from those of men.  
Bergne points out that women are just as sexually aggressive as men, only that the boorishly patriarchal constraints have so far curtailed women from exploring and exploiting their full sexual potential.
Happenings in many Kenyan urban centres can easily vindicate Bergne’s assertions. As men continue to smugly feign headaches, some wives are exploring and exploiting their full sexual potential — outside marriage.