A slap can save your relationship!

I have been holding back over this piece. Each time I thought it was ready to run, my intuition called it back. But my mind was finally made up this last weekend, after I caught myself listening in to one of the local upcountry radio stations. The radio station was holding a talk-show on wife battering.

The show host laboured to assure her audience that women should not be beaten by husbands and lovers; then the unthinkable happened. An elderly female caller, (judging by the tone of her voice) called and asked the host to stop confusing the public. She told off the host that there are certain things that are done specifically to judge a man's reaction.

According to her, the woman doing this irritating thing is hoping that if her husband still cares for her, he will turn around and be so outraged by the irritant that he will unleash a slap on her. On the other hand, according to this lady, if the man has ulterior motives, or is contemplating leaving the relationship, he will not be terribly bothered at all.

By this logic, the woman argued that whereas she does not agree with men who literary kill their wives; women ought to find a way of determining that their men are still interested in them. And according to her the inherent feminine way of doing this is to test her man's interest in the relationship by her actions.

Apparently this testing thing is not new to women. Even at the dating stage studies show that women are known to test their men's patience, often for no reason at all, other than to find out the man's "boiling" point, or whether he really cares about them enough to lose his cool over "nothing".

Many times men fail this test, and that can spell the end of the relationship in the end, if the man comes off as too nice and lacking in backbone. So the next time, you agree to go together for her friend's wedding party at 2:00p.m. and she is still in the bathroom at 2:30p.m. you know what is going on, you are under the test my brother. How you react can determine how long you'll be in this relationship.

Despite what you have heard, women do not see it as cool for a man to lack backbone here, so my dear brother throw your toys and ask her why she is always late. Assure her that you will not accept to be taken for granted if she "misbehaves" like this again. If she is not done with the test, you could soon see her sniffing into a handkerchief, in protest at your "cruelty".

Now if you apologise after this, you have ruined it for all of us. It means that you did not mind being taken for granted and thus you are opening yourself up to be tortured endlessly, and as such my brother you deserve your pain, so eat it bravely. It also means that for such a woman, all men are wimps that deserve to be tortured or de-toothed as some would rather have it.

Of course many women will deny this, but if you take time off to find out how our old men managed to maintain their marriages, you will be shocked at horror stories. For instance, no woman could ever run away from home simply because her husband was too tough and uncompromising. In fact, it is what they expected him to be!

This country is full of corporate women who endure corporal punishment at the hands of their husbands. Many of these women will not say a word about it the next day, but will be cruising nice cars as the rest of us endure the occasional splash of water from the roadsides. Oh, and of course they will assure you how they would just get up and leave their husbands, if they just as much as talked down to them, forget about the slap!

During our youth, there were certain things that we as children could never ask of our fathers, because they had set a certain standard. In case you have your doubts, the situation was the same for their wives as well. Like that caller affirmed, the only woman who ever crossed that barrier was the one trying to find out if the man still cared enough to unleash that slap.