When men prize women above their own lives

September 8, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, My Column, Source

I was having a drink one day when my friend Henry Jeffrey, the same Dr Henry Jeffrey, became embroiled in a conversation I was having about smoking. He was not a smoker and I was, as were some of the boys I happened to be with at the time. The occasion was one of the anniversaries of Queen’s College and we had repaired to the Georgetown Club.

There were those among us who had quit smoking and had different symptoms of withdrawal. Henry explained that smoking had become physiological, so the attempts to stop would be hard for some. What he was saying was that cigarettes somehow got into the system (not that I don’t know how) and pretty soon the body craved it in the same way it craves food.

Henry said that physiological things are hard to get rid of. For example, sex would be a driving force for some people, especially when they are young. I suppose that is why the Maker opts to let the older folk tone down by simply toning down the physiology.  But these days there are Viagra and Cialis that make older men continue on the race track, living the dream they once did as youngsters.

That is why I thought that life had lost all meaning for some people, when I heard that a man pumped fifteen bullets into another because the man was sharing his woman. Different men would react differently and I know many who did. I would never see it fit to spend one minute in jail over a woman. I tell my friends that no matter the pain, it will ease with each passing day. That too is the human physiology.

Another friend once said to me that it is in men to chase, conquer and then flee when it comes to women. Marriage, in his book, merely represents a break in the chase, but it does not mean that the man stops chasing when he gets married. Tiger Woods is one of the famous cases, although I didn’t see why there was all the need for the publicity. In Guyana there are many such cases and they will not make the news.

I will not try to imagine what went through the mind of the shooter. Some say that he was extremely close to the victim—that they were actually friends. From the woman’s point of view, she must have been seeking those things that she found missing in her partner, because that is what they all say when they are caught, if they get a chance to talk.

So there it is, the shooter is hiding and the woman is now left vacant. I also know that some men do not consider their absence an opportunity for the woman to move on. I know a man who spent a long time in jail and came out to kill the woman because she simply could not sit and wait.

All the cases I seem to hear about these days are rooted in infidelity. The male is so much more aggressive that he would kill to preserve what he considers his property.

There are organisations that seek to make men react differently, but these organisations seem to ignore the nature of the human mind. One trend that some people are working on involves working with mothers. It makes sense.  Women raise their sons and it behooves them to see that their sons treat women in a certain way.

I have two sons and none of them would hit a woman because I taught them to walk away rather than assault the woman. I even told them that men like to sleep and that women can be excellent planners. This is no joke.

When a man opts to get married the woman fixes the date and many men do not know why. The answer is simple. The woman ensures that she is not on her period during her honeymoon. Similar planning takes place when a man beats a woman. She knows that he must sleep and that is when he is most prone to harm by way of retaliation.

One of my ex-wife’s cousins was the victim of domestic abuse and one day she decided that enough was enough. The man beat her and then went to bed. She placed a pan of oil on the fire and every time he nodded she would sprinkle some water in the pan. The man would jump out of his doze to see a tearful wife by the fire with this pan of boiling oil.

In this case the man did not sleep all night; daylight could not come fast enough. He left that house never to return. I could picture his face the next morning as he fled his home.

Another friend, a policeman, got scalded with hot oil too. This happened at Nabaclis a few years ago. People said that he screamed like a pig. The bottom line is that men should not hit women; neither should they incriminate themselves over a woman.

The fact that one man got stabbed to death this past week because a passing motorist made a comment to a woman he happened to be walking with is also so unnecessary. For me, the comment would have been seen as a compliment and the issue would have passed.

Reasoning plays a significant role in the way people behave and reasoning is best among the persons with the most schooling. Yet sometimes the physiology of the person can make him or her forget all about the reasoning.

Fifteen bullets. Somebody lost all sense of reasoning. Some lawyers would want to plead temporary insanity. Quite frankly, a senseless loss of life.

My friend Mike Baptiste reminded of a case of a Kingston resident whose wife was cuckolding him. Mike said that the man was a frequent traveller and the woman could not wait until the man was out of the house.

One day the man left for an overseas trip but changed his mind when he reached the airport. He returned home and caught his wife in flagrante delecto.  Suffice it to say that the man literally softened and froze.

This husband simply got him to put on his clothes and leave. For his wife, he asked her to leave as she came into his life, with the clothes on her back, although Mike embellished the situation by claiming that the man put his wife out naked.

There was no loss of life and all parties went on to live either happily thereafter or as best as they saw fit.