By Ebele Orakpo
Marriage, we are told, is for better or for worse but in recent times, it has been redefined as ‘for better we stay, for worse we part.’ Today, marriages pack up for the flimsiest of excuses. ‘Oh, he presses the toothpaste in the middle instead of the end.’ He doesn’t arrange his shoes well.’ ‘Oh she thinks we are equals. I’ll show her who is the boss.’ These and more are what the author of Anatomy of Marriage set out to address. Anatomy is the study of the structure of organisms and their parts, So Chief Olayinka Ogunmekan in his book, looked at the structure of marriage and how the various parts should work together in harmony. He spoke to Vanguard on what inspired the book due for launch on Sunday, March 8, 2015 at 2.00pm at the Lagos Country Club, Ikeja. Excerpts:

CHIEF Olayinka Ogunmekan, president of Nigerian-Swedish Chamber of Commerce, ex-banker, ex-Lagos Country Club president and marketer, has had vast experience in both monogamy and polygamy and has interacted with a lot of people.

The 69-year-old Ogunmekan said,“My father was a polygamist and I was determined to make a success of my marriage. I thank God that I have no regrets. But funny enough, I don’t encourage my friends to have second wives because I know they cannot cope. I am coping due to God’s divine grace.”

Olayinka Ogunmekan

What inspired Anatomy of Marriage?

The inspiration for this book came as a result of my interactions with a lot of people, both young and old and I have seen many things happening in marriages.

Attendance at seminars

I started by just interacting and counselling young people and my friends in those days. You can imagine our wives fighting each other over what I don’t know. That was how I started. I am talking of over 30 years ago. Bit by bit, it grew. There are many homes I have brought back together and they are always happy. Apart from my marketing job, I did banking and worked in Union Bank, I am proud to say I am a product of Union Bank. My attendance at seminars both abroad and locally, helped me a lot because I was able to gain a lot of knowledge.

Anatomy of Marriage is not a novel, it is not a religious book, it is a book of knowledge, a reference book. My first book is Steps to good marriage, but when you have steps, you have to sit back and analyse. Steps to good marriage may just be stage one, but keeping the marriage is a different ball game and that was why I illustrated more in this book. I entitled it Anatomy to go further and say ‘look, this thing goes further than just steps to good marriage. To keep the marriage is more important than the steps you take to get tmarried . Some people can get married within six months of meeting but how do they sustain the marriage? That is where anatomy comes in.

“The book is for both married and intending couples. You can imagine a couple that have been married for 20 years now quarreling because the wife gets annoyed that the husband is pressing the toothpaste in the middle. These are real life stories. Imagine a lawyer telling his medical doctor wife that she can’t deny him of sex, and the wife saying no, there are certain times you cannot have sex. The husband says no, it’s my legal right. All these things are addressed in this book.

“The young people need this book more than the elderly ones because their life pattern is different now. In those days, our mothers will lay the bed for a mistress but if a young man should try it today, both he and the mistress will wake up in the hospital.

Again, most of our young men consume a lot of alcohol these days which affects libido and the wife would think he is cheating on her because before they got married, they were having fun anytime, anywhere but after two children, their sex life became almost non-existent. The problem is that his libido has gone down due to consumption of excess alcohol. Even if you take too much water, it will have an effect on you so we need to educate our young ones” said Ogunmekan.

Equality: “Today, there is so much talk about equality of the sexes. This is one of the problems because today’s women see themselves as equal with men. Equality between a man and a woman ends in the bedroom

That is why a woman will leave her father’s house and come to your house, change her father’s name and bear your own father’s name and say you are still equal? This is African setting. The western countries where they practise Polyandry, polygny, etc., you notice they have very high number of broken marriages. Here, before you can separate, or divorce, the families would be involved, they will ask questions. So we must always have at the back of our minds that this is African.”