Gentlemen: When your woman goes silent, be very very afraid

When a woman becomes undone, she is beyond hurt, angry, or any other emotion. She is at her most clear, level-headed logical self.

Guys, as much as you dislike a moody, quarrelsome wife, you are better off when she still screams at you or ‘nags’ you. When she goes off the radar, when she shuts down and remains extremely polite and agreeable, she is entering the war zone. With a woman, there is no blood and gore. Instead, you get the Sahara, Antarctica, and ghost lands.

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I heard the most astounding story of *Clara, which, for privacy's sake, can only be described as an apt depiction of a scorned woman’s wrath. She chose grave silence, the one our DCI officers give you during interrogation as your blubber and yadda.
Clara was everything that made up wife material. Supportive to her husband, a devoted mother, a Proverbs 31 woman who brought home a decent enough income, though not too big enough to intimidate her husband.

She was faithful, beautiful, calm, and not drawn to quarrels or loud grumbling. She kept a clean, warm home, and did everything by the book. Then one day, seven years into the marriage, she woke up to find herself entangled in a web of deceit, which was met with a violent response when she asked what the underground had been happening while she played a good wife.

Since we mentioned Game of Thrones, you might be familiar with the evolution of Sansa. Naïve, dreamy, sweet girl whose world was soft cotton and powder scents, until life threw her into the very deep end. Then, she emerged, reborn, a powerful, albeit deadly woman who took no punches.
That was Clara after she became undone. There is a time when a woman gets done and when she becomes undone. She stops toeing the line. She learns that good girls finish last.

My grandmother once told me that women love easily, trust fast, and place great faith in their husbands.
“A woman is so dedicated to her husband that she will not see nor hear any evil about him, until and unless the evil slaps her across the face.”
Even then, a woman still tries to nurture, fight, shrink herself, and do everything in her power to make things work.

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See, we carry life, we nurture it and we adore family. That is our wiring. But then, at some point, we get consistently hurt, we get stunned, then we get livid.

And we get done. Or undone. Like Clara. Or Sansa.
The facades fall off. We do not care what anyone else thinks. We realise that everyone has their crapola to deal with and that life is about living, not about trying to create impressions.
We get done with smiling when we should be frowning. We face our spouses when we realise that they are taking us through the wringer. “I did not sign up for this.” We say no to violence, to adultery, to belittling, to disrespect.
A woman gets done with laughing and chooses to cry. She gets done with saying yes when she should say no. We get done with tolerance, prayers and fasting, with hoping, waiting, forbearing, needing, tiptoeing, whispering, putting up fronts, and most importantly, we get done with riding dead horses.

Read: Wifespeak: January, just be done with your bleakness!

We turn timidity into boldness. We face our traumas head-on. We learn and unlearn. We renounce conformity. Some women still persevere, tolerate, lose themselves, and turn into martyrs of marriage.

The other lot of us do the same, for a time, but one day, something snaps when we look in the mirror and can no longer recognise the joyless image gazing back at us. Guys, it is not good for man to be alone. Do not push her to undone.
 

 Karimi  is a wife and mother who believes marriage is worth it.