Love Receipts

It was from the mouth of a comedian that I first heard the phrase “receipts of love”. The comedian was talking about his crashed marriage and how suddenly he realized that all the things he had done as a father and as a husband out of the goodness of his heart and the love he had for his wife and children did not count any longer unless he had receipts to prove them. Imagine being happily married and keeping a receipt of every conversation you are having with your spouse, deliberately downloading apps to record your conversations to keep evidence of verbal abuse and other forms of abuse you are enduring in the marriage while being happily married to the person who you are gathering evidence against.
 A couple had a fight, and one or the other brought out a phone and started taking pictures of the damage done either to the property, each other, or the children. How in God’s name is that still a marriage? A marriage where every conversation is recorded secretly by the other party to extract evidence against the person who is supposed to be the most open and trustworthy partner in his or her life. I wonder how such partners feel when they make love to each other, knowing you are planning a divorce in your heart and gathering evidence against the person you are sharing that most intimate moment with. How is that true love? How do you explain that to your children later in life? How do you explain that to yourself? Is that not more or less like sleeping with the enemy? If you don’t want to be married to someone anymore, or you don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone anymore, what is wrong with walking away? There are too many damaged people who have no business being in relationships but someone they found someone to relate with at that level and they are making the person’s life a sheer hell on earth just for the fun of it.

 A brother explained to me that when he met his ex-girlfriend, she had recordings on her phone of evidence of wrongdoing by all her exes. These are carefully recorded conversations on the phone in which she would place a call to them after she must have hurt them and seen that they were about to break up with her, she would then speak in a very friendly manner asking what her offense was and ensuring that for every answer she gave a counter reply regardless of how truthful or deceitful it is so that at a point the person would lose his or her temper and she would then claim the person had always had anger issues and was abusive in the relationship. He said she shared many of the recordings with him, like a red Indian sharing the scalp of his victims. He said he never knew she would do the same to him some months later they had broken up, he wanted to settle things with her and talk about reconciling when he suddenly got a phone call from her. He picked up the call and she began to speak to him in a quiet and composed voice about how the relationship started and other events that happened in the course of the relationship. He realized that throughout the conversation she was trying to paint herself as the sensible one while downplaying all the unscrupulous things she did in the course of the relationship. Suddenly it dawned on him that she was recording the conversation, he then asked her “Are you recording this conversation?” At that point, she began to stutter because the recording is only effective when done without his knowledge. It was a puzzle to him, who was she planning to share the recording with? Her next lover? Her parents? Will it be the evidence that she couldn’t get married because all the men she had dated were crazy or will it be evidence that he was not a good match for her? What could possess anyone to do such? Insecurity? Mental instability? Seeking Validation from others? Just being bitter and destructive on a whim? I never could understand it.
A lawyer later told me that these receipts are the evidence to present in the court of law in the case of a divorce. The lawyer said when a partner is causing you physical damage and other forms of damages, it is best to take pictures, videos, and audio recordings of such so that you can prove your case before a judge. I understand that if we are talking about gathering evidence against a stranger, an enemy, or even a family member who had certain issues and would often deny it, this can be done so that such a person can see for himself or herself and seek help. For example, the husband denies snoring or the wife denies snoring the husband then records the wife while she snored and the wife records the husband while he snored, they both listen to their snores and laugh about it. That is fun and when it is done in the right spirit, it is okay. It can also apply when a man or a woman has certain habits like drunkenness, the other partner can record the one with the habit so that he or she can show it to the other partner when such becomes sober. How can you in good faith love someone, be in a relationship with the person or marry the person and still have the ability to gather evidence against the person so that other people can act as arbiters of your love and judge between the two of you to decide what? The moment you started gathering evidence, you had already logged out of the marriage, you do not need a judge to tell you that. The fact that you can still sleep with the person while you had logged out and had changed your intention to saboteur is what bothers me.

 There are lines of decency nobody should cross, not because of the other person but because of what it does to you. I read the story of two lovers who at the beginning of their relationship decided they wanted to do something as serious as marriage. The man was upfront with his intentions but the lady was cautious she felt they needed to spend some time together in a relationship and see if they could work out as a couple. They got into the relationship, and it was good maybe even better than good but the man had some habits that the lady couldn’t stand. He had friends with whom he clubs once a week, and whenever he went off with them he would return to his apartment late. The lady by this time had moved in with him and she didn’t like the late-night crawling thing. She talked to him about it several times, cried about it several times, and eventually escalated issues and they had a bitter row about it. The day after the bitter row, the man called off the relationship he told her he was no longer interested in marrying her because of all the things she said and done the previous night simply because he went to hang out with his friends. The lady didn’t know he would take her escalation to that level. She had let go of her apartment and didn’t have anywhere else to go so she told him she would like to renegotiate their terms of engagement. She said it was the “marriage expectation” that made her care that much about his habit of hanging out with friends in lounges and clubs every Friday. If they take marriage off the table, she won’t give a hoot anymore where he goes on Fridays and whom he hangs out with as long as he does not cheat on her. She proposed that they go into a friend-with-benefits relationship. She stays in his apartment, cooks his meals, and warms his bed, he will take care of her financial and emotional needs but she will be free to talk to other guys while he will be free to talk to other ladies. When she finds the right person she will move on and he can do the same but because she was staying in his house he will give her two months’ notice so that she can move out. They both agreed to the deal and from that point on their relationship was heaven, they had no more fights. She was open to other suitors but no serious one showed up. He was open to other suitors but no serious one showed up. They went on like this for a year.

 On the eve of the New Year, he gave her a huge sum of money as rent support. The money was enough to cover full rent or half of her rent depending on the location she might choose to rent a place. He also gave her a two-month ultimatum so that she could move on as agreed. He told her it was obvious they could not be married to each other and the wise thing to do was go their separate ways rather than waste each other’s time. She said she had agreed with him and she called agents to help her get on the house-hunting mission. However, she intensified her efforts to change his mind by ensuring she slept with him every night. She was not going to marry him but she didn’t want to leave his house either. He saw this and told her it would not work because he intended to get married in the new year and he would not be getting married to her. She told him she had no romantic interest in him, she more or less saw him as a sex toy or sex doll and was taking her pleasure when it was still available.
After two months, she still hadn’t gotten an apartment of her own. He called for another meeting, this time she revealed her secret recordings of the two of them both audio and video and threatened to release them on social media and damn the consequences if he ever told her to rent her own place or move out of his apartment ever again. She said she was ready to face all the legal consequences and had even written her will because she was willing to die if he was prepared to kill her. She said she was not forcing herself on him as a wife but moved in on her own accord and would move out only when she was ready. He kept quiet, he felt she was having a mental meltdown and as a result, he should just manage her until she was no longer on edge and then escape from her.

 A month later, he went to work and didn’t return to the apartment. She stayed on for a few days, called to plead with him to return home. He told her he would not return until she left and also told her he had given instructions to the security guards in the house that she could only take out her clothes and other belongings but none of his things. She left that same day, did she expect him to continue to act freely around her after she had threatened that she was making videos and would joyfully share them on social media just for the fun of it?

Every relationship requires a level of trust that should not be crossed as long as those in the relationship intend to stay together. The moment a husband starts blackmailing a wife to have sex with her (I was told of a husband who caught his wife cheating, he had video and picture evidence of the act he extracted it from the wife’s phone). When he accused the wife and presented his evidence, the wife fell on her knees and began to beg. The husband insisted he was reporting to the wife’s parents and getting back his bride price. Wife begged and promised her husband she would do whatever he wanted if he would keep her secret. From that day, her husband demanded she pay half the rent, and half the school fees of the children, resign from her job, start trading (the person she was cheating with was a male colleague in the office), and have sex with him four days a week. The wife complied but only for a year. The moment the phone on which the evidence was got bad, the wife filed for divorce, presented her own evidence in court, and walked away from the marriage.

 If love is not freely given, it is not worth it. Sleeping with someone you are gathering evidence against makes you a very bad person, like Delilah. It should not be encouraged at all. If push comes to shove and a couple has to land in court for any reason, the truth should be all the evidence that is needed. A friend told me I was being naive by taking this position, he said this is why Christians lose out in court despite having good cases. They will blatantly refuse to gather evidence against their opponents because gathering evidence is synonymous with keeping grudges or holding people in malice. I don’t think life should be that difficult. The same thing applies to parents who go to court claiming they have been the sole provider for the children in a marriage just so they can make up an excuse to leave a marriage with the children while labeling their spouses as irresponsible.
In many cases, the evidence points to the contrary. Why the lie? If he has been providing for the children and if he is a good father, what will it cost you to tell the truth? We have good fathers who are terrible husbands, we have good husbands who are terrible fathers. We also have good mothers who are terrible wives and good wives who are terrible mothers. It does not sit well that partners have to concoct lies and makeup stories to make their spouses look bad before a judge. It leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth. I understand that some abusive cases are so bad that they have to be reported to the police and therefore picture and video evidence has to be taken. What I don’t understand is why the victim here will go back to the marriage, knowing firsthand what their partner is capable of, just for the sake of experiencing abuse again for evidence Of course, we all strive to make our relationships work and we don’t give up at the first hurdle if there was a disagreement and we needed to sit down, have a talk, and settle it then we must settle it and forgive each other cleanly. If indeed we have forgiven each other, neither party will install an app to record the conversations and take pictures of the other person because he or she is anticipating a future reoccurrence of bad behavior. 

On a final note, let me state this. A man had a misunderstanding with his wife, the man was previously married with children but the marriage did not turn out well. He got remarried and the second wife was more than a blessing to him. They made each other happy and they made a lot of progress together while they were married. Then this man died, his children from the former marriage laid their hands on his iPad, iPhone, and other gadgets they began to comb through WhatsApp messages and emails. In one of the emails, they found a message written by this man to his wife several months later in which he berated her for being excessively jealous and nagging. This was due to an incident that happened between them several months before and they had since forgotten about it and moved on. The children used this email message as evidence that the second wife was wicked and deserving of nothing that their father left for her in his will. Of course, the children who did this were all female and they were invested in the fact that the second wife should leave their father’s house empty-handed. When I heard the story, I told myself the truth. That man would have been weeping in his grave for how his second wife was treated especially because it was a mail he wrote to her with his own hand that his children capitalized on to strip that woman of the dignity she gave him while he was alive but which he has failed to give her even in death. Receipts of love are supposed to be gratitude and affection not some written notes, recorded voices, and videos that show or prove what we did or spent, how we spent it, or where we spent it on our loved ones.
 PS: I know a brother who is suffering from domestic abuse at the moment his wife works in Katsina. They live in Lagos, he has a good job and he is making good money. His wife insisted she cannot leave the job she has in Katsina where she is earning stipends. They have two children, the wife refused to take the children to Katsina and she insisted her husband could not take care of the two boys by himself. She instructed him to take the children to her parents in Ikorodu. The husband said no, she beat him blue-black and smashed the windshield of his car. He had to run away from home for now to preserve his life and sanity. When the case was reported to the police, they told him to take video evidence of the destruction to his car and himself he said he cannot. What joy would it give him? To hold evidence against his wife in his phone and be watching it or sharing it with friends and relatives. It is evident that the marriage is over. He does not mind walking away to start all over, but he has refused to burden his heart and his phone with visuals and sounds of pain and agony gathered as evidence against his wife. I applaud him for his stance.