HAVE I BECOME THE TOXIC PARTNER

Hello there! I trust that your week has been abundant with wisdom and completely positive and all that nice stuff; I just planted some greens in the garden so I could say that mine has been great!
Anyway with all the good vibes going round I came to a kind of revelation while deep in my daydreams, that although I have been the recipient of some especially rotten antics, I may have borrowed from them a little more than I want to admit, and that I may have become a bit toxic from that.

Obviously, 'a bit' is relative.

So anyway the main reason for this conclusion is that sometimes I get really aggressive and go all out in revenge not caring a lot about much else- feelings, thoughts, responses, and anything else (of the other person) just cease to matter to me. And the it's not a change that occurs at the snap of a finger though that is what it looks like to the outside observer. It's a process that begins very much in advance and builds over time, picking random pieces here and there and growing in size like an avalanche until finally boom! It hits the unfortunate victim; nowadays mostly my spouse who I guess has developed some rather thick skin and mostly deals with it better than I expect him to.
It doesn't make it any better for either of us to be able to predict the patterns that lead up to it, but it has to be worth something. He's asked me before if I can stand to live with a person like myself, and in my mind I just see all the logic, planning, rationality, and order that would be there so I say yes every time. But maybe what he sees is everything that I have managed to get out of my self. Maybe I wear all my unlikable traits on the surface so that the inside is nice, calm, and lovely, because I value within a lot more than I value outside - it is my final stand after all, the only place I can find peace, serenity, and security when the world around me goes dark.
I can understand why he wants me to make our house into something similar; so he can have peace, love, quiet, and all those nice things going when he gets home from a bad day out there, so he can rest and rebuild the strength to go face the terrible outside world another day. So why do I not share my inside peace with him? Maybe it could be because I think he doesn't deserve it; he got himself thrown out so now he should just brace himself for the coming winter without any help or sympathy from me. Maybe there's a magic key or set of keys that he needs in order to get back in.
We tend to take for-granted the things that we don't have to work for, and feel they are less valuable than the ones we sweat for. The first time round I gave him the key free of charge, and I can't help but to wonder if I had made him work for it how different things would have been right now? Maybe we would not even be together, and maybe that would have been for the best. But we are now, and have kids that we brought into our stupid, messy lives, so any decision I/We make has to be filtered through their eyes first.

I heard that women find it easier to forgive cheating spouses than men do, but could it be that it's not easier for them to bear mistreatment, but rather it's harder for them to dissociate themselves from the consequences of their actions?
As as stupid as it sounds when you hear 'I stayed and endured it for the kids', it's a very different railway track when you become a mother; when you look into the eyes of your little angels and you cannot think of a single person or thing that you wouldn't kill (or try to) just so those eyes will never cry in pain.
What then is your own self worth at this point? Of course you want to hang around and watch them get little ones of their own and succeed infinitely but what if by looking out for your own self interest and leaving their father you will throw a spanner in the works?
I know it's just as messy to have to watch your parents fight every damn day but honestly, would you rather they just stopped trying and parted ways or they stayed and tried to fix things no matter how much it seemed to take? After all, you never asked them to have you...
So which one would I choose; stay and grow bitter from all the hurt or leave and watch my kids grow bitter because they feel short-changed? It's true they rarely appreciate the sacrifices that you make for their sake but some of these actions have consequences in real-time; and the results are visible for lifetimes in the afflicted. Sometimes.
So which would you rather; that I stay and lose my mind trying to get things under control, or leave and try out new roads, at the risk that my kids will lean the other way when it's too late to change anything about anything?
Which would I rather?
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PICTURE-PERFECT RELATIONSHIPS, AKA 'COUPLE GOALS'

Hello darlings! I trust you have all kept well, loving even if treated unkind, and  healthy even if broke lol....
So early this week, thanks to the internet and a bunch of sleepless neighbors, we were served some drama when a prominent vlogging couple had a nasty breakup, or extension of a breakup, and got some text and even video evidence of the goings-on.
This made me want to write about those picture-perfect couples we all have seen at some point of our lives (especially on social media), or even have the pleasure of knowing personally. Although there is no such thing as a perfect union of any kind, we are all really easy to deceive and find ourselves typing fast 'couple goals' on pictures of people whom we have never ever met just based on what they share online.
As either a victim or ambassador (depending on where you stand) of being idolized as a perfect couple member myself, I'm here to tell you that the fights are bitter, and the compromise needed is out of this world.
Contrary to popular belief, we do not always split the tab and the house chores, neither do we find ourselves completing each other's sentences and being synchronous in everything we do.

Sometimes he wants left while I want right, and others he won't eat dagaa yet it may be all I'm craving for.
Other times he will refuse to help out with some duty when I'm feeling too unwell to do it, or even act up a storm if I ask him to help, and I in turn will archive this to torment him with days, weeks, or even months after the event, at my own pleasure.
Outside, people see us stepping aside for the other to pass, or calmly arguing about some issue or other with healthy attitudes and hearty smiles, and for some reason they think that we carry this to our home and stay like that from sun up to sun down.
This is honestly not even possible to say the truth, because we are two different people with different backgrounds and upbringing, different opinions and even different hormones flowing through us, of variable concentrations and combinations, so stress will affect us differently, for instance.
I cannot even start to say how difficult it is when I'm pregnant or we are going through some financial issue or just generally under pressure from life;we borderline turn into animals and the house becomes a multi-room fight club.
When the kids are around and/or awake though, we try very hard to disagree amicably; so hard, in fact, that it is becoming a kind of second nature to us to have a diplomatic fight without raising our voices or lifting our fists against each other. Personally I grew up

in a home where my parents fought plenty, openly, and no holds barred, though never physically but verbally and up to this day, I can't stand being yelled at and being in an environment where people are yelling at each other stresses me tf out.
I do not want to put my kids through this, and fortunately, neither does he, so for this I am lucky-we all are, because we have relative peace of mind while at home, and even if the two of us are fighting, it becomes very exhausting to keep switching from angry to happy, back to fight mode then again play mode. Over time, I hope we will be able to stop altogether, but I am not disillusioned enough to imagine that our seas will be permanently calm.
Still, I keep praying for the best.
I believe that it is this kind of irrational thinking that has pushed the divorce rates through the roof, the thinking that one can find a spouse that will never be angry, will always be supportive, and will never be broke (lol for that one especially). It is not even that they grew up in perfect households, and they are not perfect themselves, but they seem to think that they can have a tv-kind of person, and it saddens me to say that girls and ladies are the worst afflicted.
It is so bad that I had a friend who used to tell me that she's 'talking to' about four guys at any given point, and when I asked her how she would feel if the guys were also 'talking to' other ladies, she hesitated before saying that she would not really mind. So then I asked her what her endgame was, and she told me she wanted to settle with one that ticked a majority of her boxes, which included having a car, and for the longest time ever, she would pick a guy then drop him, because according to her 'he was wealthy but didn't have good looks, or he was handsome but didn't drive, or he expected me to stop talking to the other guys'
..etc....
...etc....
....etc....
So eventually I told her she wasn't being realistic, and that she should also realize she had some glaring flaws herself so she can't just hop from boy to guy to boy and so on because eventually she would fail at her own game, and she chastised me, asking me why I was saying that things like driving were not necessarily deal breakers yet when I met and settled for my boyfriend/baby daddy/mzee he was driving.
I wondered if it had been a competition all along, but she went on to tell me that most of her friends

in serious relationships were with driving guys. It didn't seem to change her mind when I told her that he was not driving at the time we met, and we actually got serious a while before he  got the car, and though we stopped arguing at this point, I'm not sure if she heard me. All the same, she eventually settled down with a guy with a car, and a general nice personality, so I was kinda relieved that she had managed to have her cake and eat it too, and yes, there is no tragedy to read about here.
I was a bit careful about talking relationship issues with her after that however, because we were clearly of two very different mind-sets, and we drifted apart since then so apart from the random checking up on her, we don't exactly talk that much.
It just got home to me at that time that females seem to have their priorities messed up, because they will very often choose wealth over charisma, kindness, and even health.
I'm not saying go to the gutters to collect the brokest of the broke, after all guys will also seek out the most attractive female they can find to shack up with, just that you should not dismiss everyone who can't drive you to a black-tie dinner every two weeks because who knows, you may walk everywhere but glow from the unadulterated love you are getting, all while keeping fit.....
That's all I have for today, and I hope that people(women) will stop trying to get impossible ideals while they are themselves very basic and have little to offer besides warmth on a bed. Til next time, stay sane my friends!
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WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE RESPOND TO BEING CHEATED ON

Hello my lovely foxxes, I trust that you have been well and that you're chasing your dreams with lots of vigour, working on your well being and what not :-)

So, early this week I came across a post on Twitter of a scorned woman calling out her 'co-wife' and saying she's left her home to her randy husband and her because she could not stop screwing a man she knew was married. Of course people in the comments had all manner of opinions, from supporting her and consoling her to being shitty insensitive supporters of the guy, or his side chick, or both haha.
I felt her pain because I have been on the receiving end of this nonsense more than once and I knew the range of emotions she must have gone through. She got to putting it up on social media though, and I always stopped just one step short of this as I thought it would work against me in the long run because 1, the internet never forgets, and 2, we don't know what the future has in store for us and life has a funny way sometimes. Plus, keyboard warriors are the worst; they don't know you and they don't really care so your chances of being bullied right off the edge of that cliff you're standing on are very high.
We are all different though, and being a person who never told anyone about it -family, friends, or frienemies- I never understand how someone goes online to air this laundry out....
So it got me thinking of the different ways in which people respond to being cheated on because it occurred to me that there's quite a few, and I wrote this article up, about the different categories of scorned women out there .... Read on, and be sure to let me know in the comments section which of these categories you fall under, if you dare haha  

THE FORGIVING WIFE
I have to say that this is either the most common, or the rarest of the categories, depending on who you listen to. You have to consider the fact that most of those who forgive do not go public with the information in the first place so this survey is grossly off, mainly because they feel shame and feel as if society will judge them for being cheated on (which it does almost always anyway). So rather than be told that the randy animal of a male strayed because she couldn't cook, or couldn't sex him right, or placed career or children before him, they choose to stay mum and just swallow the pain caused to them.
This results in one of two things, either the woman will get so bitter from all the heartache and will loathe all other women she perceives might be in a better situation than her, and will live the most miserable life you could imagine. Alternatively she will try to hold it in, but without regular outlet the pressure builds up slowly over time then like a pressure cooler, boom! A homicide, suicide, or both are the worst case scenarios in this case.
The other type of forgiver is the one that is lucky enough to have a partner that truly regrets his action, and works through some healing process religiously resulting in a better future for both, and a happy marriage in the end. If you have one of these unicorns, pray every day that they will not be corrupted by the millions of mules out there lol.


THE VIOLENT WIFE

This class is glorified in movies, I guess because, well, drama. She will key your car, or spray paint it lewd things. She will trash the house if it's yours or throw you out like a dog if it's hers. She will sue you if she can and will cut off your friend's and family, calling you all a classless nasty lot that everyone should avoid, then she will leave in a huff after causing as much physical damage as she possibly can afford to.
Sometimes she will be violent, ambushing you when you don't really expect it or can't do anything in your defence. Other times she will pretend all is well, but will start to grind glass and mix it in your food, waiting patiently for the day you die an agonizing death then bury you and your nonsense with a perfect poker face. I have to say at this point that I do not endorse any of these actions, at any point or for any reason. Life is sacred and no one has the right to take it away from somebody else.

THE EYE FOR AN EYE WIFE
I have heard that this one is a bad one, mainly because she does to you what you did to her, only more publicly, or with someone that it just kills you to imagine, like your boss, your best friend, your brother, your father....
Because the guy will feel her pain and realize he has absolutely no excuse that can be viable, it hurts all the more especially when he asks the same questions he asked and gets the same responses that he gave; they do say that revenge is a dish best served cold.
Most of the time she does this as a last resort and really doesn't care if you leave her or not, as long as she gave you a taste of your own medicine, then that's fine with her. For the obvious reasons like disease or an awkward pregnancy especially in the event the two stick together, this method seems to me the equivalent of splattering your own clothes with mud because someone came and sat next to you with mud on THEIR clothes. Love is said to be blind, but some of the times its deaf, dumb, and down right crazy as well... I will stop here because I am not too far from this type of madness, as you shall see in the future if you stick around lol.


THE DRAMATIC WIFE
This category is men's favorite one, because there is plenty of huffing and puffing, but no action in the end. She will cry and yell, threaten to kill and threaten to leave, threaten to tear you to pieces with her bare hands and say she will not put up with this shit.
At the end of it all, it will be a lot of words and no action, so the guy often just waits until it blows over, resets and goes back to his side chick next time: rinse and repeat. The more a woman does this, though, the more she demeans herself and sets up the stage for her downfall soon, because everyone knows that a barking dog never bites, her partner will have no reason to change because he can have his cake and eat it too and will get comfortable in his ways.

THE WIFE IN DENIAL
This one will never see the husband as the actual problem, but will always see other women as the issue with her relationship. We all know that men lie, so sometimes they manage to fool some naive girl that they are in love and she buys it at the recommended retail price. She either does not get to know that the randy goat is married, or knows but falls for the classic 'we are going through our divorce and I'm miserable but I love you' crap and while this is not to say it's a valid excuse, it happens. Or the other woman is simply a classic hoe.
Now the wife comes to know about the affair and what does she do? Gets the other woman's number and calls her up with threats and insults, or physically goes to her and slaps her around, or if she's powerful enough she hires a hit man to finish off her competition.

Why does she do this, you wonder, does she not see her guy is the issue? She does, but does not want to accept it, so she resents other women who she feels might be desirable to her man (if he can still be called that), and makes herself his bodyguard, barking at any female entity that dares come near hers.
In my opinion, this just keeps working against her because what she has done is tell her guy 'whatever you do, (whoever you do), I will be there waiting to catch you when you fall'. So he will keep at it until he gets tired, fat chance of that happening though.


So there you go, what do you think about my list? Did I leave any type of scorned woman unmentioned? Be sure to let me know in the comments section if I have, and until next time, keep it foxxy my dears!!
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A ROYAL WEDDING, AND A FALSE ACCUSATION

While Meghan Markle was lucky kissing her prince sometime last year, some of us -myself included- were still struggling with the toads that we chose to be yoked to for eternity. It was a very busy weekend in general terms; and today's post is not advice or anything like that, but a story of sorts that you may or may not learn a lesson from so hear ye, hear ye, my sorrowful tale of being falsely accused....

It has happened so many times that I lost count, but there was a previous incident whereby after filling the kiddy pool with water and trying to get the babies to play in it, we went to the house, and left our resident trouble maker outside. The water had still been running because it was so slow in filling the pool so he said he was going to shut it since we were done and off he went in the direction of the tap.
Quick jump to the evening, when the driveway was filled with water and I was outside doing some light weeding in the kitchen garden when he came up to me and said, 'you know you drained the pool'.
This sounded strange and because I was surprised I asked him, 'what?' To which he repeated his statement, and said that when I pulled the pipe out of the tap with the other end still in the pool, it siphoned the water out hence the wet driveway and almost empty pool.
I stood upright and told him, in the most calm way that I could, that I was not insane, and I had not even gone near the tap since leaving the area with the pool. He was the one who shut the tap and did whatever else he did so why now was he blaming me?
He must not have expected this because he just turned around and walked away, smart if you ask me, and good for both of us as it would save us a tiring exchange, more so on our son's second birthday.
So now on the weekend in question, it seemed to me that he is trying to refresh his gaslighting on me by doing things and then very sanely and calmly blaming me to see if I fall for it. Unfortunately, I have learnt that this is his trick so now my immediate reaction when he accuses me of anything is to deny, deny, deny, as he always does.

This time, my latest gripe, is when he tried blaming me for not giving him complete feedback about an engineer he had requested me to follow up for him, concerning verification of some drawings. As the story went, we were together that whole day, when I called up my contact person who told me that he did not personally know any registered engineers, but that he knew someone who worked in a printing shop who might know one- a broker, if you will. I told him thanks and he forwarded the number to me and I relayed the info back to my deaf-man; in a conversation that went as follows:
Me: So I don't think we'll get any help from there as he said his dad is not registered and he does not personally know a registered engineer, the person who's number he has forwarded to me is just someone who works in a printing shop so he will broker us and will definitely want some payment in return, defeating the purpose of the cheapness we are trying to get.
Him: .... Silence......... Then call him and ask him if he can send us to the person he works for and we will negotiate.
Me: The person he works for is a printer. They do not have any drawing or approving capabilities because they just print. Will you be fine with being sent to someone else through him, then pay both of them?
Him: Just call him and ask him.
Me: Here's his number, I think it would be better if you talked to him as I'm not sure what or how exactly I'm supposed to ask him.
Him: Well if he's not an actual engineer then it's fine I guess he can't help us.

*****************************conversation ends*********************************

So, at some point his phone went off and he needed to talk to some people and meet up so we put his sim card in mine and he had it for the better part of the evening.

Forward to the next day, where he's out and I can't reach him due to network disturbances and I have a long day comprising of cramps and burning my fingers on the ugali sufuria. At some point his mother calls me and after some small talk asks me when I last spoke to him, and I can literally hear the disapproval in her voice when I tell her about three hours ago, to which she says ok, goodnight, talk tomorrow, then we hang up.
This gets me feeling some (bad) type of way because it is not the first time that his parents have said and/or implied that I need to constantly know where he, is, and reach out to him, call him, and talk to him. But just how the shit do you keep tabs on a grown man with his own agenda who most of the times picks up your call with a sigh, because you're just bugging the soul out of him? I need a course on how to do this, and I also think that if his parents could not tame him in all the time they have known him, it's unfair to give me that responsibility; I have never in my life professed to being a miracle worker.

So anyway finally his phone goes through, and my emotions are still smarting from the call and trying to restrain myself from saying something stupid, as I often do when angry. We start off on a bad note but things calm down and there's actually even a light joke thrown somewhere in there at some point.
He calls me when he's at the gate, and says he has the key anyway so don't bother. I say ok but go outside all the same after some minutes so I can close it once he's in, but there are no characteristic lights under the gate to signal his presence. I stand around for a bit then go back in, because the cold is making me miserable.

After a few minutes, I hear the gate open, he gets in, and closes it, and gets into the house, says hi to the kids, and comes to the room, where I am, having just gotten out of the loo.

No hello, so I volunteer one that gets the coldest response you ever heard, and before I can recover, he hits me with 'why did you refuse to follow up with the lead we had for a registered engineer?' I literally wonder out loud, 'what the fk!?' 'I refused to follow up???? did you show interest past the point we left it at? I told you he sent me a number and you had the phone, did you call him??' He walks out of the room and heads into the kitchen.

At this juncture I realize I have just gone fifty shades angrier but I cannot stop myself, and I try, believe me. I follow him there, and tell him to try and not blame me for his mistakes and failures because when I offer to help it does not mean that he needs to step out of the situation and be an observer, with no input. He says it's ok and he will help himself in the future and will never ask for my help, so I can just leave it at that he does not want to listen to me anymore.
This strikes a raw nerve, so I do what every angry woman does; cut open an old wound then pour the salt in. Suddenly it's about his being late a month ago, it's his general irresponsibility, the way he talks to me, etc etc. and just everything else we have ever fought about. He's getting angry and asking what that has to do with anything, could I please just shut the hell up and leave him alone, he just wants some peace etc, but I'm on a roll so I carry on, til I'm all spent, and go back to the bedroom just after he calls his mother asking her what she told me over the phone to get me so upset.
I don't hear the exchange though it's a short conversation. I know she's going to take this opportunity to give me a talk of how to stay well in a 'marriage' as if this sham is one, and as if I'm responsible of the actions for her son. I get madder at the thought but pour some whisky in a plastic cup and drink it bitterly and I guess it calms me down  bit.
I get to work on the laptop doing random things and put up a blog post (not this one, I'm not that fast haha) and end up sleeping at 3 a.m.
Is this how I want to raise our kids really? Did I not learn from my mum and dad that this is the recipe for messed up adults?
Stay foxxy out there.
I wish I had more alcohol.

XOXO